Reviews

Sweet Treats: Patisserie Valerie (Newcastle) Review

13 January 2017

By Lois

The chain of ‘up-market’ cafes which specialise in handmade cakes is widely popular and is often littered with small groups of friends and families who are there to take afternoon tea. Their menu boasts a selection of savoury meals and cakes, as well as hot drinks and ‘special occasion’ orders which have to be made in advanced. Being so popular, and having grown from 8 shops to 124 between 2006 and 2015, I expected greater things.

The cafe itself is fairly small and had a generally quite cramped feeling (or ‘intimate’ depending on how much you value your personal space) and it’s scattered with rather large paintings and mirrors, which are most likely intended to make the place seem bigger. They don’t. It wasn’t quiet, but it wasn’t busy either (had it been it would have been almost unbearable). The staff were lovely, appeasing rather fussy old ladies with a graceful conduct I admired having been in their shoes, and that was more or less the sole redeeming factor.

The cakes themselves were nothing to shout about; aesthetically pleasing but that’s about it. It wasn’t as expensive as I had anticipated, but for what I did pay ,and for their reputation, I expected better. They seemed to make it look nice but there was very little actual taste to it. I had a chocolate gateau and my friend a raspberry tart (mixed berry was not available). Neither of us were blown over, and I was left quite bitterly disappointed. It was a nice enough place to go and sit and have a cup of tea if you wanted to go somewhere a bit different, and I can’t speak for the larger cakes that are made to order, but in general it was painfully tight and skimped feeling, managing to stop short in just about everything before it managed to be really nice (the hot drinks were also rather underwhelming). Certainly could have been better. Around a 5/10, as it wasn’t quite dreadful either.

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