Cocoa Patisserie Cafe, Brighton, UK

Cocoa Patisserie Cafe produces some of the most visually beautiful pastries and tarts in Brighton and Hove. I first came across the pastries in the Brighton and Hove food festival a year or two ago.  I remember the pastry I bought quite vividly as it stuck in my mind as being very yummy and unusual in that the caramel was salted (a taste I had not come across before.)  The Salted carmel shortbread tart can be seen in the image below, it is the second from the right.


                  My grandmother was in town the other day and I was stuck with somewhere to go for lunch, so I decided that we would try the Cocoa cafe, being that it is in a quite central locale.  You could quite literally step off the train and go there for lunch.  Lunch ended up being quite an enjoyable experience.

The cafe is very nicely decorated with the companies cocoa theme colours and features nice wooden furniture that was surprisingly comfortable to be seated at.  This was a nice change.  Each table was decorated with a fresh cut yellow rose and our tea came served in lovely china teapots with matching tea cups.

For my lunch I ordered a Char-grilled chicken Caesar salad, mostly because I'm supposable on a health kick. :)  However salad is always a good test of any kitchens food hygiene as it features fresh vegetables that go off very quickly if kept in poor conditions.  Much to my delight the salad was crisp and fresh, this is always a bonus.  It was also beautifully presented, I could really tell that the chef was a first artist when it came to food.  It's no wonder he's won awards.  The chicken was grilled just right and the parmensan cheese came in a caramelised section (An absolutely yummy way of eating cheese).  My one concern was the the salad leaves were drenched in olive oil which tasted good but made for an oily meal.  However it was a very nice meal all round and as you can tell from the photos of the pastries it was very hard to resist having a yummy yummy desert.

The desert are what make cocoa worth the visit.  They are as tasty as they look.  I would highly recommend trying them if you are in Brighton :)