Nadia's Patisserie

Nadias offers a good choice of cakes and pastries, excellent to accompany a nice cup of tea and fill a gap before lunch. However, the authenticity of these home-baked treats is doubtful. Often the chocolate cake toppings taste like they have been no where near a cocoa bean, and the muffins are overly sweet. Even the chocolate brownies are slightly under par. Nadia’s is a chain masquerading as an home bakers.

The prices are reasonable, and the service is always friendly. If you move away from the cakes, you can get a very tasty baguette or sandwich, although the falafel sandwich is often lacking in falafal, and as they are all made in advance, the later you go in the day the less variety there is, and the less fresh the food.

All in all pretty good, but a little disappointing as it promised to be something special, yet it is just standard and forgettable.

Cheap, and lots of choices, but Nadia’s is no more a 'patisserie’ than Starbucks is a house of fine coffee. Overly sweet, with industrial textures and (seemingly) more artificial colours and flavours than you can poke the proverbial stick at, Nadia’s wares fill a hole, but that’s about it. These are sugar-laden, stodgy cakes and biscuits to be wolfed down when starving and broke, not delicate treats to be savoured! But in a tourist town, this has its place…

An excellent bakery serving the best marshmallow-chocolate brownies I have ever tasted. The range of cold drinks is more varied than in many bakeries, and the savoury selection is also worth sampling. It is a joy to find tasty and different lunch choices at a reasonable price, but it will be the cakes that draw you back time and time again.

Nadia's undoubtedly does the best almond croissant in Cambridge- as well as a seemingly unending range of other delicious cakes that will utterly destroy your diet! Each cake cost around £1, which is excellent for Cambridge, and you could try something new every day and take a long time to repeat yourself. However, while the cakes are definately Nadia's strongpoint, you can also find excellent baguettes with unusual fillings, as well as great samosas. The only terrible thing is that it's location (just near Queen's Bridge) makes it incredibly difficult to resist tempation as you walk back from lectures...