King's Lynn's Best Cafe Sausage - Part 5 of 10 - Dobbies Garden Centre Cafe

The Dobbies Garden Centre in beautiful downtown King's Lynn is incorporated into the same humungous timber-framed building as the Tesco mega-market. When this was built Dobbies was part of the Tesco portfolio of businesses - but as you know they have now been sold off to Midlothian Capital as the grocer concentrates on its core business of selling loo rolls and baked beans.

Why do garden centres have a cafe attached? Well it's to add value to their sites. "Most" garden centre customers fit into demographics with some expendable income - obviously carved sandstone ornaments in the shape of half an apple, with gold coloured pips and stalk, are not the kind of everyday essential that less well-off families would visit the next-door Tesco for. Why not tempt the Meldrews and the Leadbetters in for a pot of tea and a crumpet after their exertions in the herbaceous aisle?

Sausage: score 2.25. 
The sausages on offer at Dobbies are sort of like Lincolnshire sausages, but a poor quality version. We sliced and squished of course, and it wasn't the worst we've ever seen - but far from the best too. The flavour was mild, slightly peppery, but overall quite bland. They've made a little effort here, but not enough. How often are cafes ruining ther breakfasts with low grade sausages?

Service & Cleanliness: score 2.5. 
One lovely chap behind the food counter was warm, friendly, bubbly, fantastic! Sadly the rest of the staff were surly, prickly and stomped around with faces like slapped arses. Thank god for Mister Nice, or the overall score would have been humiliating.

The cafe was lovely and clean, and the high-celinged dining area was relaxing and airy. We ate our meals in armchairs in a bright corner of the dining room, which was also a super vantage point for some people watching.

Rest Of Meal: score 2.5. 
As per the rules we opted for the second-cheapest meal that includes sausages. In this case it was the "10 Item Breakfast", which is quite a lot of food. Choosing the assortment of "goodies" didn't take too long though. Sam the Junior Sidekick went for 3 x bacon (which he would later regret), 3 x sausages, scrambled egg, beans and 2 x hash brown, whilst I plumped for 2 x bacon, 2 x sausages, fried egg, beans, mushroom, grilled tomato, hash brown and black pudding. Both meals included a slice of toast. For drinks Sam went for water and I paid an extra £1.95 for a two-cup pot of tea (ignoring the odd-sounding Sucky Tea).

The food was completely underwhelming in quality. All the hash browns were well over-done and should have been thrown away. The black pudding wasn't far behind in terms of over-warmed hardness. Scrambled eggs were insipid, flavourless and watery, but the fried egg was OK. The toast was stone cold. The rashers of bacon were large and there was some clumping together in the hotplate. Sam found it stringy and of low quality. The mushroom was small and utterly waterlogged. Must try harder!

Price: 
Our meals averaged £5.66, which means that the score for Price is 2.33. This meal was not at all good and we would have sent it back had we not been taking part in this taste-testing odyssey. Dobbies cafe, amazingly, has stolen last place from the Silver Spoon cafe - and I didn't think that was possible....

Scores On The Doors (after 5 rounds):
P1 Carousel Cafe 14.04
P2 Pedlars Hall Cafe 13.19
P3 Archers Cafe 12.25
P4 Silver Spoon Cafe 9.99
P5 Dobbies Cafe 9.58

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....

King's Lynn's Best Cafe Sausage - Part 4 of 10 - Carousel Cafe

In 2011 the then-named Carousel Diner achieved third place and a bronze medal in our search for King's Lynn's best cafe sausage. Would four years and a change of name improve their chances this time round? We were intrigued how this visit would go, as Carousel Cafe is - at time of writing - rated number 1 restaurant in King's Lynn by review website Trip Advisor.

