So long old friend. (Salhouse Garden Centre tearoom, Salhouse)

Salhouse Garden Centre Tearooms,

Salhouse,

Opening times Mon-Sat 09:30-16:30, 

Sun 10:00-15:45

The weather man on the telly had told me that today would be the first proper cold day of the winter and when I looked out of the window this morning it was clear that Jack Frost had indeed been busy overnight. Fortunately it was just cold and not icey so the conditions would not impact my planned cafe cycle ride with Chris (Mrs Crusader) plus Barry and Helen and their Tandem. It would be the last time that Barry and Helen's Tandem would be coming on a ride with me as they pick up a new young bike from the Tandem breeders just before Christmas. I asked Barry what would be happening to the current Tandem and he mumbled something about a sack, bricks and the river. Remember Tandems are for life not just Christmas.

Despite double socking and gloving my extremities were all very cold as we set off to our meeting point and they didn't fully recover until we got back home, as despite the clear blue sunny skies the temperature never warmed up.

It may have looked like a warm day but it was freezing

Today's ride would be a shortish one visiting the Salhouse Barn tearooms at the Salhouse Garden centre. On the way there we went past the Olive Tree Cafe in Tunstead. Their facebook page had said that they were temporarily closed for staff training although they have been since the end of July. I was keen to see if they had reopened as by now the staff would be some of the best trained in the world and this would surely up their already good Atmosphere and Ambiance rating. Sadly as we cycled past there were For Sale signs up, clearly they had spent too much time and money on staff training and the business had now gone under. I will therefore be removing it from the blog and adding it to the closed cafe archive so as not to confuse future cafe cyclists.

Still cold we continued the ride to Salhouse Garden centre and the Salhouse Barn Tearooms. There is both an indoor and outdoor seating area available with plenty of room but only one hardy customer had opted for outdoors and we decided not to join them and headed inside.

Outside the entrance to Salhouse Garden centre and tearooms

It was clearly a very popular destination as it was packed with people spending their grey pound on hot food on a cold Tuesday lunchtime. 

Busy indoor seating area

However I was more interested in the cakes so first checked out the range in order to award the effective cake selection (ECS) score. It was a pretty good selection so I awarded a pretty good ECS before joining the back of the food queue.

Good cake selection

I went for Cherry and Almond cake with my hot chocolate whilst Chris and Helen both went for Mochas, one with chocolate and one with coffee cake. For once Barry had a coffee (cappuccino) and hadn't gone for his normal sausage roll but a cornish pasty instead. As a cornish pasty still isn't cake Barry played no further part in any cake rating activity. As Barry and Helen mercilessly tucked into their cake and pasty their Tandem said it was too sad to be able to eat anything on it's last ever cafe cycle ride so patiently waited for us by the Christmas trees.

Our drinks performed very well on the 'being really hot on a really cold day' front but not so well on the strength side as they were all a bit milky. The cakes were reasonably good but just the wrong side of the dry to moist continuum.

Cakes and drinks

I also tried some of the Salhouse Barn tearooms flapjack which was very good indeed. You will have to wait for another week to see if it made it onto my final short list for the flapjack of the year flapjack off next month (see flapjack news).

As we left the cafe the old folk were still queuing up to get in so the Salhouse Barn seems to be doing a lot of things right and I don't expect that I'll need to be adding it to my closed cafe archive anytime soon.

We finished the last few miles of our ride before Barry and Helen and their Tandem turned off for home. Before they left I said a last good bye to Tandem, and with a tear in my eye we took a moment to remember the many enjoyable rides we had been on together. However age eventually catches up with us all and there is no way for anyone to avoid ending up in that great bike rack in the sky (or possibly rusting at the bottom of a river) just Barry and Helen's Tandem will be going there sooner than it realises.

