Whitehall Garden Centre restaurant, Lacock

Ok, I admit it, I secretly quite enjoy a Sunday afternoon at a garden centre. Not that I’m particularly interested in gardening, plants etc, but these days, garden centres tend to have a great selection of housey/gift bits and bobs, decent farm shops and a good range of cake in the café! 

A few of our houseplants were looking decidedly worse for wear and we had nothing much planned for a wet Sunday afternoon, so we decided to pop along to Whitehall Garden Centre for a potter. Having skipped lunch, we decided to head straight to the restaurant to find something to eat.  The restaurant is fairly standard for a garden centre – fairly large, with lots of fairly cheap, modern wooden tables and chairs. There are large conservatory-type windows overlooking the outside plant section of the centre, so the restaurant is light and airy. As you would expect on a rainy Sunday afternoon, it was busy and most of the tables were filled.

Although we were thinking about lunch, the range of paninis was fairly limited and didn’t really tempt me, the only sandwiches available were packaged and, as we had a big roast planned for the evening, I didn’t want something more substantial, so after much deliberation, we decided just to have a slice of cake. There was a good range of cakes available, including about 4 different gluten-free options. I immediately spotted the one for EHH – an enormous hunk of caramel-covered flapjack. After deliberating between carrot cake, Victoria sponge and apple cake, I decided to go for the apple and cinnamon cake. We also opted for the standard pot of tea for two. In all, the bill came to just under £10, which was fairly respectable.

The tea was standard tea bags in a fairly decent-sized pot. It didn’t come with any additional hot water and the milk jug was fairly small, but the staff were very happy to top up the hot water and provide more milk, when asked. EHH really enjoyed his huge piece of caramel-covered flapjack – it was way too sweet for my tastes but he loved it. My apple and cinnamon cake was rather disappointing: I expect apple cake to be very moist and fruity, this was really quite dry and lacked flavour. The cinnamon icing was too sweet and rather overpowered the rest of the cake.

In all, the restaurant is acceptable but not exceptional. We’d probably pop in again if we were back shopping at the garden centre, but wouldn’t visit specifically for the restaurant.

Temple Gate Coffee Shop review

Apologies first – this feels like a bit of a cheat – the basis for this blog is meant to be cake and no cake has been made or eaten today! However, we did visit a coffee shop so thought I’d write up a quick review.  

Temple Gate Coffee Shop at Bowood House

Picture taken from the Bowood House website

Wow – a very rare thing – sunshine at the weekend! We decided to make the most of the weather and head out to Bowood House, near Chippenham. We arrived, very hungry, in time for a late lunch, so we were pleased to find that the Temple Gate Coffee Shop was right at the entrance to the Estate. It’s outside the ticket office so you could visit without having to pay entrance to the House and Grounds.

It’s a fairly modern and simple building with some tables and picnic benches outside. The lunch menu was pretty standard and fairly disappointing – jacket potatoes with a few standard fillings, a choice of two salads, soup French bread pizzas and some packaged sandwiches. The cakes on offer were a Victoria sponge, coffee and walnut sandwich and a chocolate cake. They also offered a cream tea with pot of tea, two scones, jam and clotted cream but the scones looked fairly small and it was an expensive offering at £5.45.   

I opted for the chorizo and sun-dried tomato salad (£6.50), which sounded promising. When it arrived, it looked fairly appetising – with a salad of leaves, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and mixed peppers topped with a reasonable amount of sun-dried tomatoes and fried chorizo. Unfortunately, the sun-dried tomatoes were tough and fairly tasteless and the salad just had the faintest hint of balsamic vinegar, rather than a decent dressing. It was edible (with the addition of a couple of sachets of salad cream!) but uninspiring.

My ever-hungry husband chose a jacket potato with tuna (about £4.25) and a sausage roll (about £2.50). The sausage roll was fairly standard, acceptable but nothing special. The jacket potato and tuna mayonnaise topping was generous – the potato was a little tough (it had probably been sat around a while) but the tuna was fine and not overly swamped in mayonnaise as can so often be the case.

In summary, the coffee shop was a bit of a disappointment and we felt that they could make a lot more of it. I’m guessing they cater mostly for the families visiting the adventure playground (which looked amazing!) and therefore everything is fairly basic. We certainly wouldn’t return for lunch and the cakes didn’t really tempt me either.