2 days ago
9
A tipoff to try the Tin Roof Cafe in Maldon came with prior warning: I wouldn’t get a table easily as this all-day spot serving brunch, lunches and sweet stuff from the in-house bakery is constant, scone-fuelled bedlam. Red brick walls, greenery throughout, alfresco spaces, allotments growing fresh veg and herbs. Capacious, family-run, dog-welcoming, pocket-friendly. There’s bubble and squeak with hand-cut ham, Korean-style chicken burgers and a vegan burger called, rather brilliantly, “Peter Egan” after, I’m guessing, the animal-loving actor who played Paul in Ever Decreasing Circles.
Could this place be any more adorable? No, but still, brace yourself. “It’s one in, one out,” I was told. “There’s a seated holding pen at the front where you wait for a table. Stand your ground in there. There’s loads of sharp-elbowed garden-centre folk. I think they’re there for the Basque cheesecake.” Ah, yes, the equally vast Claremont garden centre, just a few steps away. Cake, as we all know, is catnip to gardeners. Sends them daft. Come for 20 litres of alkaline topsoil and a terracotta trough, stay for the seasonal pavlova and thick wodges of billionaire’s shortbread. That’s millionaire’s shortbread with an extra layer of caramel decadence. Clearly real billionaires would never eat this shortbread, as they’re all on longevity hunts fuelled by OMAD (one meal a day), that meal being a posh spin on Trill budgie food.
Thankfully, at the Tin Roof Cafe there are plenty of customers on hand to eat Bill Gates’ share. Instead of wholesome eating spots like Tin Roof becoming tweely irrelevant as the years pass, it’s evident they’re becoming more necessary. In 2026, eating early, soberly, with multigenerational tables – and, probably most importantly, while trying not to spend £100+ per head – is highly desirable. Once, a social life revolving around stale scones in garden centres was a quiet admission of life’s downwards slope; nowadays, places like Tin Roof have queues out of the door and TikTok hype, while the likes of Pizza Express, or local pubs, beg for daytime trade.
Tin Roof Cafe is clearly not earnest, po-faced dining; it completely lacks that Petersham Nursery-influenced pretension where small plates come strewn with petunia leaves and there’s a gift shop with £50 notelet sets. No, this is much more down-to-earth dining, with fish finger baps, doorstep Burnham Bangers sarnies and very good five-cheese toasties on sourdough. Oozy, crisp, buttery and hefty; a shining example. We ordered a seafood sharing platter with prawns in shells, smoked salmon, anchovies on toast, a peppery smoked mackerel paté and a glut of other fishy things. A Malaysian chicken salad appeared in a large bowl with all its components laid out separately: piles of seared chicken, mango, cashew nuts, cucumber, seeds, leaves and a well-balanced sharp-sweet orange-based dressing in a separate dish. It felt princess-like to complain that this was lovely, but that it was a build-your-own salad, the whole thing needed a good stir and adding my own dressing felt like an arduous task. Perhaps modern audiences can’t commit themselves to all the ingredients, so Tin Roof are making it easier to remove terrifying things like avocado or rocket. Still, one couldn’t fault its generosity.
As we ate, the queues in reception got longer. A motorbike gang arrived – a pleasant one who liked bakewell tarts, not bedraggled, lawless menaces to society as seen in films. Pensioner ladies who lunch, dating teenagers, couples with babies grabbing fresh air and the partners of green-fingered types bribed to carry top soil by a promise of eggs florentine and a round of berry financiers. We took cakes home; their Basque cheesecake is pretty damn good. Airy, rich, just sweet enough, blackened in the right places and with a pleasing crust. The bakewell tart is equally good; albeit of US-style Cheesecake Factory proportions. An enormous slice of coffee and walnut was less impressive, but not upsetting enough to stop me returning to Tin Roof whenever I want to fight for my right to eat banana bread at 2pm between babies, grans and hungry horticulturalists. A not-so-hidden gem. More power to its gardening elbow.
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The Tin Roof Cafeteria and Bakery, Bryants Lane, Maldon, Essex CM9 6TB, 01245 204666. Open all week 8.30am-4pm; breakfast 8.30am-11.30am, lunch noon-3pm Mon-Fri, brunch 8.30am-3pm Sat-Sun, counter food all day. From about £15 plus drinks and service
