Escape to the country: Twig & Spoon
So every now and again I jump on a train and take the 30-40 minute journey to Kent (South East England) to visit my parents. Sometimes it’s just nice to get out in the lush countryside and away from busy roads and sometimes unpleasant commuters (not forgetting actually seeing and catching up with my family!).
I recently took the trip south and partook in a lovely day with my parents pottering around a local gardening centre, Woodlands Garden Centre in Ash only a short drive from my parent’s house. They were hunting for some new pretty 
plants to refresh their tired looking garden. Whilst browsing the many different plants, flowers & herbs we became a bit peckish and wandered into the Twig & Spoon restaurant a family-run establishment which always seems very busy – especially at weekends!
Luckily there was a free table and we sat down to browse the menu. The Twig & Spoon are proud that they make 90% of their items from scratch, including cakes, biscuits, chutneys and preserves from which 95% of their ingredients are organic or locally sourced (you can find a list of their suppliers on their website). Feeling like a relatively light lunch, we opted for sandwiches and chips – I choose the vegetarian cheese and apple chutney option whereas my parents choose more meaty dishes!
The sandwiches came complete with little dainty pots of condiments, salad and some funky sweet potato chips. The sandwiches were really delicious, despite being a fairly simple vegetarian option my cheese and chutney was flavoursome. My only qualm was having to add the yummy pickle myself!
We had ordered 2 portions of chips between the 3 of us and this was plenty. Again we had little pots of mayonnaise and ketchup supplied which were rather cute.
Having enjoyed our lunch we wanted to top it off with some of Twig & Spoon’s incredible looking home made cakes and coffee. Proudly on display in the restaurant is a counter of some amazing looking cakes in all sorts of varieties. We decided upon the Coffee & Walnut cake, the Chocolate cake and a rather adorable Vanilla cupcake to accompany our lattes and cappuccinos. The slices of cake were really massive, a huge portion for people who had just enjoyed their main dish!
I really enjoyed my little cupcake, it was fresh and light with a delicious butter cream icing (a little heavy on the butter, but tasty none the less). The chocolate cake went down a treat also. My mother was a little perplexed with the coffee & walnut cake – asking my opinion if the icing tasted funny – having tried it I informed my mother that rather than butter icing it was in fact a cream cheese, quite to my mother’s surprise! She was a little disappointed with the non-traditional topping but other than that we enjoyed our deserts but who doesn’t like a bit of coffee art to finish a nice meal?
Overall I think the Twig & Spoon is a little gem, hidden in a beautiful part of England serving great quality food. It gets a 4.5 out of 5 from me! I look forward to checking out their Christmas menu later on in the year.
