Brook Tea Rooms in Swanage Dorset

Brook Tea Rooms

15 The Parade

Swanage

BH19 1DA

Date 11^th March 2016

We have been regular visitors to Swanage in Dorset for about five years.  Sometimes our visits are for a week for a holiday or just for a few hours as with today’s visit.  Even longer ago Swanage was a place my parents took my two brothers and I when there was a rainy day during our holidays in Studland.  The town has not changed much in five decades.

Every day trip we make to Swanage and every time we are there on a holiday we make a visit to Brook Tea Rooms overlooking the full expanse of Swanage Bay from Ballard Head in the east to Peverill point in the west. 

The main menu has some American dietary influence with ‘The American Breakfast’ of pancakes, fried eggs, bacon, sausages and the sweet drownings of maple syrup.  Or pancakes and maple syrup. Both of these dishes are enough to make any American or Canadian homesick and the British diner just sick at the thought of covering bacon eggs and sausage with maple syrup.

A specials menu takes up most of one wall and has a seafood bias with whitebait, scampi, bass and traditional British fish and chips along with several meat courses.  Today there was the New England equivalent of homemade chicken noodle soup; New England Seafood Chowder (£12.95) served with crusty crunchy bread.

The chowder arrived in a wide soup dish that was full of recognisable chunks of white fish and salmon along with prawns, a scallop, a huge mussel clinging to its last home on earth and cubes of boiled potato. All of these were held together in a thick chowder sauce.  The flavours were soft if that makes sense?  Just looking at it made me feel warm, comfortable and secure.  Sea food with a sea view overlooking Swanage Bay on a bright sunny day.  Life could not be better while the dish lasted.

As I mentioned earlier, the menu has an American accent and so does the manager who also works as chef whose accent is redolent of Boston, Cape Cod, Kennebunkport and Plymouth on the New England seaboard.  The only slight issue with both the set menu and the specials menu is a lack of vegetarian choices.  As we were too late for any of the breakfast choices my wife had to choose between a jacket potato, vegetable burger and an omelette.  The Brook Tea Rooms are not unlike a lot of other establishments with this limited selection which is a shame.  Also, always go with cash as the business will not take card payments.  Allow £15 per cover for a meal at the maximum.

Apart from that we will be going back again and again and again and be confident in recommending the place to anyone who asks ‘Where’s a good place for lunch in Swanage?’ .