First impression was "Wow, it's busy" which is obviously a Very Good Sign - and we took the only table not already occupied. We both chose the Carousel Breakfast, in line with the rules, which is made up of 2 Bacon, 1 Sausage, 1 Egg, 1 Hash Brown, Mushrooms, Black Pudding and Bread & Butter. Junior Sidekick swapped his mushrooms for baked beans. We added a mug of tea and a glass of water.

Sausage: score 3.5
A reasonable effort, The squish test was fine and the texture was quite crumbly with plenty of pork present. A good improvement. The skins were collagen which isn't great, but the flavour was pleasant - mild peppery taste and not over-seasoned. For a cafe sausage - not bad.

Service & Cleanliness: score 4.0
This cafe was packed full yet the service was superb. Archers take note. There were two staff on the floor, another behind the counter, and this level of staffing meant that the whole show ran smoothly, even at ths peak rush-hour. We were asked for our drink order after maybe one minute, and the drinks turned up a couple of minutes later. With not a spare seat in the place we did expect a delay before our food arrived, but this turned out to be an acceptable ten minutes. The staff were super-polite, very smiley (which helps), and really helpful. The table next to us were given two capuccinos instead of one and a tea, but the extra drink was removed without question, and with a sincere-sounding "Sorry about that".

Rest of Meal: Score 4.0
When our meals arrived we glanced at the plates and then at each other. There simply didn't seem to be a lot on them! JS remarked later "I wondered where the rest of it was." This actually turned out to be a completely false impression as the amount of food was more than adequate. We put this first impression down to the high volume of customers and the cafe maybe running out of slightly smaller plates at peak time. The food was cooked nicely, eggs were PERFECT, my son found the bacon too salty, but overall the quality was very good. One small quibble on my part - there were only five mushrooms on the plate. As tasty and well-prepared as they were, this is a bit stingy.

Price: Score 2,54
Our breakfasts cost £4.95 each, my tea was an extra £1.00, meaning that the average price was £5.45. Using our scoring algorithm this means that Carousel Cafe scores a very tasty 2.54 in this category.

Scores On The Doors (after 4 rounds, click the cafe name to read their report):
P1 Carousel Cafe                14.04
P2 Pedlars Hall Cafe         13.19
P3 Archers Cafe                 12.25
P4 Silver Spoon Cafe          9.99

So into the lead by some margin zooms the Carousel Cafe - good work!


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!

King's Lynn's Best Cafe Sausage 2015 - Part 3 of 10 - Silver Spoon Cafe

The first time we ran this competition the Silver Spoon Cafe finished dead last, by some margin. As you can read, HERE. But things can always improve, so four years on we're back for more.

We went for Medium Breakfasts as per the rules this year, and found that there are four different combinations of ingredients to pick from. I chose the B.C version which includes egg, 2 bacon, sausage, fried slice and beans, whereas Junior Sidekick opted for the B.A and its egg, 2 bacon, sausage, beans and chips. There was quite a difference between the two. And drinks are not included.


Sausage: score 0.75. 
I won't beat about the bush - sad to report that the "sausages" (inverted commas are Very well deserved) served at Silver Spoon cafe are the worst I have ever encountered in any food outlet. Ever. Anywhere. The sausage looks like plastic when it arrives in front of you, the waxy skin has the look of a barrier made out of Joan Rivers' face,  to either stop you getting inside, or more likely to stop the disgusting plop inside getting out. There is little or no discernible pork content and the texture.....well, what texture? We sliced one lengthways and pushed a fork down onto the filling. Disgustingly, the amount of force needed to squish through the filling was negligible, and the gooey mess squirted up through the tines like a watery, porky (?) version of the famous Old Faithful geyser. Truly horrendous.