Scores

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
6.0	5.0	7.0	7.0	6.0	6.20

Route

Click here to down load 26 mile Norwich Tunstead loop GPX file for your GPS

Good start to the year. (Prima Rosa Tearoom, Salhouse)

Prima Rosa Tearoom,

Salhouse,

Opening times Mon-Sat 09:30-16:00,

 Sun 10:00-16:00,

Highly Recommended 

It is already the middle of January and I have not yet visited a new cafe or tearoom this year so it's about time I put that right.

You may remember that back at the start of December I went for a ride with cycling guests Chris (Mrs Crusader) and Barry and Helen and their Tandem to Salhouse (see getting back on it) where I was presented with a Cafe/tearoom dilemma. At number 82 Lower Street I found Prima Rosa Tearoom and at number 82b Lower Street was Radley's coffee shop. As there didn't appear to be any other commercial outlets in the village I was surprised that Salhouse (pop. 1462) could support two such establishments next to each other. But which to choose, on that ride we tried Radley's, so today, in the interest of fairness, it was time to return to Salhouse to check out Prima Rosa Tearoom.

Once again Barry was in charge of our route where, demonstrating great imagination and variety, we did exactly the same route as last time, only going the other way round. It was a fairly short ride so we soon arrived at the heart of the Salhouse commercial district and parked up outside Prima Rosa.

Prima Rosa doubles up as a gift shop but if you didn't know it was also a tearoom you might well miss it as there is only a tiny teapot sign letting you know. 

Outside Prima Rosa where there is little indication that its a tearoom

There is an outdoor seating benches area available although it was a bit too cold to put it in to use today leading us to go inside (note on a second visit in Sept 2016 the bench had been replaced with a table and 2 chairs, plus table round the corner)

View from September 2016 with extended outdoor seating facility

Apparently until recently the building used to be the Post Office and looking around inside you could see that a number of the old features had cleverly been retained to keep some post office character. On the gifts front there was an eclectic mix on display throughout and a series of tearoom tables to choose from. We got a very warm welcome from Mrs Goggins and her staff so with the whole package we awarded a good atmosphere and ambiance score.

Inside Prima Rosa

I checked out the cake selection and it was a good one with a number of items I liked the look of. As well as the cakes they had some good looking cheese scones but cheese scones are so 2015 as this is the year of the flapjack (see thing of the year 2016). Unfortunately news of this had clearly not made it to Salhouse as they didn't have any but despite this I still awarded a high effective cake selection (ECS) mark.

Good cake selection

For drinks it was good to be offered a choice of dark or white hot chocolate. I went dark, Chris went dark Mocha, Helen went white Mocha, Barry went cappuccino while their tandem went outside as he decided he didn't need a drink after such a short ride.

Well presented drinks

On the cake front Helen chose the apricot Bakewell cake, which I didn't even know was a thing until today, I went for rich chocolate cake slice and, despite regular cycling guest and coffee and walnut cake expert Mick not being with us, Chris went for coffee and walnut cake.

Today's cake choices

I thought my hot chocolate was very good being nice and thick. My cycling guests also liked their coffees, particularly the white Mocha, and all received high guest hot drink quality (GHDQ) scores.

Barry had chosen a panini, which is clearly not cake, so I had excluded him from any cake tasting while the rest of us tried each others cakes. They were all excellent with my personal favourite being the coffee and walnut. I would be keen to come back again with coffee and walnut cake expert Mick to get his qualified opinion.

All in all we were very impressed with Prima Rosa and it scored highly in every category (and slightly higher still on my next visit) so I highly recommend a visit. As an added bonus I got a a Prima Rosa loyalty card, which I have added to my loyalty card picture library, that requires just 5 stamps for a free drink, equalling the record for the lowest number needed.

The ride had turned out to be a very good start to 2016 as I continue the voyages of the Cake Crusader and my ongoing mission to explore new villages, to seek out new cafes and new tearooms, to boldly cycle to where no cafe cycling reviewer has gone before, as long as it's not too far away and I'm back in time for dinner.

Ratings (from 2 visits)

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
8.00	7.75	7.63	8.00	7.50	7.78

Route

Click here to down load 26 mile Norwich Tunstead loop GPX file for your GPS