I like cakes & I like treats. London's lacked a good vegan coffee shop for years now, so what's not to like? I visited Cakes'n'Treats back in September, during its opening week. My experience was hopefully that of teething problems and not a reflection on normal trading. That said, it was dreadful enough to deter me from returning since.
Exhibit number #1:
Cake shouldn't look like that! It's not unreasonable to expect a vegan cake shop to be able to cook vegan cake properly, surely? The flavours were OK, but either the mixture was wrong or it was undercooked - if I'd make cake looking like that I'd have been too embarrassed to serve it. The person who owns the shop seems to make good looking cakes to order (if Facebook photos are anything to go by) - I hope they don't look like mine did when cut into!Exhibit number #2:
At £3.90 their "Hazelnut Crunch Macchiato" is more expensive than the largest equivalent at airport/motorway service branches of Costa/Starbucks/Nero, independents (which tend to be cheaper) or any restaurant I remember visiting. It was terrible.I couldn't taste hazelnut (syrup or otherwise). Assuming it was meant to be a latte macchiato (it bore no resemblence to caffè macchiato); there was no attempt at layering, other than beany tasting macrofoam floating on top of beany tasting coffee. What really 'topped it off' though was the sprinkling of chopped hazelnuts. WTF? Why would you want hazelnuts in your mouth whilst drinking coffee? It makes no sense and for me it totally didn't work.
I want to like Cakes'n'Treats - I hope their products have improved since my visit in September. I want them to succeed, which is partly why I waited several months before creating this post or writing on TripAdvisor / Facebook. Please, someone tell me things have gotten better since?
Surprising that they think it's acceptable!!!