Review : Relish café, Beeston

I’ve lived in Beeston for almost a year now and one of the things that I’ve enjoyed most since moving here is discovering locally-run cafes and shops. I now get all my fruit and veg from Fred Hallam which is amazing value and saves me loads of money compared to buying it at Tesco. When I saw that a new cafe was opening, I couldn’t wait to try it. The road that Relish is on has become increasingly gentrified over the last few years, with quite a few different delis and cute homeware and crafty shops popping up.

I visited Relish last weekend with three friends and we were lucky to get a table – it was really busy! Considering the economic climate and the fact that it had just opened, I was relieved to see that lots of local people had turned out to give the new place a try.

Relish is a large airy cafe with three separate areas, a main one with the counter, menu and merchandise (as well as food, Relish also sell upmarket treats like biscotti, chocolates and biscuits), a left hand area with generously spaced (lovely real wood) dining tables and a right hand area with leather sofas.

While we were perusing the menu I was pleased to see that most of the food and drink options were good value for money – for example a pot of tea for one at Relish is £1.60 whereas at the Malt Cross in Nottingham city, its £2.50 – I’m not saying that the Malt Cross is horrendously expensive, but that I’d expect Relish to be cheaper since its not in the city.

Food and drink wise, I went for a pot of tea for one (a generous 2.5 cups) along with a scone with cream and jam (£2.45). The scone was pretty nice but not perfect for me (It was…. rustic? and I prefer a more floury crumbly sweet scone) and came with gorgeous jam….. and whipped double cream. Now for me serving double instead of clotted cream falls into the category of things that are wrong! Clotted cream and scones were just born for each other, why deny them their destiny? Based on that I wouldn’t go for the scone and cream at Relish again, but I would certainly try their other option which looked incredibly yummy. They do a very reasonably priced range of breakfast foods including toast, muesli and a veggie full English, as well as various veggie-friendly options for lunch.

The tea came with a tiny adorable and delicious shortbread biscuit!

Two of my friends went for a healthy jacket potato with veggie chilli which was great value (I think it was about £4.50). I failed to take a picture, but they both seemed to really enjoy them.

I also spent a while perusing the cake selection at Relish. I was initially disappointed that they don’t serve homemade cakes (all the cakes are bought in from a local company called Classy Cupcakes which are also based in Beeston). The types of cakes they had an offer while I was there were a yummy looking coffee and walnut cake, a victoria sponge, vanilla and chocolate cupcakes, chocolate brownies and chocolate caramel shortbread. The coffee cake and victoria sponge both looked lovely, but at £2.85 and cut into pretty small, ungenerous slices, I went for more cake for my money and chose two vanilla cupcakes to take away at £1.50 each.

The icing on the cupcakes was somewhat hard – I get the feeling they’d been waiting around for someone to buy them for while. However the cake inside was perfectly soft. The cakes were quite good, although they had far too much frosting for my liking – the proportion of frosting to cake on the white cupcake was 2 to 1!! I probably wouldn’t buy more of these cupcakes again, they weren’t amazing, especially not compared to the ones that the amazing Liana at Star Bakery makes! I would try their other cakes or chocolate caramel shortcake though as they looked yum!

I really enjoyed my trip to Relish and will definitely be popping in again for more fun times and nice food!