Dietary Options:  Vegan, Vegetarian, Gluten free, Dairy free, Raw.

Favorite Dish: Soup of the Day





Ambiance/Atmosphere:
2/5

On all accounts it could be described as a cutesy little cafe situated in  the beautiful Kingsly Court just off trendy Carnaby Street. It has the makings to be a delightful little establishment due to its location however there is literally no room to sit down and enjoy your meal and even if you do get a seat you will be knocking elbows with the person sitting next to you.  We wouldn't recommend this cafe' as a sit in spot, with the amount of room it is better suited to be a quick pop in an take-away option.

Customer Service:
1/5

We arrived at the retreat cafe just after 6pm on a weekday evening, the cafe' closes at 8pm so we did not think there would be an issue with ordering a drink an a light bite especially as all the items on the menu are either pre-prepared or made up in under 5mins. Unfortunately when we arrived and asked about the menu we were informed that we couldn't order any juices or smoothies as the machines had been cleaned and a fair few of the main dishes were sold out leaving us with the choice of pre-prepare salad boxes, cakes an tea or water. Fortunately after a little persuading we got to try a smoothie as we felt we couldn't give a complete review without trying at least one of the juices or smoothies. We would expect for 30mins before closing time certain things to be off the menu to allow cleaning up before closing however 2 hours seems little excessive and would be very irritating for a customer to turn up to the cafe early evening hoping to grab a light bite only to be told they cannot order the majority of the menu therefore we unfortunately had to rate this low.

Food & Drink:
1/5

Even when we managed to acquire something to eat from the Retreat Cafe we were bitterly disappointed. The soup was flavorful but did not come with the accompanying rye bread, the avocado on toast was under ripe and on a sad piece of supermarket bread and the raw spiralised salad was dry bland and completely void of any crunch or freshness. Our salad box also contained the leftover but of the spiralised carrot. The smoothie we ordered was also disappointing and separated into a pulp on the top and a juice on the bottom making it an unpleasant texture. When we went to have a look at the dessert options we saw that some of the cakes looked burnt so opted for a raw truffle which was very hard to bite into and not particularly tasty.

Burnt Cakes

Separated Smoothie

But of spiralised carrot.

A really unfortunate experience at what we hoped would be a cutesy little cafe. There are many more healthy cafe's in the area that offer far better food for a similar price.