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Yet another surprising addition to the reviews that i had not expected to have much to say about. but the cafe at the Maritime museum is jolly jolly nice, and worth a visit in its own right.
It takes some finding. We emerged from the Ansell Adams exhibition determined to find the coffee shop for sustenance to keep going in out long evening out to come.
Distressed, we found that upstairs was closed and I concluded that the coffee shop no longer existed.
Not so, my hungry husband who insisted that we were too far from Rhodes for the coffee smell to be coming from anywhere else and located a map, only to find that it had been hiding behind the entrance to the exhibition.
What a magnificent vista from a large open space (locals will know that ‘large’ is an achievement in these parts). You can overlook Greenwich Park. Suddenly the months of boarded up maritime museum ruining the views from the park made sense. This was what they were building.

Winters day view

Winters day view


We purchased a dark chocolate lemon tart. The neon counter base glowed pink in appreciation of our choice, then red, the purple… Actually it just rotated through the visible spectrum.
Pink Neon Glow

Pink Neon Glow


I have to respect what is going on in the aforementioned lemon tart… We get good quality shortbread base, we get high content cocoa chocolate layered sneakily above it – in a kind of grow up, paid attention to detail sort of way, and we get luscious oozing lemon curd- you know how that is (see Boulangerie Jade review), plus a lightly brûléed top.
I do respect it. But I don’t agree with it. With the exception of bitter midnight lemon club bars (last seen in school lunch boxes of the nineties) lemon and chocolate don’t go. It’s the rules. They take you on two completely different sensory journeys – sorry to sound like an aromatherapist but it’s true. One is deep and bitter and cavernous. The other is sunny and light hearted. They wouldn’t even get on with each other on a date for goodness sake.
Fabulous ingredients individually. All wrong together

Fabulous ingredients individually. All wrong together


Fortunately the coffee shop at maritime was all over this and provided orange and chocolate shortbread tarts. I did not taste and cannot vouch for the adequacy of the tart, but consider this a much more acceptable combination.
We were there quite late, so we may have been seeing a depleted collection, but there were at least 2 other interesting looking cake options that I may return to investigate in addition to some very interesting main meals chalked onto the menu board.
And so to coffee. It boded well as the Italian primadonna barista hung over his assistant’s efforts, and it tasted good, arriving with a very romantic latte art. It tasted so good that we went to investigage the make despite closing time hanging over us. It was hard to miss.
Latte Art

Latte Art


But we did not purchase. At £7 a bag, this was indeed the most expensive coffee we had ever seen. So the various grades if strengths remain uninvestigated, and £2.20 a cup sounds like a very good deal.
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Coffee Shop at the Maritime Museum
(Not the 16″ West Brasserie, which is above it)
National Maritime Museum
Romney Road
Greenwich
London
SE10 9NF