Hitit Cafe

http://www.hititcafe.com/

A new cafe on Hills Road, where Cafe Avalanche used to be. Turkish based, but they do a full English too.

Troby

Quite a plateful, but those beans weren't to my favour

It's a pretty good breakfast - Not a budget one at £7 - but it's big. It's also a case of the Good the Bad and the Ugly!

The Good:
Within seconds of ordering, I could hear sizzling coming from the kitchen at the back. Service was good (there was only one other customer mind you). The breakfast came pretty quickly, probably in less than ten minutes, piping hot from frying pan onto plate. The bacon and mushrooms were particularly nice the egg was done perfectly. Tomatoes were also good and the hash browns were lovely and crispy, but a bit unflavoursome in the end. Presentation was nice, with some green stuff sprinkled over to make it look like they cared, and they did. All comes with toast and mini jam.

The Bad:
Sausages - budget, low on flavour, a bit weird let the side down.

The Ugly:
Wet beans, stealing important plate space, albeit separated by a sausage barrier, were not great.

I noticed they also do a Four Items breakfast, for a fiver, and I think I'd have been happy value and quality and size wise with just a bacon, mush, tomato, egg combo. Maybe next time.

Coffee was fine, from expresso machine.

Ambience slightly lacking as it was pretty empty, and annoying local radio playing weird music mix including some dreadful warbling Dexy's Midnight Runners b-side.

Views of the Price Regent, Hills Road.

• Food     3.5
• Value    3
• Service  4
• Ambience 3
• Coffee   3.5 

Seefud

Yes, this was a bit of a mixed bag. On the downside, way too many beans for me, I'm rarely pleased to see a deep fried frozen hash brown, and the sausages were economy style. But the rest was really quite good, especially the mushrooms, which I enjoyed possibly more than Cote or Browns. It was nicely presented too, the service was good, and I did enjoy the coffee.

Ambience wise, it was quiet. And definitely more Cafe than Café. I get the impression the cook does care about food, but doesn't quite love a full english. It's not a destination dining experience but if I go back, it will be to try his Turkish Breakfast:

Turkish Beef Sausage (sucuk), Egg, Tomato, Halloumi, Olives, Feta Cheese, Turkish Bread, Butter - Jam

Cheeky!

• Food     =average(2,4)
• Value    3.5
• Service  4
• Ambience 2
• Coffee   3.5

Cote revisited

http://www.cote-restaurants.co.uk/Cote_Restaurant_Cambridge.html

Breakfast at Cote is up there with the best of them in Cambridge. So we went back. This time with guests...

This is the same photo as last time. Today it was pi$$ing down with rain.

Michael McIntyre (guest)
The butter melted fulsomely onto the toast, like the heart of a Scottish headmistress who comes home from evensong to find a rain-drenched puppy in her garden.

The yolks of the fried eggs eyed their surroundings suspiciously, like a bridegroom waking to find himself handcuffed to a bicycle rack.

The bacon gladly yielded up its salty goodness, like the Dead Sea, only smaller.

Seefud

With their hypnotic piano music and 2-4-1 deal, breakfast at Browns last week would be a pretty hard act to follow. Fortunately the "Formule" deal at Cote is great value too at £9.95 for Full English, toast, coffee and juice. 

This is also a Cote stock image. But my coffee did look like this again today

It's not the most generous plate of breakfast you'll ever see. The quality is just lovely though., and the toast is good and plentiful, with jars of good jam on the table. I could eat this breakfast every day I think.

This is today's actual breakfast, complete with extra 1/2 tomato

When it comes to cooking a quintessentially British dish like a Full English, the French do have one advantage. They're not shy of using the butter or the salt. This is one well seasoned plate of breakfast. The only reason it loses 1/2 a mark for me, is because I could just murder another of those sausages. Or a little black pudding, naturally. My scores are almost the same as last time (good consistency), but I docked him 1/2 a point on Service for not bringing the toast until I was half way through my food. Grrr. Didn't spoil my breakfast though.

Given the choice, I think I'd probably go back here rather than Browns, despite the 2fer. Cambridge's current reigning breakfast champion I think!

