ARTBOX Cafe - My Melody & Kuromi Tea Shop — Restaurant in Great Britain

I will go as much detail as i can :3 .

✈️ Firstly, this is the only kawaii cafe in Europe i’ve seen. So much thanks for somebody finally making my dream come true for this cafe to be here, and many thanks to the workers making it wonders too. But as known, this is the UK, and taxes and so on are added to make this a reality with the exported goods and licenses, so prices will not be the ‘cheapest’ but are the most worthy to experience this caffe in Europe.

🩷 Decor was beautiful, more than enough, to make you want to say ‘awwe’ and take picture. It is so organised, tables are organised, food is organised, workers are well organised too. The toilets are so so clean. Decor was pink as it was hello kitty and friends, from what i heard they change decor every once in a long while. :3

🩵 Food: We had the my melody waffle, Japanese curry, little twin star sundae, and i had personally the hot chocolate and cinnamoroll’s dish. I am personally a huge fan of Hello kitty and Cinna, as dressed as cinnamoroll theme too. Food was nice, my niece did mention it was sweet for her teeth, so we were helping her out finishing her food, but she still appreciated it and loved it and never has had that experience of themed restaurant. This was her first time seeing a sanrio ‘themed’ cafe. She would love to come back in the future too. ^^ She was astonished by the amount of food choices she had, she couldn’t decide what to get. :3 Food was fresh too, it was all very tasty. We finished what we could as we were full from it. ^^ The food was done in an explainable amount of time. With no lateness and rushing ^^. The service charge is explainable. Almost every restaurant has that, usually it is included in the prices so they will not be seen on the receipt as separated charges.

🤍 Staff: They were super kind, nice and understanding. They deserve that extra charge at the end as so does every other restaurant/cafe or workplace. They work hard to keep this place alive. And i love and adore this passion to do so. They were also very welcoming as well.

🌼 Also cups are all clean. Environment is clean, dish are clean. ^^ Seats are comfy.

💛 There is a lot of merchandise on the first floor and my niece had a hard time choosing what to get for a memory. I love every single merchandise there myself too. The prices are normal, expected too. Those are exported goods from East Asia and the price will double/triple sometimes due to the transportation fees and taxes on the way. They are worth buying because it is a very special place and buying plushie is not that bad for the price considering that it is the UK, and they are much more expensive online to get due to people scalping the same plushies. So to recommend by me: buy it here in the caffe.

🩶 Price: it was a good price. Actually turned out to be cheaper than i expected. We had 2 drinks and 4 plates of food from the menu. They were all so tasty and nice. Also price is not that bad honestly, it is a theme cafe and you pay for theme. You pay for the experience. And that’s what we paid for, it is £20 for us as £5 each. For the booking. That goes towards for the food as well. And we never regretted anything about it. We loved it.

💜 Our Experience: We loved the food, i came here with my boyfriend, mom and niece. And they all really loved the place. We felt welcomed too. ^^ Very special cafe.

⭐️ 6/5 ⭐️ P.s....

We visited Artbox for our 9 year olds birthday on her request.

After seeing others experiences on Artbox’s instagram and having had feed back from personal friends who had previously visited the cafe, we were keen and very excited to visit the themed cafe with its dishes and menu based on the iconic Sanrio imagery.

We drove nearly 2 hours to visit the cafe and on arrival, having never been before when we asked “do we just go up stairs?” - the rude looks and one word answers we recieved had already began to put a dampener on our mood and experience.

Once we went up stairs we did find the cafe cute however there were no guides or instructions about how to place an order or how to view a menu. We had seen that the cafe was counter service only online but the fact you have to make multiple trips up and down the stairs because there is no menu upstairs and the order process isn’t clearly indicated isn’t ideal at all.

The adults of our group both have a physical disabilities and whilst it was noted that there were 2 “accessible” tables down stairs, (bistro tables without any furnishings for comfort) they were completely removed from the cafe experience upstairs. This combined with how hot it was downstairs didn’t feel like a fully inclusive option, especially when bringing a child.

The menu itself boasted about gluten free options - especially online. We were also looking forward to the cutely presented food similar to the images we had previously seen on the cafes social media. When we enquired about the gluten free options due to an intolerance on our group we were met with a very dismissive response of “ that’s all we’ve got” when there was only 1 gluten free option of a brownie, despite the menu stating options being available under the toasties section too. We then were told that the dishes we’d seen were no longer stylised as characters since the theme change - this isn’t made clear on any online areas either. Not only was the themed food no longer available which was a huge dissapoint to our child. We then had to explain to her why the cafe she was experiencing wasn’t like the expectations she had been given via the various media outlets we had seen the cafe on. It’s also important to note that our child is neurodivergent and there weren’t very many, if any, sensory safe choices for them on the menu.

Depsite our child being mostly open minded with food we found it difficult to pick food for them due the very small selection now available compared to the previous offerings we had seen.

Once the food was ready, which didn’t take too long I’d like to add, it was spread out over two trays - only one of us was able to come and retrieve the food so that our child wasn’t left alone and I was frustrated that no offer of helped was recieved even though it was obvious I was going to struggle getting things upstairs.

Overall we are really dissapointed with our experience of the food, cafe and service in general and unfortunately we can’t say that it lived up the hype it boasted online.

The only decent part of service we recieved is when we asked if a pencil case we had seen on arrival was in stock and a kind assistant actually...

I arrived at the artbox cafe at 12.50pm today. Staff did not greet us at all. I saw a sign and waited next to it to be seated. After a short while a lady enquired as to whether I had made a booking ( I sensed she was hoping I did not have a booking so she could send us away). I informed her that I had a 1pm booking, she replied that I would need to wait 10 minutes for a table. At 1.05pm I heard a staff member remind other staff behind the counter that he believes I may have a booking. This polite young man showed me, my daughter and her friend to a table. When we got upstairs it was far from busy so not sure why we had such a long wait. Decor was nice, and the girls loved the theme, however generally the atmosphere was frosty and unwelcoming here. Staff did not speak to the children when ultimately I would assume the cafe is aimed at children of my daughters age group, so therefore I would expect staff to make children feel welcome, be bubbly, friendly and used to dealing with children, in fact it was quite the opposite. They did not even smile, and seemed disinterested in making the girls experience an enjoyable one. The ice creams were overpriced however due to the theme, I was ok with this, the sweet and marshmallow on my daughters ice cream were both stale and inedible, the ice cream was not of a great quality. I ordered a coffee and when it came it had a hello kitty coaster with it, a thin cardboard effort but nonetheless a little keepsake, I gave it to my daughters friend and enquired with the staff member if I could perhaps have one more for my daughter. The staff member said this was not possible, as it was a gift with the coffee. I offered to purchase a cardboard coaster and was again told the only way I could have one was to purchase another coffee. I did express my dissatisfaction at this as I felt it was absurd and quite mean. The girls had wanted to purchase some merchandise from the shop downstairs, however on the basis of what happened I paid my bill and left promptly with my daughter in tears. So what was meant to be an enjoyable experience with great memories was unfortunately far from it. The staff here need a serious lesson in customer service, politeness and how to be child friendly. Having read through other reviews it seems the response of choice is 'No' to anything that deviates from the norm. They totally did not care that my daughter was upset. They certainly do not aim to please here. An experience I will not forget for all the wrong reasons! Really...