Picnic, Reading

Post Hunger Games late night marathon, what could be better than lunch in what must be one of Reading's nicest cafés?! It was my first time at Picnic yesterday, and it didn't disappoint.

It's a brightly coloured cute little café, with colourful tables and chairs, shelves full of food and a blackboard listing the specials and drinks.

In addition to the soup (why oh why was it tainted by blue cheese?!) and the salads, they have a fridge full of sandwiches, with both typical and more interesting fillings!

Sometimes the labels were a bit of a tease - they didn't have either the salt beef, gherkin and mustard which took my fancy, or the pâté and brie which Tanya loved the sound of, but there was still a great selection.

Decisions

After much deliberation I went for the pastrami and emmental, and Tanya chose the goat's cheese, honey and walnut..

I guess there isn't too much you can say about sandwiches, but as far as sandwiches go, mine was a really good one. (And I am fussy with sandwiches - I used to take smoked salmon bagels to school....!) The bread was really soft but with a nice chewy crust, and the pastrami was nice and peppery. I might have preferred a bit more filling in it for £3.65, as I felt like Tanya got a bit more for her money with the goat's cheese, but overall it was very nice!

They also had a really good selection of drinks (San Pellegrino Limonata included!), and one of my favourite things was that they had jugs of tap water out. I always drink loads so hate having to annoy the staff by constantly asking for more, so while the jugs may have been to save their time as well as out of consideration for customers, I loved it!

Then it was time for cake

I went for a piece of the chocolate cake (the final one!)

It was moist with a good amount of icing, but not icing overkill which is what makes me hate "cupcakes" - why is there more icing than cake?!?!

Tanya had a large mint hot chocolate

And I had a small hazelnut hot chocolate

As you might remember from my Flower's Café post, I'm not a fan of hot drinks (unless they're basically melted chocolate, Flower's style), but I wanted to try this as I thought it might taste like liquid Nutella! And as far as non-chocolate-fondue hot drinks go, this was really good. A thick foamy top and it did taste a bit like Nutella too! I also dipped my cake in it - yum!

Picnic is a fab little café and I really wish I worked in Reading town centre so I could come in for my lunch - the salad boxes looked great so hopefully I will be back soon to sample one of them!