• Food     4.5
• Value    4.5
• Service  4
• Ambience 4.5
• Coffee   4

Troby

I loved it! Was it the fact it was a drippy rainy day that made this so good? - I really thought the Browns breakfast was going to be unbeatable on quality/price, but this Cote breakfast had the edge for me. Even ambience wise, with the right sort of breakfast music, and great views.
For the food, the scrambled egg was great, some herbs, and wet enough but not scary. Bacon and sausage both great flavours, not some 'over smokey' bacon that's trying to grab your attention. The mushrooms too, although a bit tiny, we well seasoned and had some herb about them. Heat issues were a distant memory, as our perfectly sized platefuls arrived together nice and hot. As Sefud say, the late arrival of the toast was a shame as I really needed some to accompany my first few mouthfuls of egg, but great toast when it came! - warm, brown, seeded crumbiness, also a lot of it - Maybe they gave extra to make up for late arrival. There's also the fact that there's Jam on the table in case you like to leave on a sweet note. For a tenner you're getting a coffee, fresh OJ, cooked breakfast and toast, so this actually works out to nearly as good value  as Browns. Currently my number 1 breakfast.

Fine scrambled egg

All the mustards are available

• Food      4.5
• Value     4.5
• Service   4
• Ambience  4.5
• Coffee    4

Pastries
I was keen on something sweetish and not too meaty this morning so opted for 'Croque Madam':

Not photogenic but nice

This was a good choice. Quite substantial and gooey with nice ham. I would've preferred the whole thing to be dunked in egg and fried in butter and sugar, but you can't have everything. Only medium value - £6.50 or thereabouts without coffee. On which subject, I downed 2 and still felt like I hadn't had enough caffeine. Partly they're a bit small, mainly just on the average side. Good service but like Browns this is a sit down and relax for 45 minutes venue; my personal taste is for somewhere with a bit more bustle.

• Food      4
• Value     3
• Service   3.5
• Ambience  3
• Coffee    3

Browns Cambridge #2

Browns Cambridge - Two for one breakfasts!

We discovered Browns were doing a 2-4-1 deal - So we had to return.

Troby
Another great breakfast from Browns - The offer is only for the Full English, or vegetarian, but it does make for an incredible quality/price quotient. 2 eggs, 2 bacon, 2 sausage, black pud, mushrooms, tomato, beans and toast all for £4.50. Other breakfasts styles are available.

The decor is also pleasant - This feels an upmarket breakfast experience and it's a shame to be rushing off to work afterwards. 

 

So overall, this was a large, tasty well featured breakfast, particularly good were the smoked bacon and the lovely browned Browns Cumberland sausage. My only niggle was that perhaps with the large rectangular plate, things get cold a bit quicker, but service was perfect, and the coffee, whilst not stellar, is a solid 3.5.

• Food     4.5
• Value    5
• Service  4.5
• Ambience 4
• Coffee   3.5

The Full English with scrambled egg

Seefud

Mmmmmm GET IN MY BELLY. To my tastes, this is about as close to perfect as we've found so far. Let's start with the minor negatives though. Like Troby I had an issue with the temperature. Unlike Troby I'm not going to blame plate shape though. I suspect most of the ingredients just sat around for too long waiting for the scrambled eggs which, to their credit, did arrive pretty well cooked. They were, however, slightly too pale and not very rich. Maybe they’re bulking with a splash of milk?

Apart from that though, it’s all good. The sausages were nice and porky and well cooked. The bacon was griddled for extra flavour and not at all dried out. There nicely cooked big field mushrooms, juicy tomatos and respectable black pudding.

There was only one slice of toast (with an absurd slab of butter on it incidentally) but it was a nice sourdough loaf and on such a good plate of food only having one slice is fine by me. After all, we do live in a gluten obsessed society.....

Anyhoooooo......

Yes, that's butter, not cheese!

The ambience is great, the service was faultless and the coffee was fine. An inside source says this 2-4-1 deal will be available for the "forseeable future". It does not appear to be a time limited promotion. It’s not perfect, but at this price few other places will get a look in. I urge you all to patronise Browns for breakfast at the earliest opportunity.

