When I get to the front of the line, I am in my own world. This will be the first time I have ordered sit in at Ralphs. Does such a thing exist? When I was asked “and what will you have” the only thing I could think of was Latté for here.

My latte comes out at a reasonable pace, given the quality of orders, and the barista/ sports enthusiast guy (son of ralph?) seems not to miss a step, with skim cap, followed by soya flat white, iced coffee and so on being made.

I carry my coffee over to a table by the big windows over looking the field and take a good look at it. The drink is well proportioned, with a good quantity of foam to milk in the glass. It has a rough cocoa smell, which is not unpleasant at all. The coffee, to be honest, looks a little disappointing, very little effort was put into its finishing, although the coffee foam has that nice shiny look to it.

Taste wise it’s nothing amazing, with a slight burnt milk after taste lingering after every sip. I think when the milk for my drink was heated up the jug was not totally emptied. After taste aside, it had a reasonably strong flavour and hints of the cocoa smell were evident when drinking it, although the milk really was an issue it was over done and lacked texture to it.

Ralphs over all is nothing amazing, but neither is it terrible. It’s located in a unique part of campus, and has added a lot to the quality of coffee on campus today. Sitting outside by the oval behind the nets, or near the big open windows inside is nice, if a little shambolic. One always has a since of accomplishment when you have worked out the unspoken rules of how to order and what not (made easier by Ralph’s ‘rules’ on the big board). Good news is this place is getting renovated so may be a far nicer place to sit in future.

Sit in scores:

coffee: 6/10
style/put together: 5/10
total coffee: 11/20