Saturday 2 July 2011

Dixie's Diner - Norwich

81 School Lane
Norwich
Norfolk
NR7 8TQ


Opening times

Monday 8am - 1.30pm
Tuesday to Friday 7am - 1.30pm
Saturday 7am - 12.15pm
Sunday 8am - 11.30am


There are two entrances, this one can be found on School Lane.



I keep forgetting to check opening times recently but this time I remembered.





Head to the counter and choose from the blackboard, the guy in the back cooks one hell of a fry up!



In the background is the other entrance, this leads to an outside seating area which looked really nice.



Inside it is big and spacious with plenty of tables.



I liked the spotty table cloths, sauce bottles and sugar dispenser.



A damn good strong mug of tea for just 70p.



Lovely fluffy white sliced bread, perfect to wrap around the bacon.



You are looking at what I look for in a fry up, I can tell you it was delicious.



Hidden under the mushrooms was a sea of juicy beans.



The eggs sat on top of perfect fried bread and look, tinned tomatoes!



Another weekend in Norwich and another Friday fry up inspection, only one problem though, where to go this week? I ended up typing "cafe" into google maps, thats how I found out about Dixie's Diner. There were a couple of reviews online saying the food was good so I decided to go along and find out for myself..


Upon entering - There is a small car park outside and a few spaces along the road. I walked into the School Lane entrance and walked down a flight of steps into the cafe. It is basically a large seating area with a counter situated in the corner. The tables are large and there are plenty of them, outside are tables too. You are drawn to the counter by the large blackboard, the cutlery is on the counter, everything else is on the tables. 8/10

Service - The lady taking your order who I assume is Dixie is happy and helpful. When the food is ready she brings it over to you at the table with a smile. 9/10

Contents - 2 sausages, 2 bacon, 2 fried eggs, 2 hash browns, fried bread, mushrooms, tinned tomatoes, beans and bread & butter. 9/10

Presentation - It looked visually stunning when it arrived, I did briefly worry where the beans were but it was ok they were just hiding. 8/10

The food - Everything was piping hot when it arrived at the table. The sausages were a decent pork variety that were well nice, the bacon was also delicious and went nicely between the fluffy white slices of bread and butter. The fried eggs were cooked nicely with runny yolks that poured onto the perfect and crispy fried bread. The beans were perfect too with a nice stodgy consistency. Nicely cooked mushrooms and tinned tomatoes finished off this truly magnificent plateful. 9/10

Value for money - I paid £5.10 for the mega breakfast, tea was just 70p. 9/10

Veggie option - There was a 'build your own' option available.

Overall - What a fantastic place! So many other places out there are serving cheap catering sausages for the same price so it is nice when you find another place that clearly wants to impress and please the customer. This place has everything going for it and the food is great.  9/10


22 comments:

  1. Hi there

    I am The Sausage King, a Norfolk based food blogger. I run www.sausagefans.co.uk which is the largest specialist sausage website in the World.

    Where is the best sausage in any fry up in Norfolk/Suffolk? We should meet up and do a joint review?

    Kind regards

    Stephen

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  2. Hello Sausage King!

    So many establishments serve up the dreaded economy sausage but many are getting it right though.

    Harty's Diner, Dixie's Diner, The Street Cafe, Olives, Pat's Cafe and The Unthank Kitchen in Norwich all serve a decent sausage. My favourite sausage so far was The kingfisher in Walcott though. Would be happy to meet up for a joint review!

