Foggs in Windsor

There aren’t many non-big-chain coffee shops in Windsor. It’s crying out for something like the Boston Tea Party we had in Bath and Bristol, or Brew and Brownie as we recently found in York. I can’t help thinking that if someone was to tap into the barista-quality coffee market here; there’d be queues round the corner! That said – there is the department store Daniels of Windsor and this has a couple of cafe/lunch places in it. These have been there for a while but as part of a recent refurbishment the main first-floor cafe/restaurant has now opened as Foggs Friend and Family Food. I went there for the first time today (my wife and Piglet have been there before, a few weeks ago).

The main attraction was the sight of almond milk on their hot drinks menu. We’d spent the afternoon catching up with all (well, nearly all, a few couldn’t make it) of the parents from our NCT group. Some of the children I hadn’t seen since they were babies really! But as a result of chasing my and other people’s toddlers around for several hours I was desperate for a caffeine hit. The place is set up quite nicely with a theme of travel around the world (in 80 days, I presume). Flags and oars and hot air balloons hint fairly subtly at the subject matter. It’s also right next to the music department with an array of eye candy in the form of guitars and pianos and, for Piglet, the toy train that does laps of the ceiling to promote the Toy Kingdom (“Train!!”). Even better though – they have a bean-bag corner which was showing Toy Story 1! I managed a reasonable job of staying at the grown-up’s tables and having a normal conversation despite the distraction.

In the continued theme of unnecessarily posh drinks, I had an almond milk macchiato and my wife had an almond milk latte. Mine was really strong without being bitter (just how I like it) even if I did make a bit of a mess trying to pour the sugar. Piglet had been napping and awoke half way through our refreshment break so we got him a babyccino which we were given for free despite it having a cost on the menu, I’m sure. The only disappointment was that they sold a ‘free-from’ cake which it turned out contained milk when we eagerly asked what it was free from exactly. The answer, it turned out, was gluten.

Interestingly, we’d been in the queue at Costa Coffee just before we got to Foggs but left when we realised there wasn’t really anything on the menu we wanted. A perfect example of the fact that these allergy options drive commercial decisions. The true beauty being that by not charging anything for the option of almond milk (something a lot of the big chains do for non-soya alternatives) our drinks were probably far less, at <£5, than we’d have spent in Costa if they had have got our custom. I’ll definitely be going back to Foggs next time I want a coffee in Windsor.