After a spot of coffee and a girly shopping spree, finding the right location for lunch can be tricky, especially when both you and your friends take your food seriously! When catching up with my pal Vick recently in Chelmsford, we spotted a new venue that hadn’t opened at our last visit; a crepe and waffle restaurant called The Works. Intrigued and prepared to try something different from our usual Italian haunts, we headed in to check it out.
Décor wise, The Works is very industrial and sparse, with an abundance of corrugated metal sheeting, mismatched bricks and ad hoc seating creating a very jumbled, garbage tip vibe that appeared part trendy, part laziness. Our square wooden table, for example, had four completely different dining chairs, while a long table behind us utilised flip down wooden pew style seating. The floor was a polished wood, which unfortunately acted as an ice rink for a cluster of children seated near us; thankfully the squealing stopped as they left shortly afterwards.
We expected The Works to be primarily a dessert restaurant, however we were surprised to find they had an extensive savoury menu too, both in terms of breakfast options and savoury fillings for their hallmark waffles and crepes. With this in mind, we therefore decided that two courses were in order, so that we could fully explore the available options.
For my mains, I chose the huevos rancheros filling, which I decided to have with a waffle. This was described as being topped with smashed avocado, chorizo, poached eggs and salsa. I must admit, when it arrived at the table, my heart did sink a little in disappointment. The waffle, which looked very shop bought and plastic, was folded in half, the filling propped in the middle looking incredibly light, while a bunch of plain salad leaves clustered behind the folded side of the waffle. Opening up my waffle, I found that the filling was very sparse indeed, and actually only properly covered one half of the waffle. Luckily, I had two poached eggs, which I popped and oozed over any leftover waffle to help give it some flavour and goo. The poached eggs were lovely and cooked perfectly to be the right amount of runniness, as well as a glorious yellow hue. The avocado smash was creamy with chunks of avocado springing up here and there, rivers of salsa occasionally spurting up from underneath the layer of green. The chorizo was diced into small cubes.
The flavours were lovely and such a great combo. The creaminess of the avocado worked so well with the punchy 
chorizo, both flavours nicely accompanied by the fresh yet vibrant salsa, which was a decent consistency too. My only problem was that there really wasn’t enough of the filling to actually cover the waffle, so I was certainly spreading everything out quite thinly, which of course minimises the impact of the flavour and being able to actually eat the components together. Not sure what I would have done without the yolk running all over the dry areas of waffle. The waffle itself was fine; more of a bland base for the filling. It was thinner than I expected, a bit smaller than I expected, but soft with a slight crunch on the outside.
On the whole, I did enjoy it and it was tasty, but I really think The Works are missing a trick. Just by adding more filling and actually giving any thought at all to the presentation of the dish could really escalate it to something special. However, the presentation was sloppy, the filling stingy.
Talking of being stingy, we asked for tap water to have with our meal when we ordered our main courses. By the time our mains arrived, we still hadn’t received our drinks, so we had to ask again. It’s not like we had asked for anything complicated to prepare or fetch!
Since my waffle wasn’t the most filling, I was looking forward to round two and having some dessert. This time, we opted to share a crepe and test out The Works’ pancakes. We chose the chocolate honeycomb cheesecake, which featured chocolate honeycomb pieces, mascarpone cheese, biscuit crumbs and toffee and chocolate sauces, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. This was much more my scene; the crepe was a nice size and drizzled with an ok amount of sauce. Cutting into the soft crepe, the mascarpone cheese was melting lusciously over everything for that cheesecake vibe, which I really enjoyed. I found the biscuit crumbs distinctly absent, and the chocolate honeycomb pieces small and tricky to find; again, the filling must have been gathered in one place or there just wasn’t enough of it. The vanilla ice cream was pretty standard and not that flavourful, although it seemed a bit too frozen and icy in the centre, which wasn’t ideal. Crunchy ice cream is a bit of a no-no. As a dessert, it was still enjoyable and the crepe itself was a nice quality. There was plenty of mascarpone for the cheesecake element of the dessert, however the honeycomb and biscuit aspects were a bit lacklustre. In the main though, nice and certainly edible.
With my dessert, I decided to properly treat myself and have one of The Works’ speciality hot chocolates. I went for the sea salted caramel version, which was a milk hot chocolate, with a salted caramel syrup, topped with lashings of whipped cream, fudge pieces and toffee sauce. This was excellent, even if the cream did ooze off the top messily! It was served in a kilner jar style mug, which I liked, and the whipped cream was proper cream and not just spray can stuff. It was stacked like a white afro atop the hot chocolate, with lots of fudge pieces and sauce for me to get stuck into. It 
melted pretty quick, so I made a bit of a mess on the table, but it was great having that dessert-like element with my drink. The hot chocolate itself was quite thin, but nice and I enjoyed the caramel tones that the syrup added to the beverage. The hot chocolate may have been my favourite bit of the meal actually!
We knew the restaurant was new, but the service was pretty terrible in all honesty. We felt that none of the staff really wanted us there, and that we were very much an imposition; we were served by about three or four different people and got the same vibes from all of them. Waiting an age for simple tap water is laughable too. On the other hand, it was a really cheap lunch. We paid £16.45 each – granted, we shared a dessert and didn’t have alcohol, however this does seem very reasonable price wise.
All in all, I did enjoy my lunch at The Works. I like the idea of it, and certainly there is innovation in the savoury and sweet crepes or waffle genre, throwing in breakfast and other elements – this varies from the typical dessert bars you find on the high street. However, it does feel like they’ve taken a good idea and just not delivered it properly, or thought it through all the way, as there are definitely improvements to be made to take it to the next level. The food that we had was tasty though, despite being sparse, and our meal was still an enjoyable one. I’m not sure I would go back in a hurry, although I did spot that Aperol spritzes were £6.50, so that may be an incentive! It will be interesting to see how long The Works manages to stick around for.
The Discount Deal Menu 