Cafe Break #1
Mon Chai — spoiler alert, I didn’t order chai
Located on St. Benedicts Street, Mon Chai is a Bengali cafe that also serves halal breakfast here in Norwich. Overall, I quite enjoyed my experience with the main highlight being the taste of my drink. Without further ado, here’s the first review of this series, Cafe Break.
Criteria 1: Ambience — there’s a tiger staring at me.
Honestly, the painted tiger on the wall wasn’t that obnoxious, it just definitely was one of those images that very much stood out. The rest of the interior is a soothing deep green that isn’t too harsh on the eyes which contributed to this overall comfier feeling. The size of the cafe was also a large contributor to the cozy environment given it could only seat about 20–25 customers (give or take I didn’t count all the chairs but seemed about as much). Because of this, I never felt “coopy”.
I strolled in at about 4 in the afternoon, an hour and half before closing, and there were 5 other people in the cafe at the time. Whether it was how loud this woman was across the room talking about the balance between height and egos (like how a short guy with a small ego doesn’t seem short and vice versa), or the acoustics of the room, I was afraid that it would be quite noisy throughout my cafe break. However, it was quite the contrary, as I settled into my session the noise around me kind of disappeared and the subtle music in the background was a nice compliment to my reading time. The chairs felt comfortable enough, and it didn’t seem too dark or too bright.
The staff wasn’t anything special (again, referring back to our guide on #0, nothing special isn’t bad), the guy that served me was polite and took my order without any problems. Pretty much represented the baseline for what service should be.
Get Bevan Dolon’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Based on all this, I would give this section a score of 5/10. I would say the space is comfy enough to stay at for long periods of time and factors within the control of the cafe were well controlled. The music, decoration, seats, etc. were all good but nothing special. I think as a baseline, all cafes should be comfortable enough to read, study, or have long chats in.
Criteria 2: Mocha £3.9 — a surprisingly good mocha experience
When I walked into the cafe that day, I was really in the mood for a coffee-based drink. So of course, when I stare at the menu board for a cafe called Mon Chai, I am faced with about a dozen options for chai drinks and only a few coffee things. Figures. Since I’m not the biggest chai tea fan, I reluctantly order my mocha and get on with my life.
Flying colors, the mocha passed the eyebrow test with ease. Often my biggest gripe with mocha drinks is either the coffee or chocolate being mediocre thus dragging down the experience as a whole. I can confidently say this cafe did neither. I’m not the most sophisticated coffee connoisseur but it definitely had a nice aroma, wasn’t too sweet, and wasn’t a mocha that you could get in most places, especially given the £3.9 price tag. I usually expect most mocha drinks to be closer to the 4.5–5-pound range and even there, I’ve had significantly worse.
Based on this, I rated this mocha a 7/10. It definitely had a distinct aroma and flavor that was special to the cafe and it’s one of the main reasons why I rated it so high. Generally, I would rate most coffees of a similar flavor at a 6 but due to the very nice price attached to it, I decided to give it a step above most great drinks. I easily would have paid closer to 5 pounds for this coffee, it wasn’t neither flat nor flavorless and was the highlight of my cafe experience.
Final Judgement — I would probably go back
Given the nature of this series, I generally won’t be going back to most cafes unless both the ambience and coffee are perfect. While the mocha and its price were great, and the environment was also acceptable, it wasn’t convenient or spectacular enough for me to go back multiple times. I would definitely go back to order a coffee and read another book there, but I think what’s holding me back is probably how the general atmosphere of the cafe felt cold. I can’t explain it; it could also be that we’re in the middle of January, but I didn’t get the warm feeling that I would like in a cafe that I would be a regular at.
In conclusion, Mon Chai gets a rating of 12/20 with its Mocha being the star of the experience. Its general atmosphere meets the expectations of what a cafe should be providing an ambience suitable for most cafe activities. They definitely get a “I would visit again” stamp of approval and are a great start to my cafe journey.
Also, I’m using this as an excuse to get better at drawing so expect more crude illustrative representations of these cafes :). Tune in again sometime in the future for my next Cafe Break!
