First off I have to disagree with the visitor from the USA last year. If you ask people hereabouts - Hastings Old Town - the responses are not positive. Of course, in the unusual event of buttonholing someone and asking "What's the best bakery in town?" one might get directed to Judges, especially as now it is owned by the other bakery, 1066, and is the only bakery in the Old Town anyway.
Let's put it like this. I needed some pot, not pearl, barley earlier this year, and when I went in, they had some, for around a £1. It's useful for stuff like that - odds and ends of ingredients one would normally find in a very grand delicatessen or upmarket health-food-shop. Some of it is reasonably priced, some of it is very expensive. There's not much shelf-space and quite often only a few of each item. Worth a look, though.
Now to our onions.
It's rather a dark gloomy space dominated by a big counter behind which are usually 2 or 3 moderately pleasant staff and invariably in my experience one sour-faced so-and-so (the one with her bonce gelled up into unlovely spikes) who is - of course! - in charge. This latter is so rude and ungracious I avoid going in there unless I must.
To the rear of the shop are now a few small stolid square tables and chairs with laminated menus poked into the space behind the end ofthe counter. There are all the usual coffees on the plastic sheet, and a few dull cakes for sale on the counter. Gracious living it ain't, despite the honeypot settng (right at the start of the High Street in a particularly charming panto-set of an ancient english town.)
Be aware that you can sit there for ages looking around hopefully, clearing your throat, and calling "Um - excuse me? Excuse me?", but nothing will happen. This is because at the bottom of the menu you are told to go to the counter, but we didn't know that.
Given the way Spiky was eyeing me whilst I was waiting for my companion, who'd gone to buy the paper to read over coffee - having been reprimanded at unnecessary length for buying and venturing to eat one of Judge's own pasties in Judges' own caff - this was undoubtedly another little lesson in how Judges is not there for its customers but for itself, very much on its own terms (and what terms they are.)
Having tried to get service, we went to the counter and asked what the position was. We were reprimanded again and left, but I returned to tell Spiky, in front of her customers, that her manners needed serious modification and that I would be reviewing Judges online.
I've asked quite a lot of Hastings people about Judges. The response has not been positive. Expense, impoverished service, and drab badly-organised surroundings feature largely. As for me, every time I've been in the place in the last few years I've come out feeling fed up and slightly humiliated, so I'm sharing that with you and most of all with Judges, who have the resources to sort themeselves out. As I hope they will. read more
