Monday, 20 February 2017

Utopia Coffee Lounge - Southend-On-Sea

After a  two hour train journey, I am finally here, my reason for travelling all this way today! Years ago (lets not say how many!) an old friend brought me here, to Utopia Coffee Lounge for a cup of hot chocolate. I don’t really remember much from that trip, I dropped a piece of his jewelry into a white hot chocolate and almost fell down the stairs but I do remember really enjoying being here though, it was fun and different and I was at the beginning of discovering my love of tea and cafes and tearooms. I like to think that this place, along with The Nutmeg Tearoom, started the wheels turning for this very blog years before I put pen to paper to review for the first time.

Being back in here, its every bit as bright and fun and exciting as I remembered, every inch is covered in art, whether in a frame or painted directly on to the walls (like the wall opposite me with the name of the café on it in huge graffiti style letters) or even hanging from the ceiling. In the upstairs section, (where I have decided to sit because the downstairs is full to bursting!) there are garlands and flags and even a canoe hung from the walls and ceiling. All the furniture is mis-matched and huddled around tables of varying types from small dining tables and low coffee tables to the crate at the chairs next to me and the old-fashioned television that serves as my table (yes, really!) I particularly like the gravity-defying golden syrup cans hung from the ceiling that have fake flowers ‘growing’ downwards from them.

I’m really curious about the nine clocks that hang above the stairs, all identical but showing different times…interesting. I have to say, as much as I love the way this mad collection of colours and shapes looks,  the not one, not two but three open umbrellas hanging from the ceiling makes the superstitious side of me a little uncomfortable.  However, like everything else in here, they just seem to fit and pull the look together. With its brick, but certainly not bare, walls and high metal ceilings, the Utopia Coffee Lounge could have a rustic, almost warehouse-ish feel to it so easily but full off colour, art and expression as it is, its more of a hippie haven than a dull cube.

My tea, a breakfast tea from Pavillion Garden is lovely but the cake is a real  masterpiece. At a glance it looks like your average absolutely gorgeous three layer Victoria Sponge cake but actually it’s a taste explosion (a phrase here used with 100% honesty and no irony) of blackcurrant and lime, lime! It is really delicious and the slice they gave me, the last slice, is far too big, I wish I had a friend here to share it with me! This is just one of the amazing cakes on the serving counter downstairs, they are all a different, Blackcurrent and lime, peanut butter and white chocolate and many more!

The décor is so colourful and different from anywhere else I have ever been. The staff are smiling and friendly and up for chat and the food and drink are delicious. I can definitely see meeting friends here once a week for a catch up and to try all the exciting cake flavors on the counter, if only I lived closer…

Facebook: Facebook.com/Utopiass

Address: The Royals, High St Unit 2, Southend-On-Sea, SS1 1DG