Jaz (00:11):
Hey there, thanks for joining me for this side Quest episode of 'My mate in...' A little while back, Tim and I were having a run and we came across a cafe that we had never tried before. The cafe is called Flinch Coffee & Play. It is in Thornbury, kind of the Northgate side of Thornbury on High Street. From the outside, it's pretty simple, it had a couple of tables outside, they were really advertising their Japanese soufflé pancakes. I am not a big pancake person, so that didn't get me super excited, but it looked cool enough to check out and I ended up really loving this place. We stepped inside and the decor was really modern and stylish. It felt really warm and comfortable. What sets this place apart is that it actually had a bunch of like pop culture, stuff in there from various kinds of animation, which was really cool.

Jaz (01:08):
Mostly they had stuff from Pokémon, One Piece and Dragon Ball. Overall, it just has this really fun, welcoming, warm vibe. On the day that we went, we met Tammy, and Tammy was an absolute delight. On your first visit, they give you a sticker, you get to choose from a bunch of stickers of various animated characters. I thought this was really cute and a nice touch. These days I'm drinking decaf lattes on soy milk, so I had one of those there, and their decaf was really strong and really yummy, and they were saying that they make it on ristretto, to have a really strong coffee flavour. And yeah, they're really nailing it there. My partner Tim, drinks regular coffee on almond milk and said his coffee was great as well. While we were sitting outside sipping our coffees and waiting for food to come out, we noticed that they have all these statues of different characters like Pikachu and various other animated characters, and you can actually purchase these plaster statues and paint them in-house.

Jaz (02:15):
I think that the pricing was somewhere between $40 and $60 a statue, and they have all the equipment that you need to paint it to just sit, sip your coffee, have some food, and kind of paint together, which to me seems like a really nice way to spend some time on the weekend. Tammy let us know that you can paint these statues anytime, but there's maybe two evenings a week where they're open late and they do mocktails and food and, painting nights and again, seems like a really nice kind of wholesome way to spend an evening. So, so far in this experience, I thought this place was really cool, had lovely staff and a cool niche with the animation focus and the coffee was great. The menu looked really good, but I had to say at this point, when I'm at a cafe like that, I'm usually thinking, okay, we've got a bunch of ticks.

Jaz (03:06):
Maybe the food isn't gonna be as great as the other experiences I've had here so far. But honestly, the food was delightful. I had this breakfast wrap that was really delicious had like a tangy barbecue vibe, halloumi, egg, various stuff on it. Halloumi was cooked really nicely. You can often tell when people prepping your food don't eat halloumi because it'll come out white and firm and you want it to come out like crispy, golden, gooey on the inside. It was really tasty. I think it had a hash brown on it as well. Tim's food looked amazing and honestly, everything on the menu looked really impressive. And I think that if you're into pancakes, you know the thing they're really proud of is their Japanese soufflé pancakes. So you need to give that a go. One of the kind of cool niche things about this place is they give you a rewards card when you visit, so you get your card stamped every visit and you're rewarded every third visit, I think it was and sometimes it's stuff like free beverages, but they also give out rewards, like card booster packs, like Pokémon booster packs and things like that, which I thought was really novel and cool. So, it was Flinch Coffee & Play. Say hi to Tammy, go in, grab yourself a coffee, Thornbury on High Street. I think they're open everyday except Tuesday and they're open late some evenings, but you may have to book for that. I'm not sure. Anyway, if you check it out, I hope you enjoy it and I will catch you next time.