Worrying trend. (Little Red Roaster, Norwich)

Little Red Roaster,

Norwich,

Opening times Mon-Sat 08:00-17:00,

Highly Recommended 

As it was such a mild day I thought it would be a good chance to squeeze in a quick cafe cycle ride before proper winter turns up. I was able to persuade Chris (Mrs Crusader) to join me as today's cycling guest on the condition that I promised not to go too far. I therefore planned a short 20ish mile loop ending up at one of the many unvisited Norwich coffee shops currently on my cafe and tearoom to do list.

Unlike me she had not checked the weather forecast and had over layered setting off in cycle kit more appropriate for an Arctic expedition. This obviously led to much de zipping and layer removal as the ride progressed. Apparently the warm weather was my fault and I was handed a pile of her clothes to carry for the rest of the ride.

Despite these delays, in what seemed like no time, we completed our loop and were heading for the Little Red Roaster coffee shop. There are actually two Little Red Roaster coffee shops in Norwich but we were going to their first one in Grove Road.

Outside the Little Red Roaster by the continental style outdoor seating area

It certainly lived up to it's 'little' name as it has a bigger continental style outdoor seating area than the space available inside. Here there is a long table and a breakfast bar facility available where you can sit and watch the world go by. Which we did.

Breakfast bar facility

Once inside it was time to check out the cakes and award the effective cake selection (ECS) score. It was not the biggest selection with only a couple of cakes, brownies and flapjacks qualifying but they all looked very tempting so I could still award a decent ECS rating.

Cake selection

I went for toffee and banana and Chris choose raspberry and white chocolate to go with our hot chocolate and Mocha. These were all soon delivered to us in the breakfast bar area.

Cakes and drinks in breakfast bar area

The Hot chocolate was excellent and a proper chocolate tasting drink. I awarded a very high hot chocolate quality (HCQ) score. Chris thought her Mocha also tasting extremely nice but she likes her drinks to be nuclear thermally warm and this one was only hot so she docked half a mark off her guest hot drink quality (GHDQ) score for lack of temperature.

I moved on to the cake but to my horror, for the second cafe running, the cake had been served on top of the serviette rending it useless. 

Cake served on serviette. #keepcakeoffserviettes

Chris didn't know what the fuss was about and suggested I take the cake off the serviette before eating it. I explained this would not help as in the process of removing the cake my fingers would get crumby and as the napkin was now covered in cake I would have no way of wiping them clean (unless I did it on my trousers which she is always telling me off for so also a non starter). I just had to work through the cake to retrieve the serviette. Remember #keepcakeoffserviettes.

Ruined Serviette

Despite the serviette issue the cakes were really good and I awarded a high cake taste quality (CTQ) rating.

All in all the little red rooster proved to be an excellent stop scoring well in all categories and earning a highly recommended status. Defiantly worth a visit.

I returned home and vowed to up my game on my keep cake off serviettes campaign as standards seem to have slipped. I checked my cafe cycle ride data spreadsheet to find that up until last week then this year, of the cafes providing serviettes, only 7 from 92 visited had placed the cake on the serviette but with two new examples of this practice in last two visits the number is now 9 out of 94 which is a shocking 10%. My work here is clearly not done.

Scores

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
8.50	7.50	6.0	7.50	7.25	7.35

Route

click here to download 21 mile Norwich Barford loop gpx file for your GPS