Tea Monkey Review

The concept of Tea Monkey is an interesting one. Most town centres are over-run by coffee shops these days, they seem to be on every corner. But what about tea lovers? Sure you can get a pot of tea in any one of these coffee shops but you certainly don’t get the array of choice should you choose a coffee. In the UK, around 165 million cups of tea are drunk every day! That is a lot of tea lovers.

Tea Monkey isn’t a tea shop - it’s a funky tea café. It offers 40 different types of loose tea and the pyramid tea sacs for anyone who thinks loose tea is bit too difficult. The aim, they say, is to show how different ‘real’ tea tastes. Oh, and they have lots of nice cakes as well, which helps when you are doing a review.

Now, I’m actually not a great tea lover, so I decided to take along a friend who is the definition of ‘a tea lover’ to give a fair review. When we arrived, it certainly doesn’t look like your typical ‘tea shop’ – the green and brown logo features a little monkey and is very distinctive. When you go inside it is light and airy, and invites you to look at huge menu of tea and other goodies up on the wall.

I’ve never seen so many different types of tea; green tea, black tea, white tea, herbal tea and speciality teas – the list just went on and on. I might not be a great tea lover but I do like chocolate, so I decided to try the chocolate tea (the taste of chocolate with a mild caramel and sweet finish) and although it took a little bit of getting used to, I really enjoyed it. My friend went for the decaf Irish Breakfast tea which she really liked, although the tiny pot of milk it came with could have been bigger for the amount of tea she had, unless of course you like your tea strong.

They also have a wide range of cupcakes and other treats and, well, it would have been rude not to sample a few. All the cupcakes are baked fresh each morning by hand using the best quality and natural ingredients. We tried the Chocolate one (I did say I liked it) and the Malteser one. And yes, the Malteser cupcake had a lovely little Malteser perched right on top of the icing.

And the food offering doesn’t stop there they also do sandwiches, wraps, salads, paninis, toasties and soups and you can have your tea with toast, crumpets, muffins, croissant or a Danish. The children aren’t left out either with baby food, natural juices and snacks available plus a colouring station and cupcake decorating to entertain them.

We did also have a look around the place and we were very impressed by what we found. Instead of loads of newspapers cluttering up the café they have a bank of iPads mounted on the back wall for customers to surf the web and generally play with. They also have free WiFi access if you bring in your own laptop or smartphone. They even let you print stuff off on their own printers – how handy is that? The iPads are also loaded with a music library so if you just want to chill out, plug in your earphone and away you go.

So, what did we think?
Not only does Tea Monkey revolutionise the tea shop, I think it actually revolutionises the coffee shop; this is how they all should be. A wide range of choice which gives something for everyone, whether you are a tea lover or not. At the moment Tea Monkey is unique to Milton Keynes, so grab this experience quick as I think this could be a very successful venture, and soon Tea Monkeys will be springing up all over the country, but given my experience - that’s okay with me.