The Garden Cafe

The Garden Café offers a range of lunch items as well as desserts to go with your hot drinks.
My family and I were at Hove Park on a Sunday afternoon and after an hour of playing with the kids, we found their café to be closed! But thankfully we remembered St Anne’s Park which is not too far via car and managed to still get a reasonable lunch at 2pm at the Garden Café.
The adults had the chicken and avocado burger and fish finger sandwich and the children had pasta and chicken goujons. The food was decent and well-​priced and sorted us out for the rest of the afternoon. Service was also great and prompt.
Am so pleased this café is reliable and offers fabulous service.

I had never been to the Garden Café in St Anne’s Well garden before. However, when visiting the park a couple of weeks ago I noticed that there were a large number of tables outside and all of them were reserved. This of course piqued my curiosity so I went to investigate…
It turns out that the café is running tapas nights every Friday throughout the summer. I love tapas, I love this park — I booked up for the following Friday without hesitation!
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting that much with regards to the food but was pleasantly surprised. The menu describes the food as ‘tapas with a twist’ and consequently features a few Greek mezze dishes alongside the more traditional Spanish small plates. We stated with bread, oil and olives and a bottle of the house red, a tasty Tempranillo. We then ordered the charcuterie board, halloumi, chorizo and deep fried courgettes. The food was all really tasty and it was nice to see that good quality ingredients had been sourced for this adventure. Sure, it’s not the most authentic tapas that I have ever tasted, but the location and atmosphere made it a wonderful evening.
The service was good although some of the girls did look a little tired traipsing up and down the garden all evening. There was an acoustic guitarist playing bosa nova in the corner adding further to the wonderful atmosphere. Children could play on the grass while their parents ate, and even well behaved dogs are welcome.
I hope the weather holds out over the next couple of months as I would love to return before autumn approaches.

Note to staff here:
Can you please try and spray a bit of sanitiser on the tables and menu’s every once in a while. The place looks filthy.

St Ann’s Well Gardens, one of Hove’s nicer chill-​out spots, is home to the Garden Café: one of my top tips for a day out in Brighton. The gardens aren’t a long walk from anywhere in Brighton, and are a great place to take kids, dogs, watch some outdoor theatre, play tennis, and have a lovely lunch. The Garden Café can accomodate any type of person: for a little café, they do try very hard, with some more complicated dishes as well as your basic sandwiches and breakfasts. Any time of the year, pop along and see what a day in the gardens, and what the Garden Café can offer you.
The Garden Café seems to have illusions of grandeur: for a small café in the middle of a public park, there are quite a lot of ambitious and full meals on the menu. When I have ordered them, they have been very nice and not too pricey, but I have felt out of place eating quiche while everyone around me’s tucking into sandwiches… I’m not quite sure this works. Obviously, the attempt is being made here to cater to various different families’ needs, but it just ends up being a bit confused.
Apart from the not-​quite-​worked-​out food policy, The Garden Café does have a lot going for it: it’s in a beautiful location in Ann’s Well Gardens, perfect for a lazy summer day, and sitting outside and absorbing the rays is really pleasant. Unfortunately, the mum’s have taken over here a little: you will be hounded by kids and dogs, although this isn’t such a problem inside the café. In the end, this is a nice place for a coffee and a lunch, and The Garden’s Café is in a lovely location: worth going to for the Ann’s Well Gardens themselves!

This is a perfect spot to bring children on a warm summer’s day, or for snowball fights in the winter now that we’ve entered the Ice Age. The café sells some more ambitious dishes which I never try and seems to have ambitions to be a more sophisticated restaurant, but I like to stick to the breakfasts and toasties which are delicious. The staff are friendly and there are comfy couches to sit and read the papers inside and seating outside to have a fag with your coffee. Be warned though — this isn’t a good place to get lost in a Camus novel, the kids have taken over, esp inside at the play are, and the sound of birdsong is joined in a duet with screaming critters yelling for Magnums — mine included!

Brighton is lucky to be littered with such beautiful gardens and greens everywhere… and an added bonus of St Anns Wells Garden is the gorgeous café in the middle of it. They offer an array of homemade cafes as well as proper British mains like Welsh Rarebit. The gardens have a pond and are well looked after, its real treat to sit on the café terrace and take in the surroundings with ham, egg and chips!

The Garden Café can be found in St Ann’s Gardens in Hove, its a really unique venue and great if you have visitor from overseas as its so ridiculously British. They gardens are gorgeous with a pond and landscaped everything, and the cafes large outside terrace over looks it all. They menu is also quintessentially British with rarebit, homemade cakes and quiches, ham egg and chips, as well as a enormous breakfast menu.
It well worth a mission out to if you don’t live in the area and you can make a day of it a have a muck about in the park.