Review 7: All Saints

1 atmosphere                                    ****

2 the food & drink                            ****

3 price                                                **

4 hospitality                                      ***

5 reading potential                          ***

6 clientele                                          ****

7 location                                           ****

8 busy-ness                                       ***

9 professionalism                             ****

Billions of blue, blistering barnacles, tea fans!  This review has been brought to you by no less than 7 critics!  Three only appeared towards the end, so they shall have to wait until they have played a more prominent reviewing role until I introduce them.  But I can reveal the identities of two new big wigs.  Ursula and I were present, and so were Field Marshall Haig, and Boudicca. 

While the Field Marshall is not a fanatical tea drinker per se, he has good taste in foods & drinks in general, and despises Earl Grey, which in my book makes him a good chap.  I only wish he’d channel his callous disregard for human life into destroying all traces of that vile leaf. 

Field Marshall Haig

Boudicca is an advocate of smoking in cafés, and is dangerously close to be excommunicated. 

Boudicca

All Saints is another of the Big Players.  In fact it is a Very Big Player.  For one thing, All Saints is a church, or at least the café is in a church, guaranteeing it a mighty atmosphere bonus.  On the way there, I met some poor fool in a misty graveyard, and between cries of ‘Pity poor Tom!’ he told me of the beginnings of this noble enterprise; how, when a new vicar took over some moons ago, the building was due to be razed to the ground, but he implemented a hair brained scheme & created this rather trendy, nationally acclaimed café / vegetarian restaurant.  And, thank the maker, not a smoke particle in sight. 

But no W.I. – clothed or otherwise – here.  This café is very modern (they even have a website: http://www.cafeatallsaints.co.uk).  It’s so minimalist and stainless steely it could give the Tate Modern a run for its money.  The toilet, a futuristic giant bubble type thing, looks like a Rebel Alliance shuttle, and is one of the few in Hereford to have disabled access; indeed, there is disabled access everywhere.  As well as on the ground floor, seating is also to be found on a kind of balcony accessed by a (hideously trendy) curving staircase.  Apparently, Ursula tells me, this balcony section was designed to resemble a ship, and its rails are indeed cylindrical in a vaguely hull-like style. 

Far from clashing with the delicious dark woods and iconography of the church proper, the two styles work well – the juxtaposition reminds me of the use of old school telephones & the like in the Matrix.  Anyway, one might say All Saints is the essence of the liberal intelligentsia often found in the post-modern Church of England – they even have a Fair Trade thingy every Wednesday (as the Field Marshall says, “All Saints is possibly the only way to get the bourgeois fascist scum into the churches of our Lord”).  While a few years ago I would have rolled my eyes at the whole shebang, now et in Arcadia ego.  Come back, Katharine M, all is forgiven! 

Incidentally, all you Wicker Man fans out there will be delighted with the hints of paganism to be found in this building.  For one thing, there are some very naughty wood carvings in the ceiling beams in the upstairs section …

So, all looking good so far.  What’re the goods like?  Tip top and ship shape, apart from the lack of meat.  Looks like I picked the wrong day to give up baloney.  All a bit expensive, perhaps, but then I would think that – I’m from the country, not the town.  Y’see, in the country … yeeeah, it doesn’t matter. 

Overall, only a **** will do.  And others concur; I notice the café won the:  

and the

and the

I certainly recommend it.  But as a wise man once said, “My soul’s prepared, Dr Jones – how’s yours?”