Address: 32 Haven Green, Ealing W5 2NX

Website: http://www.wacafe.co.uk

Where it is: The café’s right next to Ealing Broadway tube station in West London.

How to get there: As the café’s by Ealing Broadway tube, you can get the Central line easily from central London or from anywhere west of Ealing.

Quite a few of the local buses, like the E8, stop close by at Ealing Broadway tube.

If you’re already in London, you can plan your route to the café with TfL here or with Citymapper here.  And if you’re outside of London, check out the route planner on Googlemaps here.

What’s it like: The café’s in a really convenient location, and is easy to spot once you’re around Ealing Broadway station.

There’s a small button you have to press to activate the café’s electronic plate glass sliding doors if you’re entering or leaving, which I thought was very swish.

Inside, everything’s very peaceful and ordered, which makes it a welcome change to the crazy pace of central London close by.

On the right hand side, when walking in from the entrance, there are a few tables dotted around with chairs on one side and comfy lined benches on the other.

The counter takes up most of the left hand side of the café front room, with tempting cakes all lined up in perfect rows under sparklingly clean glass.

As the café is Japanese, there’s a lovely mix of Asian flavours like matcha tea, azuki beans and sesame alongside ingredients like chestnuts, cream, chocolate and soft fruits that you might see in traditional French pâtisseries.

What I ate: After having a little browse on the website before turning up, I found it even harder to decide what to go for. I wanted ALL the cake.

I ended up going for a slice of the chocolate and praline cake, which looked insanely good.

And also like it would give me diabetes, angina and every other medical complaint known to man if I even did so much as look at it.

Although, in my experience, this is definitely the sign of a cake that’s worth eating down to the last bite.

And how right I was. It was deee-licious. There was smooth and silky chocolate mousse. There were layers of beautifully buttery chocolate sponge cake. And there was a glossy dark chocolate topping with crunchy candied nuts.

If Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall could include this in his Three Good Things recipe book, oh my God he would.

But even after polishing off the cake, I wanted to see what else was on offer.

So when I saw that they sold chocolate marble bread (check it out here), I of course started wanting all the bread too. And then felt an unstoppable wave of cake-related greed/sadness as I read the words “only available on Saturdays”.

At least I’ve got an excuse to pop back on a weekend though – I’ve already pencilled in a Saturday trip in the diary to make the most out of the breads and the candied chestnut in whipped cream(!)

Yesterday, I went for an espresso, which was strong and slightly bitter. I saw it being made in the café’s nifty-looking bean-to-cup coffee machine, which was very impressive. It was perfect with the cake, as it cut very well through the rich and buttery sponge.

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve visited WA Café before, or if you’re planning on going – let me know what you think in the comments section below 🙂