It's Pancake Day on Tuesday February 21 and what better way to celebrate (other than making our own) than visiting a Newcastle café famed for its pancakes.
The Dispensary on Heber Street is so well-known for them that it even sells its own pancake batter through its website. But that's not all, it's become an internet sensation in recent years due to its Instagram-friendly presentation with plastic syringes injecting sauce into stacks of pancakes and a speciality iced drip coffee that looks like something out of a science class at school.
On the Thursday morning we visited, more than half of the tables were taken. The atmosphere was pleasant enough, and the floor to ceiling windows were covered by blinds that blocked out the winter sunshine, with the inside lit by several hanging lightbulbs and the few rays that had slipped through to the concrete floor.
The sense of theatre at The Dispensary was immediately obvious when we walked in. Couples and friends sat at tables as distilling sets dripped coffee into beakers and hot chocolates floated on clouds of candy floss.
Curious from the get go, we ordered a candy floss hot chocolate (£3.95) and a drip iced coffee (£4). I was told when the drinks arrived that it could get messy and the best way was to eat some of the candy floss to create a hole in the middle, then to pour in the chocolate concoction.
I was a little too enthusiastic and the candy floss immediately vanished, the hot chocolate overflowing onto the table. That left me with a very sticky mug, and napkins stemming the flow on the table - and a completely normal hot chocolate.
It was the same with the coffee - though the theatrics were impressive, the taste didn't stand out anymore than the regular cappuccino (£3.10) I'd ordered alongside the more jazzy drinks. However, with Pancake Day coming up, those were the main event and the reason we came.
I ordered a daily special, chocolate orange Aero pancakes, while my partner went for the apple and cinnamon pancakes (both dishes £11 for a stack of four). The Dispensary also does a full English, so we tried a component of that on the side (in the interests of giving a broader review, not because we're greedy), of trash browns (£6) - hash browns covered in melted cheese and Sriracha mayo.
The pancakes look fantastic, mine had a dusting of orange and crumbly bits of Aero spilling from the pancakes to the plate, topped with ice cream and with a syringe injecting an orange syrup into the centre of the cakes, while my partner's syringe had maple syrup. The American-style pancakes were a bit crispy on the outside and doughy in the middle - not fluffy as we'd expected, while both of us found the toppings extremely sweet.
Overall, we found our visit to the Dispensary quite frustrating. It offers something unique in presentation but the food was average at best -we could have had food of the same or better quality for a lower price in plenty of places within a two-mile radius of the city centre.
There are lots of restaurants that take themselves and their food so seriously to the point where they can be off-putting, so it's refreshing when somewhere tries something different and is a little bit fun and playful. However, the food needs to be as good as the gimmicks.
Not only the pancakes, but the scientific beakers, the wild looking hot chocolates did enough to get us through the door. However, the overall package didn't do enough to make us want to come back and we'll be making our own pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.
For more information on the Dispensary or to book a table, visit the website.
Have you been to the Dispensary? What did you think? Let us know!
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