Bar du Musee, Greenwich, London

Most museums have coffee houses attached to them, sort of like a revenue generator and a place for bored, non-cultural types to have a chat, a coffee and a nap. There is a Maritime museum in Greenwich, but this doesn’t quite explain why Bar du Musee is French.

The only thing French about Greenwich is the fries from McDonald’s (not sure if Cafe Rouge counts as French?).

If you’ve never been to Greenwich, I suggest you make a trip here. Obviously, if you’re not from around the same region, district, country, continent, ignore that suggestion. Some people describe it as a mini-Bath or a medium-York.

If you don’t know what Bath or York looks like, then, possibly the entire paragraph above was pretty much useless to you.

When it’s bright and warm in Greenwich, there are tourists about everywhere. Students from Europe come for school trips, chic types hang out at the chic type boutiques (all one-off chic non-mass produced type attire) and poodles come out in full force.

One sunny day, we decided to check this place out. Having had gone past it many times previously, peering in curiously wondering what on earth was in there, we decided that enough was enough. French or English, croissant or iced-buns, we’d try it out.

Inviting until you try to figure out which of the doors went to the cafe, the restaurant of the tea room.

The first thing you see when you are in the cafe is this chandelier. There are 3 of them in there, confirming the fact that you will be paying more for your tea here than you pay for an average meal elsewhere. Nevertheless, let’s not be biased before we’ve even looked below the chandelier.

Below the chandelier is the price board, confirming for a fact that you will be paying more for your tea here than for an average meal elsewhere (because I am a cheapskate and eat at cheap places).

Once in the restaurant, you look around at what the other tables are having, and immediately wonder why you just couldn’t be generous enough to fork out that little bit more for a nice meal here.

Instead, we just ordered a cup of tea and a lemonade, and because it looked so good, a piece of raspberry cheesecake. This just goes to show that standards are ever still so low, and the pocket strings are possible tighter than before (freebies?).

Look, wouldn’t we have had liked to enjoy a meal here? Indeed we would have. Instead, we sipped our tea and Coke slowly, savouring the lovely ambience.

I’m not sure if this was actually the raspberry cheesecake we ordered but it sure didn’t look like any cheesecake I’d had before. It sure smelled like raspberry, but texture-wise, it was more like a mousse-y spongey cake.

Would I come back to this restaurant? Well, considering the fact that we didn’t actually have a meal in here, I wouldn’t say I’d eaten here, but I’d sure like to try the restaurant out. Great ambience for sure.

Google Maps to here!

View Larger Map