Food: Loads of choice, great selection of tray bakes, soup, burgers and homemade curries etc.
Child Friendliness: Great
Access: Reasonable
Prices: £4 for soup of the day and a huge portion of toasted ciabatta. Babyccino - an eye watering £1
Ambiance: Kids, dogs and ice cream
When looking online for somewhere to take Ivy along the beach front, Big Beach Cafe came up a lot. Lagoon, play park, beach and paddling pool right next door? Owned by Norman Cook?! It must be the coolest place on earth?! Onto a winner surely...but reviews aren't great. So with trepidation we made a somewhat apprehensive journey along a wet and windy esplanade to find the cafe. First impressions? 'Is that the public toilets or the cafe? Ah...it says cafe on the roof.' Not a great start. We arrived, according to the over attentive staff, 'on a really weirdly quiet day' but given the weather and time of year it was busy. On arrival there was a few vacant tables, a lot of kids, a lot of cool posters on the walls, a lot of highchairs but not a lot space. We ended up with the buggy in front of the condiment stand, in front of a door...a small child may have tripped face first onto the floor at some point. However, the food was good and reasonably cheap, the kind of fare you would expect from a normal beach cafe really so I suppose their mission is complete. But, as my husband pointed out, everything seems just a little grubby. The exterior that joins onto the dismal public toilets, the floor, the table and some of the tablewear. To be fair they allow grubby kids and dogs inside so I should be more forgiving but the staff to customer ratio didn't justify it. Overall, it was good. Ivy explored the play area which is well stocked but again on the muddy side and constant supervision was required so she stayed in her designated space and afterwards we went to the play area which was great...just muddy.
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