Light Luncheon For Five
Mr.Wolfe, Brighton
Yesterday, after my last shift for McDonald's, Mr.Boyfriend and I went out for a light lunch with our friends. The Royal Couple, Sara and her husband (Mr.Boyfriend's and mine best friends) have been talking about this "ah-mazing" place just around the corner of theirs. They tend to be rather snobbish when it comes to food serving establishments and when they recommend a place, most times it will turn out to be a really good place indeed.
Mr.Wolfe serves a fairly large range of organic food, from sandwiches and cakes to tarts and soups. They also serve excellent coffee and nice tea.
The whole shop has this vintage, hipster, eco-friendly, very European look to it. It reminds me of my favourite getaway spot back in my hometown - a very hipster place where you cannot find two chairs to match. But back to Mr.Wolfe. They prepare all the food then and there, so if you have a rather big order, be prepared to wait a fair bit. But it's so worthy. Mr.Boyfriend and I both had the Home-made BLC with rocket and mayo, Mr.Royal had Goat Cheese & roasted peppers with caramelised onions, rocket and mayo while Mrs.Royal and our dear room-mate Papa Bear had Roasted squash & emmental with black olives, rocket and mayo. You can see the tendency here, right? Rocket and mayo? I must say, they were a good match to each and every of the sandwiches. While the BLC failed to surprise me because of it's over-popular nature, the Roasted squash and emmental was a mind-blowingly good combination, so good that I want to recreate it at home. Goat cheese and roasted peppers wasn't bad either, very sweet and tender taste, definitely a hit.
Of course, all of us ordered cakes as well, because there is only one Sunday in a week, so Carpe Diem! I had Lemon and Coconut slice, which had very bright and specific taste. The sourness of the lemon was just harsh enough to make the overly-sweet coconut worth the effort. Very light and taste texture and amazing lemon butter-cream frosting. Mr.Boyfiend went for the riches cake on the menu, as per se, the Chocolate and Hazelnut meringue cake. It's basically a rich, dense chocolate cake and a hazelnut meringue on top of it, the whole thing connected through a layer of chocolate ganache. I could never eat even half a slice of this cake, so sweet, so rich, but Mr.Boyfriend absolutely loved every bite of it. Next up, The Royal Couple shared a Macadamia Brownie and Smillie Face Big Cookie. The Brownie was good, gooey and moist, with a very nice, nutty but subtle Macadamia taste. The Smillie Face cookie was cute looking but didn't surprise with it' taste, not even a bit. Standard cookie, just with a face on it. And last, but not least, Papa Bear had Chocolate, Beetroot and Raspberry Cake, a rather nice surprise. I'm usually very suspicious towards cakes with vegetables in them, I always worry that the savoury watery taste will make the cake taste bad. Well, not this time. Not sure if that was thanks to the very refreshing and sense-surprising raspberry, or just the vegetable-involving cakes are not so bad after all, but the cake was good.
However, there are two problematic things that I need to address in order to be completely fair.
- ONE - Their food arriving schedule is completely messed up. They brought the cakes first, then after some time the sandwiches arrived and finally, after more than half an hour sitting there, our drinks arrived. None of us ordered a fancy cocktail or even a cappuccino. Two lattes, a black coffee, a tea and a glass of apple juice. That's it, nothing complicated, nothing that takes plenty of time to be prepared or whatever. However this venture took the staff (that is otherwise perfectly nice and friendly) well around half an hour. And this is unacceptable.
- TWO - On their wall-menu they offer organic, farm-made, real apple juice. It sounded like a dream come true, there is nothing better than organic farm-made apple juice. However, just before I received my glass, I saw them pouring it from a bottle of Innocent juice. Not nice. If I wanted factory-made bottled juice, I would've gone to ASDA.
Food: 9/10
Service: 610
Interior: 10/10
Location: 9/10
Pricing: 7/10
Overall Grade: 8/10
Will I go back? Sure, the cakes were great, the coffee was great, the sandwiches were great. I won't order apple juice again with them and will make sure to let them know that I prefer my cake last and my drink first, but other than that - my new favourite spot for coffee and quite ME-time in town!
