Good coffee and cakes

Renamed Delicious in July 2009.I passed it twice before I realized this was a pun on Deli.I can vouch for this venue. I've been going here for years, for morning coffee or a quick cheap snack lunch.The sign outside says they do home made soups and fresh juices. I've had good quick lunches with great juices. I prefer the window seats where you are not sitting in the flight path to and from the take away deli counter. If you want food to take away go on Friday morning when they have bagels and chollah (rounded plaited loaves of cake type bread often with poppyseed topping). They sell out fast. Chollahs are special white bread used for the Friday Sabbath meal. But I freeze them and eat them any day. (If they run out of bagels, try Morrisons who do a great bagel with both sesame and poppy seed on top for those of us who are indecisive or greedy.)Coffee and cake was all we wanted in Hatch End at tea time. This is the place. (You could get a coffee for 99p in the pub (if you want privacy), or a dessert in the Delisserie which is more for soup and cooked meals, but Hatch End Bakery and Deli is the venue for quick coffee and cake.)Tea-time CakesThree types of cheesecake, New York style cheesecake, lime cheesecake, and mango and passion fruit with an orange jelly-like glaze on top and a wavy, coloured line through the middle. I opted for the lime cheesecake which looked larger.The almond cake had a couple of almonds for decoration and to prove they used real almonds and the top and sides had a sugary almond coating, I suppose it must be marzipan, but not the solid even-textured finely ground sort you get on fruit cakes for Xmas and weddings. More gritty and sugary. Two of us both thought it was good.They had other cakes - checking my picture I can see about twelve, but with three types of cheesecake, I was already sufficiently focused yet confused.CoffeeThe double espresso coffees came up so fast I wondered how they did it. The brown sugar was the small gravel sort you spoon out. But hidden in a cute lidded bowl. We had cold and hot milk.The sign outside says it's Illy coffee.EntertainmentSome gentle but jolly pop music.They used to stock piles of the weekly Jewish News but in November 2008 they had copies of Metro, the free magazine given out daily from boxes on London's stations.ServiceWith three people behind the counter in a shop smaller than my living room there's instant service from the keen smiling man behind the counter, his family or whoever's helping.AmbienceIt's a bit cramped. Four teeny tables with two or three chairs each and some bar stools along the window. But you are almost within reach of the counter and certainly within smiling, waving and calling distance. Far from being private, you could almost make friends with everybody in the area if you went in every day and were really chatty with everybody you tripped over or knocked and apologized to as you walked to the counter. What else extra?Racks of bread - depleted by tea time. Bottled Juices.Anything Missing?Fruit and vegetables. Go for the juice. The name says it all. It's a bakery, not a health farm.The fruity names on the cheesecake add visual appeal. They could do with a few dollops of real fruit to offset the sugar. For us diabetic-phobics.VerdictJust right for rapid coffee and cake if you are working at home and want to get out for five minutes for a break and change of scene, see people and get really good cheesecake.If you've read my reviews before you'll know I love cheesecake and hate so-called cheesecake which is mousse masquerading as cake. Hatch End deli did not serve the ten out of ten huge crumbly cheesecake, which you suck out of your teeth and carry around like a lead weight in your stuffed tummy. (I'd give that twenty out of ten if you linger and have two slices). But I rate them eight out of ten for a sensibly sized bolt-it-down cheesecake. Good enough. Yes, I would say eight grins in ten minutes.

A User - 05/11/2008 | report this review