Carrom Cafe

Anyone that’s visited the Sunday UpMarket will have noticed that in the corner of the food section there is always a series of large and quite complicated looking board games. These games are called ‘carrom’ and are almost a version of billiards. To be honest I’m not very sure of the rules but I think it’s quite sweet that the owners of this stall have decided to set up these games free for everyone to have a go.
The money making side of this stall is a café serving smoothies, fruit juices, lassi etc. and this is where I have to criticise Carrom Paul. Last week I ordered two drinks from here, a strawberry lassi and a banana lassi, both medium sized. We were the only customers at the stall at the time so we expected the service to be quite quick, really we were only looking for a bit of refreshment before we got back to the serious shopping. You would have thought I’d asked the man for enough drinks to go round Wembley. He panicked and flapped for about 15 minutes blending different ingredients together, rinsing jug after jug, shouting at the other members of staff… I couldn’t help thinking that he was making a very big deal out of our tiny order. When the drinks eventually came they were quite tasty but a bit too milky, probably because the man had made four times the quantity we asked for. I was a bit disappointed by this whole transaction because I had high hopes for a café with such a cute board game philosophy.
And so, Carrom Paul gets a very mixed review– go for the games but be patient if you’re looking for a drink. Oh and avoid the flustered looking man– Carrom might be his thing but lassi is not!