A pleasant surprise. (The Cafe. Brooke)

The Cafe,

Brooke,

Changed hands now Rural Kitchen

In case I had been naughty this year I decided that I couldn't count on Santa to bring me the new warmer cycle clothing I required to continue my cafe cycle rating on cold winter days. Therefore last week I emptied my piggy bank and splashed out on warm socks, leggings, top and gloves. As today was a cold winters day it seemed the ideal day to try them out. 

Modelling my new winter cycle clothing collection on a cold winters day

The ride was to take in the Cafe in Brooke with today's guests Chris (wife) and Barry and Helen (tandem riders) who are the first tandem powered reviewers. After several recommendations I had visited the Cafe in the summer (with Andrew who is notoriously hard to please) but it had not scored as well as expected so I was curious to see what we thought today.

On the way to Brooke it became clear that further winter layers were required as my hands and feet were still frozen. Fortunately I believe Santa is a regular reader of my blog so I'm hoping his elves are already weaving me some inner gloves and moulding thermal shoe covers (wiggle catalogue numbers available on request).

Apart from a quick puncture stop we arrived at the Cafe in good time for our refreshments and ratings. As Barry and Helen are tandem riders I made it clear to them that they only get one vote in the guest drink ratings due to my one bike one vote rule.

Myself with Barry and Helen about to enter The Cafe

Last time I came we sat in the outside seating area but today we needed to warm up so went inside where it was warm and cosy. There was a nice selection of home-made cakes and biscuits (although sadly no big chocolate cake) and I struggled to choice between the delicious looking carrot cake and cheese scone. Fortunately Chris went for carrot cake so both could be rated.

I next ordered my usual hot chocolate but to my surprise was asked if I wanted a milk, dark or white chocolate based drink. This is a very exciting development for all hot chocolate fans and hopefully we will be seeing more cafes offering this choice in the future. I went dark. Chris went decaf skinny dark mocha, Helen (in some sort of tribute to the milky bar kid) went skinny white mocha and Barry went cappuccino. All our drinks were excellent and rated very highly with 9's all round. Barry did think his chocolate sprinkling was too sweet but based on the one bike one vote rule I ignored him.

The cakes were excellent too with the added bonus that my cheese scone came with home made relish (another cafe first). With these ratings averaged out with the last visit it moved the Box Tree Cafe well up the ratings. One thing consistent with my last visit were the very friendly staff.  So today's stop was a very pleasant surprise making this visit one of my favourite stops so far this year.

Note: The cafe also visited in Sportive 1 post on 19/01/2014.

Based on it's 3 visits, ratings for The Cafe are

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
7.17	7.33	6.5	8.33	6.5	7.17

If anyone has any suggestions for a cafe they think I should visit then please add a comment below and I'll check it out.
This is a map of the route we took

Click to download 26 mile Norwich Brooke loop GPX file for you GPS