Its Official (Broken Egg Cafe , Harleston)

Broken Egg Cafe,

Harleston,

Opening times Every day 8:30-4:30

Recommended

It has been a frustrating time in the world of cafe cycle riding as I have been unable to review a new cafe for over 3 weeks. This is not for the want of trying but I have been frustrated by closed cafes, last minute call offs and inclement weather. So it was a relief to finally get a successful trip in the bag.

Despite the lack of new cafes I have not been idle with several more sausage rolls tested for sausage roll of the year #SROTY and I have been planning a trip to find the best cafe in South Wales in September. As always I will need a cycling guest to accompany me and have chosen Mrs Crusader for this tour. Due to injury and ongoing toothache then Mrs Crusader has not been able to get out on her bike much so will need some serious training up, starting with this 60 mile round trip to Harleston (slightly longer than one shown below).

On the way we stopped at the Spoon cake cafe in Loddon.

Quick stop at Spoon cafe in Loddon

Here I was able to audit their current ratings (still very good) and check out their sausage roll offering. It was a good one but just missed out on my current finalist shortlist.

Sausage roll at Spoon cafe

From here we headed to the border, which gets a bit hilly, so Mrs Crusader started to flag as we hit one 'climb' after another. Using my excellent motivational skills I pointed out it wasn't as hilly as Wales will be, which for some reason didn't seem to help.

After nearly 40 miles we made it to today's target cafe the Broken Egg, just outside Harleston. It has an outdoor seating area but it was mainly filled with very young people on toy tractors so we opted to sit inside.

Outside Broken Egg near Harleston

I checked out the cake selection which had scones (fruit and cheese), a tart thing but only a single slice of cake (chocolate) so I couldn't award a very high effective cake selection (ECS) score.

Rather small cake selection with just one piece cake left

I obviously ordered the only piece of cake to have with my hot chocolate which meant that Mrs Crusader would have to do without and just have a Mocha coffee. I told her it was part of her new nutrition plan, which for some reason didn't seem to help.

They were very busy so our drinks took a little time to come, the very nice waitress lady was very apologetic about the delay and kept us fully up to date with progress.

When the drinks arrived they were both very good indeed. It was nice to have a hot chocolate that wasn't overly milky as is often the case and Mrs Crusader thought her Mocha was of a good strength too.

Very good drinks

As it was lunchtime,and the cafe specialised in egg based dishes, I had an omelet and Mrs Crusader posh eggs on salmon. Again it took a while to arrive but, despite it forming no part of my cafe ratings system, I have to admit it was one of the best omelets I have ever had.

Sometime later there was still no sign of my chocolate cake so I politely approached the counter to ask for it. The waitress lady was so busy apologising to me that she took her eye off the ball (or cake) and dropped it on the floor. Fortunately while we had been having lunch a victoria sponge had been baked and had appeared on the counter so I had some of that instead and must admit it too was excellent cake.

Fortunately a Victoria sponge had appeared before the chocolate cake dropping incident

The Broken Egg was a nice stop and it's food and drink were very good but we had spent a lot longer there than planned and this meant we might not get home before the forecast afternoon rain.

As we set off again it was clear the long stop had done Mrs Crusader no favours and with 10 miles to go she announced that she was knackered. I checked if she was just tired or officially knackered and unfortunately she confirmed the later. This was a shame as it meant forms had to be filled in to make her knackeredness officially official.

Mrs Crusader who was officially knackered

By the time admin was completed the first drops of rain had started to fall. Fortunately I knew that Mrs Crusader knew the way back from where we were so I could happily abandoned her to make sure I got home without the paperwork getting wet. 

I'm sure you will be glad to know that Mrs Crusader eventually got back and as she was officially knackered was allowed a sit down, while I planned her next training ride.

Scores

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
8.0	7.5	5.0	8.5	5.5	6.85

Map of route

Click here to down load 43 mile Norwich Harleston loop GPX file for your GPS