CafeBlog

We visited Espresso Garden during the weekend for a spot of lunch. It wasn’t all that busy, but the food and coffee were both good.

For food, we had the Moroccan pilaf and a gluten-free chocolate cake slice. Both were tasty, although the chocolate slice was almost on the too sweet side. For coffee, we had a soy mocha and trim latte. These were both very good; hot and of reasonable strength.

A nice touch is the TV in one of the corners that is connected to a camera overlooking the adjacent kids’ playground. You can let your younger ones play to their hearts content while you can sit back and relax in the cafe while still being able to keep an eye on them.

Espresso Garden is located in the Mitre 10 Mega building, just off Wairau Road in Glenfield.

The New Zealand Coffee Festival is on this weekend in Auckland at the old Alinghi Base. That’s 135 Halsey Street, Viaduct Harbour, Auckland. The festival starts on Friday 6 June and runs through to 4:30pm, Sunday 8 June.

This is a great place to sample various coffees and beans, talk to roasters on how to attain the perfect brew, and view or purchase various coffee or cafe accessories.

See you there .

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.