Dice & a Slice — Restaurant in Colchester

Dice & a Slice (hereby D&aS) is set in a large modern space that manages to be both tucked away and light & airy. The café has plentiful comfortable seating, including a coffee bar, sofas and even an outdoor patio/garden area.

The food and drinks are also fantastic. With the expected range of espresso based drinks, cold cans, tea and even squash to counter your thirst. As well as sandwiches, wraps, pies and pastries to ward of hunger pangs (oh and the cakes...OH the cakes are delicious and interesting and there's at least 6 types of cake at any one time).

Of course you'll need to be fed and watered for the REAL reason you want to be here. The clue's in the name.

This is a board game café - and for a reasonable price (variable by day but no more than £5 for the full day (and £2 on Tuesday)) you can sit in the café and get unlimited access to a massive plethora of board games to play at the tables.

Whether you're just looking for some quiet classic fun over a tea and cake or you're getting adventurous and want to try something new and interesting, you'll want to book a day off and aim for D&aS. Get friends together and take over a table, sit and read up a new game yourself (or maybe be crazy and invite anyone to join you) - there WILL be a game you'll enjoy here.

From the simple to learn and quick to play, to the complex and expansive, the games are sensibly labelled and the family run café staff are generally pretty knowledgeable and happy to help with any new games you're trying out.

Oh and not to forget the staff. They love their games. If someone isn't awaiting your order and delivering it to your table, they're probably having a go at one or two games themselves.

You can (and I have) spend an entire day at D&aS, you won't even feel like any of it is wasted. It really is the perfect day in but out for when you want to down and...

We had a day out to the Dice and a Slice, we took the family which included the very small people. Place was tidy and well presented and the person working till gave us an overview of where we would find everything.

The board game selection is massive, although the ones suitable for small people as you would perhaps expect is far smaller. Kids enjoyed the ones we played, and thankfully all contents were there. Table we was on was plenty big enough to spread out as well.

We had some warm drinks fairly early on, mostly hot chocolates (orange one was very nice!) Lunch was perhaps a little more of a mixed bag, jacket potato's were good but some of the other meals didn't quite hit the mark unfortunately. Perhaps need a few more kid friendly options on the menu to. Kids weren't keen on the milkshakes, and to be fair I tried one and was a bit disappointed too.

We had a good time, and a perfect option if you don't want to be stuck inside at home / weather not...

We sat at a table for 4 at 13:20 that was reserved at 14:30 which was perfect for us, but we queued up to buy food and it was 13:25 by this time and we were told that we could book an hour to play games but we had to vacate our table at 14:15 in case the people arrived early who had booked for 14:30. if this is the case, why don’t you reserve the table from 14:15?

We were not offered an alternative table, although my wife eventually found one and we sat down to start playing a game with two of our grandchildren at 13:40 and a few minutes later, one of the waiting staff plonked a 14:30 reserved sign on our table saying we had only got the table until 14:30, despite paying for an hour for the 50 minutes. Not very good customer service and not a very customer friendly reservation service and quote an aggressive attitude from the staff today and they made it a really unenjoyable experience. (Oh and we have really enjoyed coming...