Rest Of Meal: score 2.75. 
Have a look at the top photo on this report, then at the bottom one. The top pic shows this year's breakfast, the bottom pic is the 2011 version. I'm sorry to state that this year's looks equally unappealling as the previous visit's. What do you think? Very poor presentation. My B.C breakfast was very disappointing, the bacon was scraggy and salty, the egg (just as in 2011) looked....unappetising. JS commented "How do they make egg taste not like egg?" And the sausage.....Junior Sidekick's B.A meal both looked and tasted better with a hefty mound of factory-produced chips dominating the plate, but again including the over-salty bacon, bloody awful banger, and bizarre egg. Unfortunately JS found several blue threads in his food, not hairs but some other alien presence. I checked out the cooks and none of them were wearing anything blue or fluffy, so this contamination must come from some other source. Not acceptable.


Service & Cleanliness: score 4.0. 
Now, here's where the Silver Spoon made up some lost ground. The place is clean, bright and very friendly. The exclusively female servers are cheery, fast and efficient, and smartly presented. Good work! The cafe has a range of tables to accommodate varied-size parties from one to eight diners. The decor though - JS commented "Like an eighty-year-old's living room". Bizarre 3D animal pictures poke out of the walls in between plastic models of various kinds of dog. Crisp, clean and maybe a local theme would be so much better.

Price:
 Our meals averaged £5.50, which means that the score for Price is 2.49.


Scores On The Doors (after 3 rounds, click the cafe name to read their report):

P1 Pedlars Hall Cafe       13.19 
P2 Archers Cafe               12.25
P3 Silver Spoon Cafe               9.99

It's appropriate that Silver Spoon scored Nine Nine Nine, as their sausages are absolutely criminal.

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....

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....

King's Lynn's Best Cafe Sausage 2015 - Part 1 of 10 - Pedlar's Hall Cafe

Way back in 2011 we visited four cafeterias in King's Lynn aiming to find out which of them (if any) served up half-decent sausages with their breakfasts. The answer was disappointing, and even the best of the four bangers we tried would not score very highly if we had reviewed it properly. But the testing process was a lot of fun and our convoluted points system caused much confusion - just the way we'd planned it.

Fast forward four years and we're doing the whole thing again, but bigger, better and more difficult to understand. We'll be visiting ten cafes instead of four, and the raiding party will double in size with Junior Sidekick joining yours truly. And instead of the cheapest breakfast that includes a sausage we're upgrading to the second cheapest. The amended rules can be found at the bottom of this review. One innovation this time round is our calling card - we'll be leaving a trademark tip of £1.23 at each eaterie, just to let them know that we've been....we're calling it the Mark Of Zorro Money. I wonder if any of them will notice?

Our first target was the winner of the 2011 competition - Pedlars Hall Cafe which is located right next to the bus station in beautiful downtown King's Lynn. We opted for Breakfast 2 which offers 6 items from - bacon, sausage, hash brown, egg, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans, toast and tea OR coffee. JS opted for a milkshake which was added to the overall bill.


Service & Cleanliness: 3.0   Pedlars Hall is the preferred cafe for bus drivers and passengers alike, and is a very traditional establishment. Bolted down tables, unmatched cutlery, very few stains, great! The lady serving behind the counter was very friendly and brought our food quite quickly. If visiting with children be aware this is a working man's haunt and there may be occasional fruity language.

Sausage: 3.5  Last time we visited we said "The sausage was not as bad as expected, and although it was finely chopped it crumbled quite nicely when cut.  Rather over seasoned though." Has that changed at all? The simple answer is yes, this time round we were presented with sausages that all looked different to each other, crumbled apart quite well when pushed, and tasted....pretty good. Flavour was akin to a Lincolnshire, albeit a factory version. A real improvement in the sausage department for Pedlars Hall, hence the decent score.


Rest Of Meal: 3.25   The two photos show our choices of items. The quality was reasonable and not badly presented. The beans come as a virtual lake which is a bonus, although the bacon was fairly small and a little on the salty side. Altogether a decent £4-worth.


Price: Our meals averaged £4.55, which means that the price score for Pedlars Hall Cafe is 3.44.

Scores On The Doors (after 1 round):

P1 - Pedlars Hall Cafe 13.19 - the reigning champions are in the lead!


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!