King's Lynn's Best Cafe Sausage 2015 - Part 2 of 10 - Archers Cafe

We're boldly searching the cafeterias of King's Lynn in an echo of our 2011 expedition. This is the second instalment of 2015 - we'll be making one visit each month throughout the year - and this time we raided Archers Cafe in Purfleet Street. Yes, you DO know where that is, down the road alongside Boots towards the Custom House. Next door to the Lynn News.

Online reviews of Archers recently are uniformly upbeat, so we were looking forward to this one, especially a certain favourite food item which we found out was home-made on the premises....


Sausage: 4.0 Very, very good. We were expecting some quality here and while we were waiting to be served the cafe's meat supplier pulled up in their van, right in front of us - it was only ruddy Prior's of West Lynn! Result! The Stan from Prior's came and went and our expectation levels were raised. We weren't disappointed, the banger was a beauty, the pork tasted high provenance and sweet, the seasoning was there but not over done, and the skin snapped apart delightfully. You'd be hard-pressed to find a better banger in a cafe. Great job Archers.

Rest Of Meal: 4.25 The food was tremendous. We ordered the Full English breakfast which included 2 bacon, 2 local sausages, 2 home-made hash browns, toast, beans, tomato, mushrooms, and 2 fried eggs. Tea was free if you spent £5.00 or more on your meal, before eleven o'clock; Junior Sidekick went for hot chocolate. Every item that was on our plates was cooked perfectly, and looked very appetising. Bacon was thick and sweet, every mushroom was perfectly juicy and Junior Sidekick even praised the beans. The teapot that arrived was huge and I thought I'd stumbled into never-ending char heaven - it was "only" half-full though (not a criticism). A superb quality meal, cooked beautifully.


Unfortunately there was a problem. The people on the next table were told "Sorry we have no hash browns today, our manager didn't order them." Say what? The hash browns are listed as home-made, why would you have to order them? That suggests that they are Not home-made at all. We make hash browns at home for our breakfasts and it's easy, so if Archers had run out they could simply have popped to the fruit and veg stall just around the 
corner and bought some potatoes. Not good dudes! We didn't get any hash browns....

Service & Cleanliness: 4.0 Busy restaurant = good food, so they say. And wow, Archers was busy busy busy! A promising portent. We had to park ourselves and wait for a table, which we didn't mind in the slightest. Once seated we waited a further fifteen minutes for the hard-pressed staff to take our order - again we didn't mind. Service was friendly, if a little rushed, but that's understandable in such a popular venue. Maybe one extra server would have solved this? This is a very clean, quirky, homely place to eat, and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit.

Price: Our meals averaged £9.25, exceeding the Little Chef Olympic Breakfast Threshold (LCOBT). This means that the score for Price is zero.

And, unfortunately there was a problem. We assumed that due to the lack of hash browns a small part of the bill would be chalked off, but not so. Also the free tea, as it was before eleven o'clock, was not free. Small quibbles maybe, but quibbles that definitely took the attention away from the magnificent food.

If anyone at Archers would like to put their case forward please email us - sausage-blog@live.com

Scores On The Doors (after 2 rounds):

P1 Pedlars Hall Cafe 13.19 
P2 Archers Cafe 12.25


Scoring & Rules:
Points will be awarded in four categories; Sausage, Service & Cleanliness, Rest Of Meal and Price. The first three will be scored secretly out of 5 by the two of us and the scores averaged. For Price we are again using the Little Chef Olympic Breakfast (£7.99) as the benchmark, subtracting each cafe's price from this, and the resultant figure is their score (minimum score is zero). Simples!


Next target: 
That would be telling! But if you run a King's Lynn cafe, and find a tip of £1.23, we've already come and gone....