Lesley's Place

Lesley's may be a familiar name to some tea drinkers in Lincoln, as it is a small franchise of three establishments. The most well known being Lesley's Tea Room on Steep Hill. The others are Lesley in Town, found in downhill Lincoln and Lesley's Place, hidden just off the Bailgate near Lincoln Castle. And it is this third, more obscure one that we've paid a visit to. The décor is similar in style as in Lesley's main tea room and the fact that it is smaller makes the place quite cozy. A quick look at the menu however does show that this is not the place to be for tea connoisseurs. With the only choices of tea being English Breakfast, Herbal (doesn't specify any further than that), Early Grey and Darjeeling the menu is far from exciting. The only accompaniments available are scones and toasted tea cakes. But this limited choice is not the worst thing about Lesley's Place.

After a long wait a member of staff appears who doesn't seem to find it necessary to say a single word to me and after I give my order of Darjeeling and a toasted tea cake all I get is a mardy sounding “that's it?” before she wanders off. A few minutes later and, without saying a single word, plonks the cup and teapot on the table. The traditional décor and light classical music are suddenly no longer enough for the general mood to not bother on downright hostile. The tea itself was fine, but nothing special. The tea pot just contains a normal tea bag you could get anywhere and the tea tastes as mediocre as you would expect because of this. The tea cake is also alright, but not the quality and freshness you'd expect in places other than a supermarket.

On a positive note, the teapot is very large, which means that rather than just two cups you can easily fill three or four with it. Normally not a problem was it not for the fact that I was quite eager to leave the place. Things got even weirder when a small group of customers arrived that were clearly regulars and were friendly greeted by the very same woman who served me. Which meant I was no longer able to pretend the waitress must've had a bad day or something and simply had to accept the fact that I was simply not welcome here. Very strange, and not particularly good for the established Lesley's name. Now the only way an establishment could've gotten away with this was if their assortment of teas and cakes were spectacularly good. But they weren't any better than, say, any old café.

Darjeeling tea: £ 1.40
Scone: £1.80

Lesley's Place
6 Gordon Rd
Lincoln LN1 3AJ
01522 513 703