CafeBlog

Tastebuds Cafe is located in the Aeroview Garden Centre, on the main road heading into southern side of Thames township.

The food and coffee here was superb. We had a quiche with side salad, and honey and nut slice - both were just perfect. Our latte and soy mocha were also spot on. Nice and hot, strong but not so much that they were bitter.

Despite arriving during the lunch hour the cafe didn’t seem overly busy, but this was during the week. I imagine that at the weekend they would be plenty busy.

If you’re heading into Thames from the south, Tastebuds Cafe is a “must stop”.

There’s not a lot of choice when it comes to cafes in Pauanui, but you don’t really need one. The Chocolate Pretzel is the only place to go.

On a couple of recent visits, the coffee always came out good strong and hot, and the food delicious. Of particular note, the ginger slice we had was not one of those weak, “I can barely taste the ginger” slices. It was an excellent full-on ginger slice. Great stuff.

Pumped Cafe is located at the Glen Eden Railway Station on West Coast Road in the historic railway building.

We ordered a ‘build your own’ breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, hash brown and toast. The bacon and eggs were fine, but the hash (which was made on-site) was not cooked long enough - the potato was still quite crisp and had that raw-ish taste.

For coffee’s we ordered a trim latte and soy mocha. The latte was fine, but the mocha came with standard milk. On querying this, the mocha was promptly remade.

Perhaps they were just having a bad day; the service was ok, but the food and coffee just didn’t really come up to scratch.