Today I will be reviewing another recent afternoon tea
experience of mine, this time from my very own home town of Nottingham, for
those of you who have not heard of Nottingham think…Robin Hood, Maid Marian!
I have been far and wide for afternoon tea (well…. London
& York!), yet I have never sampled the delights of afternoon tea in one of
my local cafes/ restaurants – until recently that is!
So a couple of weeks ago I was craving tea and cake (yet
again!) and I managed to persuade my sister and brother-in-law who were visiting
from London to treat themselves (and me) to a late afternoon slice of cake at Central
Avenue in West Bridgford (our local hub for shops and restaurants). It was
then that I discovered Yumacha for the first time…
Yumacha is a gorgeous newly opened bar/ restaurant in West
Bridgford with an oriental theme to it. As soon as I walked in I was blown away
by the décor, as you will see from the pictures below it really is a beautiful
little place – very quirky and sophisticated. I particularly love the mismatched
sofas – they looked so comfortable and add to the peaceful and relaxing vibe of
the restaurant.
In the centre of each table there was this adorable flower
pot – I warn you now do not pick it up
to admire it…it has a lot of water in it, which could spill all over you!! You
should learn from my mistakes! - No dining experience is complete without me embarrassing myself at least once!!
On the walls there were historical photographs of how
Central Avenue was in 1965, which I thought was a lovely touch!
Ok, so enough of my ramblings about the appearance of the
restaurant –after a quick perusal of the menu, I discovered to my absolute
delight that Yumacha serve an oriental themed afternoon tea and priced at only
£10.50!!, which seems like an absolute bargain compared to the £44 I forked out
for my last afternoon tea in London! So it was decided – 3 oriental afternoon teas
it was J
The waiter appeared momentarily confused and a little
perplexed when we asked for the afternoon tea. As Yumacha is a fairly new
restaurant I’m guessing we might have been the first customers to opt for the afternoon
tea! Perhaps this post will inspire a few more people to follow in our
footsteps!
The waiter quickly overcame his surprise and began laying
the table with the cutest mismatched cups and saucers and teapots, filled with
yummy loose leaf herbal tea - ready for our afternoon tea.
While we were admiring the mismatched cups and saucers the
waiter brought out our fruit scones, now as I mentioned in my previous post the
scones are my favourite part of any afternoon tea and again I wasn't
disappointed! I am not usually that keen on fruit scones as I feel it makes the
scone really sweet, but these were delicious so I happily dolloped the
cream/jam on and went forward with my usual Devonshire cream tea.
After enjoying the cream tea we moved on to the next
stage…the sandwiches! There was only one sandwich type, your standard cucumber
sandwich – (a little disappointing)! The oriental inspired dishes were a prawn
cracker, which was surprisingly lovely - I even gobbled up my sisters when she
wasn't looking! There was a duck spring roll, but thankfully also a vegetarian spring
roll option, which was incidentally one of the yummiest spring rolls I have tasted!
Unfortunately, when it came to the sweet treats (my forte) I
wasn't entirely impressed with the line-up. However, this really is about
personal preference, I personally have an extreme dislike of banana and one of
the cakes happened to be a banana and toffee loaf cake, which I didn’t go near!
Chocolate on the other hand is one of my weaknesses and when
I saw an extremely chocolaty truffle sitting on the stand I was in heaven!
Before I grabbed it from the tray and gobbled it up the waitress recommended to
have at the end as it was very sweet! That was certainly the case! It takes a
while to eat as it is very messy and very rich. While the three of us have
overactive sweet tooth’s, on this occasion we were unable to devour all the
cakes and pastries, as it was a bit of a sweetness overload even for us!
In keeping with the oriental theme we were also served a
fortune cookie alongside our tea! Let’s hope my fortune cookie prediction comes
true….
You sort of get what you pay for in my opinion, while the whole
atmosphere was brilliant, the service and décor were just as good as what you
would expect from afternoon tea at a top hotel, the part I was most looking
forward to…the cakes (obviously) was a slight let down as I feel it was overly
sweet and the options didn't really appeal to my taste buds. Overall, the
experience was pleasant and enjoyable. I loved the unique oriental twist to the
usual traditional English tea so I would definitely encourage others to check
it out.
If you don’t live in Nottingham and you don’t have the good fortune to be a short journey away from
Yumacha then it’s worth checking out your local cafes/restaurants as you never
know they might have a quirky afternoon tea option on offer, which is just
waiting for you! The perfect thing about finding a cafe/restaurant near you that
offers afternoon tea is that you don’t usually have to book ages in advance,
you can simply pop over whenever you fancy a special treat!
Hope you liked today's post!
See you next time for more of my
ramblings!
xx
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Thanks, glad you enjoyed the post :) x
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