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  3. Just wanted to write a thank you for your website. My husband and I were on a day out with friends the other weekend and usually like to line our tums, but this time decided after dropping our son off at my parents would be good to not cook it myself. So started a search for cafes near to us and happened upon your site recommending Dixies. Just wanted to say it was totally spot on, really really good and will defo be going back again, ta v much. Oh & ps bread was lovely and fluffy xx

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  4. With so many roadside catering vans on every main road artery you drive down, it was really nice to stumble on "Dixies". It took me back to my childhood days on a saturday morning of going down the local cafe. Alas there was no jukebox or pinball machines in Dixies, however apart from that, the feel was the same. Friendly staff, mums and dads bringing in their children for a Saturday morning treat, I,m sure those little ones will grow up to have some of the same fond memories that I remember. It would seem though that it is a bit of a kept secret as we only stumbled on "Dixies" whilst driving around the ring road on the way to a recent autumn vacation on the broads. The food was great. The atmosphere was friendly with everyone seeming to know each other and one big happy family. My only reccomendation would be to improve the signage from the road so more people could share the experience 'Dixies'.

    L L - Daventry

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  5. Glad you enjoyed Dixies, it is one of my favourite places too. Thanks for the feedback.

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  6. I am a huge fan of Dixies... we quite often meet up there for breakfast before golf or junior cricket coaching - the quality and quantity always sets us up well for an active day!!

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  7. Dixies is the best Cafe in Norwich for breakfasts for sure. Just a shame that everyone knows about it now! Hope we can still get a table :)

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  8. It certainly is a great place, love it!

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  9. Have you tried The Hill top Cafe? it is on the way from Sprowston to Wroxham they do a pretty good breakfast...plenty of parking.

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  10. Yes, I visited Hill Top Cafe last year and it was indeed a good breakfast.

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  11. Linda and Bruce27 April 2012 at 12:27

    Thanks for telling us about Dixies...only a couple of streets from home and we hadnt thought of trying it so your review sent us there a few weeks ago and we relly enjoyed a huge breakfast mid week! Definitely on our radar now.

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  12. Glad to be of help Linda and Bruce!

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  13. Tried Dixies in Feb 2013 but was underwhelmed and certainly cannot agree this is better than Denmark café. The meal was certainly large but served on a black, chipped plate. Bit of an overall taste of stale oil and the sausages are certainly nothing special - just a standard machine made product. An adequate (and generous) offering but I was not wowed by it. The Denmark is head and shoulders above this in my opinion

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    Replies
    1. work/own the Denmark, do we?

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    2. Absolutely not! I suppose it does sound a bit evangelical (!) but I have been a very happy customer there for years (under the present ownership) and I want to stick up for them!! I like Jarrolds too as it happens and rate both of them way above Dixies which was very disappointing both in ambience and food quality and not somewhere I shall bother with again.

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  14. im glad dixies is still going strong,spent a lot of time in there as a boy with my mates30 years ago the fry up was good then.....

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  15. I tried Dixies Diner today for the first time and I was very disappointed. The quality of the food is not good. How can you give Dixies and The Street Cafe the same score. The Street Cafe IS a 9/10 and my favourite. I have been their quite a lot and the food is always excellent. Dixies is more a 5/10 score.

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  16. It was great when I last visited. That was 2 years ago now though so I will give it a second look incase things have changed.

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  17. I would just like to say you are a god for setting up this website! its a shame it hasnt gone national but luckily for me I live in Cambridge and sometimes visit Norwich and thanks to you I know where to go for a fry up! Just read at the top of comments you were looking for the best sausage, till this day I still say http://www.hotsausagecompany.com/thecompany.asp have by far the best sausages (THE BEST HOTDOGS EVER) I have ever eaten all over the world! not sure if you have one in norwich but I know there dotted around. When you next visit Cambridge I 100% recommend. & no I dont work for them aha I just have been eating them the past 15+ years. Keep up the good work!

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    Replies
    1. Hi, I try to get further afield whenever possible but most of my reviews do tend to be in Norwich. I am off to Tokyo in September in search of the best street food! I think I may have tried one of the "hot sausage company" hot dogs in Cambridge, are they the ones sold on the carts on the street corners? I recently discovered some great local sausages at "Battle of the bangers" my favourite was the Archers sausage http://fryupsgoodornot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/sergeant-sausage-battle-of-bangers-2013.html

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    2. for a decent sausage, check out "Paris Butchers Online Market" on Facebook - THE best meat of any variety I've found, including locally sourced/farm shop fayre.

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