Food     4.5

Value    5

Service  5

Ambience 4.5

Coffee   3

Pastries
The twofer makes this nigh on unbeatable. There are places with better coffee but that said I happily drank two of them. Really this is somewhere you go for a treat when you have a bit of spare time - the vibe is 'take your time and enjoy your breakfast', not 'bustly place with punchy coffee on the way to work' (not a criticism just my preference).

The butter portion was silly. Cold stuff on the side, please! And as mentioned on our previous visit, smaller hotter plates would be an improvement. Just quibbles though.

Food     4.5

Value    4

Service  4

Ambience 3.5

Coffee   3

Afternoon Tease

http://afternoontease.co.uk/

I know what you're thinking: what do afternoons have to do with breakfast? Or teasing, or teas, for that matter? Well it turns out that this Cambridge foodie hotspot also does breakfasts, of a sort:

French Toast, bacon, and banana 

This cost £6.50 (not including beverages, more of which later). I'm not a French toast expert - in fact I was previously under the impression I hated the stuff - but this was very nice. Soft brioche, slight crust, maple syrup, the bacon was streaky and good quality. Not crunchy but that was OK and the taste meshed well with everything else (except possibly the banana, but then I was too scared to try that combo).

Now, coffee. Afternoon Tease is one of these gourmet places that probably have freshly roasted posh beans but insist on serving it small and tepid. Possibly this preserves delicacy of flavour, probably it matters less for espresso or milky drinks, but in any event my Americano was a gutless disappointment. Breakfast coffee should be punchy, substantial and hot; this failed on all counts. It cost £2.20.

Lastly, a word on ambience. You will be cocooned in posh hipster moronising. The seating is cramped so there's no escape. Either this will matter to you or it won't. This isn't a criticism of the staff who seem very pleasant.

Overall a good alternative to a traditional English, if you can find somewhere nice to sit and have enough company to insulate.

• Food     4
• Value    3
• Service  4
• Ambience 2
• Coffee   2 (but 4 if you choose wisely!)

Newhills Café

This used to be called Chapter 2, but now Newhills Cafe. We'd overlooked this before, but on a casual bacon roll stop (where free coffee was included) it was noticed that they did FRIED BREAD. So we had to give it a try.

Overall, this is a pretty good place. And great value if you arrive before 10am as the coffee will be included, so you're looking at a full English with coffee for about £5.45. There are a three breakfast options here: a large (which would be massive), a standard one with hash browns, but no tomato or mushroom, and a third option which I went for and added an extra black pudding portion. There's also a list of extras, including the fried bread. We didn't try swapping off ingredients, eg I would have prefered two bacon to the sausage, but with the list of extras the possibilites are mathematically endless.

Quality wise, I was pretty happy except for the black pudding being a bit underdone. I also had issues with the mushrooms, which appeared deep fried. I tried a bit of Seefud's fried bread, and it could have done with a little extra frying. It's quite a pleasant place to go though, with prompt service and friendly enough staff and I'll probably return now I know some of the parameters.

Troby

• Food      3   
• Value     4
• Service   4
• Ambience  3.5  
• Coffee    3.5  

Seefud
This was a pretty good breakfast and not bad value at all. I had the smaller set breakfast to avoid hash browns, but added black pudding and fried bread. I also added coffee and orange juice and the total came to about £10.50 I think.

The bacon was nigh on perfect for me and the herby-economy+ sausage was fine. Beans were in a ramekin which was nice, but it was slightly on the small side (and I'm not even a massive fan of beans). Even though they were ring-style and either flipped or very heavily basted, the eggs were still nice and runny.

The tomato was pretty good, if not completely hot, but the good portion of mushrooms seemed a little on the deep fried side. I can't stand it when they overcook the black pudding, but actually here it could have benefited from an extra minute each side. I still enjoyed it though. I also added fried bread, a rarity in these parts, which was great but could also have done with slightly longer cooking.

The Orange juice came from a bottle in the chiller cabinet but I did get a glass. Coffee was nice enough but nothing special. Overall, this isn't a bad little place and I suspect we'll be back. You probably won't go out of your way to sample it, but if you're up Hills Road it's worth keeping in mind.

• Food     3.5
• Value    4
• Service  3
• Ambience 2.5
• Coffee   3