Food review of Em’s Den in Hunstanton: Super breakfast and lovely cake, all with a seaside view

jeremy.ransome@iliffepublishing.co.uk

Published: 06:00, 05 March 2025

In our latest Eat My Words feature, Jeremy Ransome visits a coastal tea room….

For those of you unaware of the parkrun phenomenon that has gripped England over the past 20 years, you might interested to know that for many participants it is synonymous with a lovely breakfast afterwards.

Parkruns are five-kilometre events for runners, walkers, wheelchair users and volunteers, taking place every Saturday morning at 9am in more than 1,300 UK locations - as well as hundreds more in 22 other countries across five continents.

Once the parkrun is over, many participants meet somewhere for a drink or breakfast, the latter being something particularly popular among ‘tourists’ - parkrunners visiting courses other than their ‘home’ event.

Locally we have lovely runs at Lynn, Downham, Swaffham, Sandringham… and Hunstanton, where me and my son Alfie, 22, rolled up on Saturday. It was cold but sunny running on the prom and when we’d finished, we went off in search of something to eat.

Having chatted to several parkrunners before the start, we settled on Em’s Den tea room on Beach Terrace. After waiting 15 minutes for it to open at 10am we were welcomed in by a smiley staff member and chose seats near the entrance with a lovely sea view.

The place is deceptively roomy inside with several tables, including one with comfy-looking leather chairs. Menus were already on the tables, which were also stocked with a range of condiments including my favourite HP Sauce, sadly missing from so many establishments!

There was a decent choice of large or standard full English breakfasts (£11.95 or £9.95), a vegan breakfast (£9.95), eggs or beans on toast (£5.95 or £4.95) and breakfast sandwiches (£5.50), which also included vegan options. Children can choose four breakfast items and a drink for £5.95 and for the same price, the little ones can have a sandwich, crisps and a carton of drink.

Ham, cheese, tuna, ploughman’s and BLT sarnies were also offered, again with vegan options, for £6.95, as well as a fruit scone (£4) or toasted tea cake (£3).

A great hot drinks menu was also available, with six different coffees, hot chocolate and teas (£2.50-£3.50), along with a choice of milk alternatives, syrups and even ‘ babycinno’ and ‘puppycinno’ (both £2.50). My kids are grown up, so I’ll bring the dogs next time!

There was also a good choice of bottled drinks (all £2.50), iced teas and coffees (£3.50), smoothies and shakes (£3.95).

I chose an Americano with oat milk and Alfie had an oat milk latte while we waited for our breakfasts to arrive and we both enjoyed their warming effect after our cold runs. Both came with a lovely Biscoff biscuit.

Then we both plumped for the vegan breakfast, which contained two veggie sausages, two rashers of vegan bacon, a hash brown, toast, grilled tomatoes, beans and a large portobello mushroom.

I’ve tried several vegan breakfasts in the past and this was up there with the best of them. Alfie and I agreed the herby sausages and smoky-flavoured bacon were particularly nice, while I thought the mushroom was superb too.

To be honest, even after our parkrun exertions, we were pretty full by now - but Alfie was facing a bus and train journey to Lincoln after our drive home and I’m plain greedy, so having eyed several home-made cakes earlier (again all vegan), we just could not resist.

There were four or five different cakes on offer and I chose the largest of them all, a massive slice of gorgeous ‘millionaire cake’ while Alf opted for the Victoria sponge - they were both absolutely superb.

All in all, our breakfast, which to be honest was more of a two-course lunch, came in at £33.90 - which for two lovely coffees, two great breakfasts, some gorgeous cake and a wonderful sea view was pretty reasonable.