Friday 8 August 2014

Welcome to Brogdale

If Kent is the 'Garden of England' then Brogdale is without doubt Englands Orchard. This is the home of The National Fruit Collection, containing over 4000 different varieties of Fruit with the mission to continue to save rare fruit from extinction. Apples, plums, cherries.....Benji (our 1st son) was in heaven.

We went to Brogdale with our sons and sister inlaw who was staying with us for a few weeks and couldn't help but try their resturant and, surprise surprise, ice cream. The farm doesn't create its own BUT it does supply fruit for Deal based Solleys Ice cream. Unfortunately we couldn't try the flavours which are specially made for Brogdale from their fruit (plum and cherry) because certain of us have certain intolerances to those fruits, but we're reliably informed that they make a different exclusive flavour or two each season so it's just an excuse to go back, really. 


We went for a 3 scoop ice sundae - Mint chocolate, Chocolate choc chip and Toffee Fudge. These didnt let us down, a good texture and the chocolate particularly was very chocolatey, which personally I'm a fan of.

The nice thing about Brogdale is the atmosphere, as it's always been really relaxed when we've been. Aside from the heritage fruit collection, which we have yet to actually go and see, they have a 'marketplace' type area with lots of little shops selling locally produced foods (grocers, butchers etc), gifts, and crafts as well as their cafe which features local produce. As soon as we walked into the cafe the waitress spotted our hyper little 22 month old and asked if we'd like to go in the (at that moment empty) room with the big toy box. We said yes, and it turned out to be an absolutely gigantic toy box which would have happily kept him occupied for hours. The staff were very attentive and happy to let us sit and have drinks and ice cream despite it being lunchtime and a fairly meal - centred place. 

We can happily give brogdale a thumbs up for the experience it provides. We had a discussion the other day and decided that for places which don't make their own ice cream, we will never award a five or tho in this instance we feel a tad mean as it truly is a wonderful place and worthy of full marks but we will stick to our guns.

The ice cream was good value for money (£4.95 for the 3 scoops)a wonderful texture, taste and flavor and it was kindly presented in a really nice glas. But it lacked that little bit of something special, the gravitas that would have given the ice cream full marks.

So the scores


Experience 




Ice Cream





1 comment:

  1. I am ALWAYS on the lookout for a really good toffee fudge ice cream - the lovely Dulce de Leche-flavoured ones with the little pieces of perfect fudge. The best one I've found so far was at a pub by the canal somewhere around Wolverhampton (I think) when we were on a narrowboat holiday. This place sounds lovely!

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