Tangerine Dream Café

The Chelsea Physic Garden is a secret lost world in the heart of the city. And if you pay to go in, you can use the wonderful café, Tangerine Dream. A recent lunch there in the bustling cafeteria style venue yielded a wonderful Ligurian fish stew. Most food is available by queuing with a tray to choose from pies, tarts and salads, and lovely sweets, but a hot meal from the kitchen gets you a ticket and then it’s brought to your table when ready. My stew had plenty of fish, waxy potato, and a giant grilled shell-​on prawn on top, with croutons and aioli on the side. Pud was a divine Tunisian orange cake with crème fraîche. The combined trip — garden and café — is such a treat! Two courses for lunch with wine and tea for two came to £45.

There can be few more delightful experiences in London on a summer’s afternoon than dining under the canopy outside this café amidst the beauty of the Chelsea Physic Garden. The food served here is always of a very high quality, as are the drinks: wine, coffee, tea, fruit juices etc. I can particularly recommend the salmon en croûte for a main course (it’s served with a generous helping of beautifully seasoned salad) and the lemon and almond cake (which can be accompanied by crème fraîche, if you’d like some) for dessert. Both are delicious. The coffee too hits the spot! The arrangements are self-​service. That in itself is not a problem. However, it can sometimes lead to long queues at busy periods (particularly at weekend lunchtimes). What is more, the chaotic bill payment procedure can also add to a sometimes already lengthy wait to get to one’s table. It’s such a shame that what is undoubtedly a delightful experience overall is marred slightly by such cumbersome customer service arrangements. Prices reflect the high quality of the fare on offer. Debit and credit cards are accepted only for transactions of £12 or more. Despite the reservations I have mentioned, I think this place is well worth a visit.

I visited the Chelsea Physic Garden this past weekend and while I also really enjoyed the botanical garden itself, I want to talk about the in-​house café in this review: The Tangerine Dream Café.
Unlike many (National Trust) cafeterias, this café is worth a visit in and of itself (even though you have to pay the garden’s entrance fee to even get to the café). In fact, I was really impressed by the quality & taste of the food. To be sure, they don’t offer any fancy stuff, but this is exactly why I loved it so much: it’s honest food, not dressed up to look utterly pretty, but its simplicity pleases one’s taste. In other words, you won’t find and elaborately decorated cupcakes or cakes here (that in my opinion often lack in taste), but the stuff that they put out has substance to it and simply tastes fantastic!
I had the goats cheese tarte with various side salads and I loved it. My other half had the duck confit and was also raving about this one. For dessert we had pavlova which also was a revelation.
I ended up buying their cookbook and tried out one of their salads that very same evening (beluga lentils with butternut squash) and even that dish turned out to be great. All in all, a double-​thumbs up for the the cooks at The Tangerine Dream Café!
Note: the people behind this venture — Limpet Barron & David Hughes — are also doing catering.