Audit time (Rural Kitchen, Brooke)

Rural Kitchen,

Brooke,

Open Mon-Tues, Thurs-Sat 8:00-21:00,

Highly Recommended

With summer drawing to an end and the opportunity for outdoor activity starting to decrease then it's time to start planning my indoor programme. Top of the list is to have a full audit of all the cafes on my visited list. I have about 270 entries on my active list and map. I know a few of these have closed or changed hands so I plan to tidy the list up to the best of my ability. I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat imagining someone finding a cafe on my list, cycling there only to find it has closed and their ride ends up with no cake.

As well as removing now closed cafes from the list I need to revisit ones that our now under new ownership. I started this mission recently by going to the OB (formally Cadence) cafe in Old Buckenham (see 3rd time lucky) as it had changed hands. 

Another cafe on my list was the imaginarily named "The Cafe" in Brooke as I knew it had been sold. I had been there at least half a dozen times before and it was highly recommended so I was hoping it would still be good.

I took Mrs Crusader as my cycling guest for the 30 mile loop. On arrival I was pleased to see that the cafe had a rather better name of the Rural Kitchen. It had also expanded its range as it opens until 9pm serving Bistro style food. However I was here to check out the hot drinks and cake.

Outside The Rural Kitchen in Brooke

The set up was as before with an indoor and outdoor seating area. We opted to make the most of the sunshine and sat outside.

First I checked out the effective cake selection (ECS), which was a good one, with some unusual options along with the standard chocolate, lemon and carrot cake (3 of the sponge cake big 5). I went for ginger and lime while I got Mrs Crusader a slice of courgette and lemon as I liked the sound of it.

Some of today's Cake selection

Our refreshments soon turned up. My hot chocolate was a fairly average one but Mrs Crusader thought her Americano was very good. On the cake front I felt both cakes were very nice, light and moist although I could have done with a bit more ginger. I had had it confirmed that they were all proper homemade which is always a plus.

I added up the scores which, apart from the hot chocolate, were very in line with its old ratings and I would still highly recommend a visit.
I was pleased my Cycle Cafe Audit was off to a good start (if anyone know of any errors on my current cafe list then please let me know) however its about to go back on hold as this weekend I set off for a 5 ride week of cycling in the French Alps where I will again be looking to add to my list of the best cafes to be found at top of mountains plus continuing my search for the ultimate croissant.

Scores

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
6.0	7.5	7.3	7.8	7.35	7.19

Route

Click link to down load 30 mile Norwich Poringland gpx file for your GPS