LIFESTYLE: Cafe Rouge, Loughton / Georgina Does

LIFESTYLE: Cafe Rouge, Loughton

Friday, 26 June 2015

Last week I was invited to to review somewhere in Essex, how exciting! Of course since there were no trains involved on her part, my mum wanted to come along on this one! It was nice to be invited back to a restaurant that I have been to many times with her in the past - Cafe Rouge, Loughton.

A lovely place to spend a sunny evening, we sat right at the back where there was an entrance to their garden seating. We started with olives and bread. Neither of us usually eat bread but today we forgot about that and went all out it was just too temping.

For starters we both went for snails, an old favourite of mine and something new for mum, she usually has the pate but was very pleased with her new choice as was I. They were served differently from how I remember and looked more like a pie with a yummy pastry layer over the top of the dish.

I was super sad that they had run out of mussels as I was really looking forward to that for my main so instead I went for the goats cheese and beetroot tart which was light and creamy - perfect for the warm summery evening.

Mum had beef bourguignon which looked delicious although it was a little bit rich for me, she really enjoyed it though!

My mum likes to ask all sorts of annoying questions when we go out to eat, "is this better than that" and "what would you recommend?" but both the GM and our waiter were amazing when it came to answering. They knew exactly what was what and had great advice and recommendations for us on every course.

Which brings us onto dessert. We couldn't decide between the chocolate fondant or lemon tart so I was pretty pleased when I spotted the trio of dessert which had both of them. The third one though was a tart tatin which neither of us fancied so we asked some more questions and our waiter recommended that we tried their chili chocolate and lime sorbet so we went with that and I'm so glad we did because it was my favourite part of the dessert. All three parts were actually delicious but the sorbet was so refreshing and tasty. I would love to try their other flavours.