Floro Lounge, Pride Hill, Shrewsbury

If you look back over my blog you will have seen just after Christmas that I went to Novello Lounge in Telford and had a surprisingly nice time!  It was also my first ‘live blog’ which ended up being so stressful to complete that it will likely also be my last!  I seem to have an inability to multi-task when eating! 

I was impressed with the coffee and the food was decent enough and with good enough value for me to leave with a small burning fire to maybe go and try another branch of this chain.

I’ve avoided Floro Lounge in Shrewsbury for no reason more than my own closed mindedness, ignorance and an entirely prejudicial attitude towards it’s interior.  I am working on addressing these issues one bite at a time by dragging myself around these types of places and I am having mixed results - go check out my blog and follow what I’m up to!

As you would expect any decent chain, walking into this branch felt much like I had walked into the Telford one, only in a slightly different parallel universe.  Same interiors, same feel, same menu, marginally different sofa orientations! 

In the Novello Lounge blog I was speculating about the coffee.  Since then a good friend and coffee nerd has verified that these ‘Lounges’ do in fact use Clifton Coffee - a very reputable and trendy roaster and they get their coffee in unmarked bags for wholesale cost saving purposes, not because of my original speculation, Clifton’s associated shame!

I was over joyed that the coffee was actually better than the Telford branch!  Although it didn’t quite taste as strong, it was a bit better balanced.  Maybe they use a single shot here? I’m entering the dangerous realm of coffee speculation again……better leave that alone…..We choose Coconut Flat Whites out of flavour preference more than dietary requirements but it leaves a risk with the foaming of the milk.  It’s a little more tricky but these guys nailed it!

The excitement of the coffee and my previous experience in Telford led to a sort of fever pitch moment where we decided to order some food!

To share (because that is just how we roll) we chose the Gluten Free Big Lounge Breakfast and the Gluten Free Smashed Avocado Brunch.  I adore the ordering system in these lounges.  I really haven't seen a better segregated and more easily understandable gluten free menu anywhere.

The place was quiet as a whole but that’s to be expected on a Monday morning.  The downside was that we were forced to listen to the staff moaning about whoever closed down last night and didn’t put the sauces out! Judging from the anger this has caused and the tone of the conversation, I can only imagine that the job of ‘putting out the sauces’ is far more complex, complicated and time consuming than it sounds.  I’m unsure where these sauces are kept or where they need to be released from but it must be a seriously arduous task! 

Not all heroes wear capes, some always put the sauces out, but this particular hero managed to bring us the arduous sauces to our table.  I can only imagine the trenchlike warfare they had to go to to correct such a wrong as ‘the sauces not being put out’.

I had been impressed with Novello Lounge’s value for money on their breakfast muffin although I did question whether it was 2 sausage situation for the price.  I wondered how big the ‘Big Lounge Breakfast’ would be?

It arrived on possibly the largest, single serve plate I have seen for some time.  When does a plate become a platter? Big questions that need answering……

The large plate was largely unnecessary.  While a great spectacle for any crockery enthusiast (I am talking about myself) as a land mass it was somewhat reminiscent of Australia.  Very large with very sporadically situated populated areas surrounded by quite a bit of barren land.  I wasn’t sure if maybe the eggs hadn’t put the sauces out the night before and now the hash browns didn’t want to be on the same plate as them? Or maybe the sausages had flirted with some black pudding and now the bacon was sulking?  

I just sort of wanted to push everything in towards the middle of the plate. 

There hadn't been a huge amount of care and attention gone into cooking or plating up this supposedly big breakfast.  Labelling something big, you do make a rod for your own back. 2 sausages, 2 bacon, 2 eggs, 1 mushroom is a generous standard size to this greedy guts.  3 hash browns, while a nice gesture doesn’t really step it up in to the Big Leagues and at £16.95 (sit on that number for a short while and think…..£16.95) it is almost unfathomable. I feel like maybe the large plate or platter is actually just a ruse to make it feel more than it is? Maybe I should spend more time in the bedroom on a large plate? My wife might find things a more considerable portion?!  

The bacon had been cooked to within an inch of it’s life, dry and quite sorry for itself and one of the eggs sat there deflated.  Most likely punctured during the belligerent use of a fish slice with a once non-stick pan that is now just a ‘stick’ pan.  Slowly oozing it’s life blood before being put back into the hot pan to seal it’s wound and stem the flow before before finally being dropped onto the enormous plate.  It was a sad looking egg, looking like a sad, deflated balloon at a very sad birthday party!

The toast, hidden under said eggs hadn’t been buttered nor had any butter been supplied for said buttering.  Bizarrely, one piece hadn't even been toasted.  I can smell a kitchen drama here!  Total meltdown!  Maybe the sauce fiend from the closing shift also forgot to put the butter out? 

Much like the Novello Lounge muffin, the sausages were decent and the hash browns were great.  The beans were beans which is all I ever expect but for £16.95 I expect some sort of sausage provenance and considerable more care and attention.

I have been to 2 cafes recently that were literally half this price with better quality produce, cooked with more care and attention and just generally much lovelier.  It all just leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth.  More sour than the cheap ketchup they use (not a problem, I actually love it - go check out my other blog).

We fared marginally better with the Avocado Brunch.  It was really generous with loads of avocado.  Actually too much, it was a mountain that not even a fully glutenised piece of toast could handle!  It leaned towards the side of baby food texture, simply over worked in a food processor or some horrendous bought in mix but the avocado itself tasted ok and had enough accompaniments to offset the texture.  It just lacked some balance as a whole, it was all a bit over sweet.  The pickles and harissa sauce were both too sweet and lacked the right amount of feta for the generosity of avocado. Not even the extra portion of bacon we ordered helped balance the sweetness.  It was a shame because it sounded delicious on the menu!

Floro Lounge definitely didn’t live up to the hype of Novello Lounge in Telford.  It strikes me as a chain with some issues with consistency and it might well be that each branch is a very different experience.  It’s saving grace is the coffee.  It is worth popping in for a coffee, but then it’s sat right in the centre of a town where there are literally 5000 good coffees so it’s got it’s work cut out! The breakfast was way over priced for what it was.  It was very much a mutton dressed as lamb kind of situation that felt like nothing more than a Wetherspoons breakfast in a fractionally less depressing setting for twice the price!

What I will say however, is that Floro Lounge is very generous with it’s community spirit and offers up it’s room upstairs to community groups and needs which needs to be celebrated.  So it is worth supporting, albeit maybe just for a coffee on a Monday when most of the rest of Shrewsbury is sleeping!