Restaurant Review 4 - Hoodles, Old Meldrum, Aberdeenshire.

Hoodles Playbarn and Coffee Shop

01651 873813

www.hoodles.co.uk

Okay not really a restaurant but a cafe in a playbarn.  First let me warn you - you do not want to come here if you don't have kids.  It is FULL of children running around, screaming, etc..  Great for those of us who have kids as it means we don't need to worry if ours aren't perfectly behaved as no one will notice but I certainly wouldn't come here if I wanted a peaceful lunch or coffee.  The soft play area for the kids is great.  It is £4.75 per child at peak times ie weekends so it is expensive.  A good treat once in a while if it is raining and miserable outside and you need to let them burn off energy but at that price it really has to be a rare treat.

The cafe is excellent.  Lots of lovely paninis, soups, and home-baking!  Yum.  They have buckets that you can fill with 5 items for the kids for £3.50.  The thing I like about their buckets is that you can fill them with ANY 5 items you like.  There are no constraints.  You know how some places say you can have a sandwich, a drink, a yoghurt OR fruit, and sweeties Or crisps. I find that quite annoying whereas here I can actually choose what I know the kids will eat and can have a yoghurt AND fruit if I so decide.  When we were there on Saturday we got two buckets for the two kids but if I am skint I can actually get one bucket - I'll get two juices, one sandwich, one box of raisins and one crispy cake and split it all in two.  Anyway, I appreciate the fact they are flexible about what you put in the bucket.  Items come out at  70p per item which is not too bad.  They have sandwiches, crisps, fruit, cheese, yoghurts, crackers, milk, fruit juices, chocolate covered marshmallows, crispy cakes, boxes of raisins.  Good choice.  And they always have a great selection of cakes and traybakes for the Mummies and Daddies.  I also always have a brie and redcurrant jelly panini - yum.  So for lunch for the four of us we were about £15 but it was quite an extravagant lunch with lots of cakes.

We do love it here for a wee treat.