Meal times (Janeys Village Cafe, Hethersett)

Janey's Village Cafe,

Hethersett,

Open Sun-Thur 8.00-3.00, Fri-Sat 8.00-7.00

It's always good news when I hear about a new cafe that has opened and available for a cafe cycle ride. It is especially good news if you are planning to set the world record for a calorie neutral bike ride (see Calorie Neutral Cycle ride) and need some cafes that are open after 5.00pm. Janey's Village Cafe in Hethersett ticked both theses boxes so with today's guest, Chris (Mrs Crusader), we set off on a 27 mile loop to try it out.

The ride itself was uneventful and despite the strong wind it was an enjoyable couple of hours  spent in the saddle. We cruised through the sunny Norfolk country side until we arrived in Hethersett and Janey's Village Cafe.

Outside Janey's Village Cafe

Today's weather was sunny but windy and a bit cold. As there was no outdoor seating area we were saved the difficult sitting choice (in or out) that one always gets wrong on day's like these. 

Janey's village cafe operates a waitress based serving system so there is no counter with cakes on display. To decide what we wanted, and award the effective cake selection (ECS) rating, we could only go off the cake selection blackboard. On the cake selection blackboard there were 4 cake qualifying items, so we ordered them all, but could only awarded a lowish ECS score. For clarity although toasted tea cake has the word cake in it I consider it to be a fruit bread and therefore it doesn't count as cake.

Cake selection blackboard

For drinks it was hot chocolate for me and skinny Mocha for Chris. While we waited for our order I noticed that despite the time being well past mid day everyone else in the cafe had ordered the full English breakfast. When I was a lad breakfast was the meal you had to start the day, it had to be done and dusted by 9.00 and be oat based. Sadly times have changed and Breakfast is now just another menu item rather than a meal time in it's own right. One could argue that cake and scones are tea time fare and shouldn't be eaten for lunch either but lets not go there.

Good looking scones and cakes

Our drinks and cakes arrived and I was pleased to see that my very large cheese scone had been warmed. We opted to try the scones first and found the cheese one to be a little disappointing being a bit dry and not very cheesy whereas the fruit scone was excellent and in fact Chris felt it was one of the best she had ever had. The cakes were nice and we both agreed the carrot cake was the better of the two as the lemon drizzle was a bit too sweet for our tastes. Overall a pretty good showing on the cake front.

Drinks, the hot chocolate was very good

The scone contrast continued with the drinks as I found my hot chocolate to be very good on all three key criteria of flavour, thickness and temperature. Chris however found her Mocha too sweet but this was probably as there was no proper frothy coffee machine in operation. In these circumstances it is always best to stick to a normal filter coffee rather than go fancy.

Janey's Village Cafe is only in it's third week of operation so it was good to see it busy and looks like a good addition to the cafe world. I wish it well for the future. I will certainly be putting it on the list of cafes on my world record attempt in August. With its late opening time I will visit it towards the end of that day when I expect people will still be having evening breakfast and I hope to still be having late evening afternoon tea. 

Scores

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
7.5	5.0	4.5	7.0	5.0	6.0

Map of Route

Click here to download 28 mile Norwich Wymondham loop GPX file for your GPS