Home Sweet Home

Yesterday I met up with Kate for a lovely girly chit chat and a spot of lunch in the Northern Quarter. The venue? A lovely little café called Home Sweet Home that we had spotted a few weeks earlier at Kate's birthday pub crawl after we had been having a few drinks in The Common, which is next door.

What had immediately appealed to me when I first clapped eyes on the place was the cute interior and the girly atmosphere. A glance at the menu packed full of healthy treats confirmed that the place would be right up our street.

On arrival we were greeted by a super friendly member of staff who led us to the only available seats in the busy café which were two window seats. I would have preferred to sit at one of the cosy little tables but actually in the end I really liked sitting by the window to watch the world go by, catch the only rays of sun of the day and to see people walk past the place, look inside and stop dead in their tracks (like I had done the first time I'd seen the wee place), obviously thinking "I must go there sometime!"

We started off with some drinks - I had a nice cuppa which was presented to me in a very cute Home Sweet Home mug with lots of nice little pictures on it.

Kate went for the waiter's recommendation of a nice mixture of a couple of their fruit juices which went down very nicely.

We then perused the menu and found it to be a good mixture of nice healthy salads (which me and Kate decided to go for), hearty sandwiches, fancy toasties and amazing sounding milkshakes. Seriously some of these milkshakes sounded incredible - for example cake batter whizzed up with milk and ice cream served with a birthday candle?! Or perhaps a peanut butter and 'jelly' sandwich with vanilla ice cream?! Or even chocolate chip cookies with ice cream and coffee? Mmmm! I found myself feeling sorry for Bailey for not being there (even though he was actually elsewhere having a nice lunch!) as he would have loved something like that! In fact they had quite a lot of "boy friendly" options like that on offer on the Specials board - cheeseburger toastie?!

I decided to go for a yummy Club Med salad of roasted veg with sun blushed tomatoes and a sun blushed tomato dressing. Kate chose a Santa Fé salad which looked really lovely and hearty full of kidney beans and chicken.

I absolutely loved my salad. It was jam-packed full of lovely different lettuce leaves, yummy aubergine, courgettes, peppers and onions. The dressing was really tasty - quite oily and rich but perfect for the amount of salad that was there.

Both Kate and I really liked the presentation of the salads which came in lovely wooden bowls and were really generous portions for the price (salad and a drink for about 6 quid each).

Our only complaint would be that the food did take a little while to come out, not that we minded in the slightest as we were nattering away. Just be warned though that it wasn't a particularly "quick" lunch. But then again you shouldn't be in a rush on a Saturday when you're in such a cute little place and if you are then you're rubbish.

The waiter was really nice about the wait for food anyway and you could tell he really liked his job.

So... I would DEFINITELY recommend Home Sweet Home for all types of guys and gals looking for a bit of nice relaxation and yummy food. Not pretentious at all either. Great café and I will be going back there very soon!