Cafe at Coed-y-Brenin in Gwynedd

We were not cycling on this trip, but were recommended to visit the cafe for a refreshment stop and stunning views. It did not disappoint.

Called into Coed y Brenin cafe for a quick coffee before a day on the mountain bikes ..... We quickly decided to have a full cooked breakfast as well. Emma and Nia quickly shorted us with our coffee and breakfast. The breakfast was cooked to perfection, all nice and hot. The staff were pleasent, efficient and a credit to the cafe ..... Keep up the good work.

Lovely staff, very helpful. First time of visiting but will definitely be back. The views from the rear of the cafe are fantastic. Tea and cake wonderful, toilet facilities excellent. COVID guidelines observed, well done.

The various woodland walks are wonderful especially the quiz walk for children to find and identify creatures, plants and insects. Lovely variety of meals available in the cafe served by friendly staff. We will definitely visit again.

Great little cafe with seating both inside and out offering great views. The food is always spot on, staff are friendly and helpful, cafe is clean and tidy and it’s dog friendly too.

Great tasting food and very clean but staff seem to be a little stressed at the weekend. they maybe need more more staff. It is a tadge expensive but then it does taste nice. Cakes look nice.

At the beginning of several mountain bike tracks , this cafe is a very welcome sight on your return. Well stocked with all kinds of food and drinks served by friendly , courteous staff, and spotlessly clean . Location is something else -- well worth a visit .

This place is always clean and tidy with lovely looking food on display. We sometimes visit before we start riding but definitely always visit after when we need that cuppa and slice of cake! It does get busy at peak times but we have always managed to get a table. Had the flapjack this weekend whilst I was there and this was amazing!!

Get ready for some extra guests with your pot of tea and cake. They're cheeky with it too - but then again - you're in 'their' forest. The little robins, tits, dunnocks (they could be wrens) land on your table - size you up, then size up your cake/sausage butty then put on cute faces. Don't be fooled tho - there's a little dish with seeds in for them either on the table or dotted round the decking. The decking itself overlooks Cader Idris and Coed y Brenin. have a read of how the visitor centre was built (right hand-side as you come in) - good gift shop, kind and knowledgable staff. Highly recommend.

Food and 1:1 service is fine but the overall organisation is poor. They could serve more customers if only there was some half decent management in charge.

Who isn't in need of a cuppa and cake after a long ride?! It's a bit cosy-cafe style and the service wasn't the quickest - but then it was a busy afternoon in the half term holiday. Mugs of tea and coffee were very welcome and the scones were good - satisfyingly huge! Reasonably priced too.

Popped in the cafe for some breakfast before we headed off to do the Beast trail, Opted for Bacon and Sausage sandwich, this was cooked well although Bacon had been in a deep fryer and not grilled/pan fried so slightly hard and fatty!! My friend is Vegan and there were not many options for her to have so we struggled a bit to find her something which she could have to eat. Service was very slow, although very polite when we did get served, and the cafe was very quite due to the poor weather, I wouldn't like to see it when it is busy......seem's like this in all Forestry Cafe's, Cannock, Coed Y Brenin, Whinlatter they are all the same!!! Price of food was good, not expensive like I thought it was so that was a plus side! If there was some thought put into running this establishment it could be fantastic!! As someone has mentioned on another review you will not beat the food and service which you receive at Llandegla - Top quality!!!!

After visiting the Coed-y-Brenin woodland trails took the weight off and stopped for a pitstop at the Cafe at Coed-y-Brenin. Great hot chocolate and slice of Gluten Free Victoria Sponge - about the price you'd expect for such a place. Friendly helpfull waitresses. Nice wooden benches outside with views down into the wooded valleys in the morning mists.

Nothing better than finishing a ride with a nice cuppa Tea , and some decent grub Been coming here for many years and the service is ok still think they need a new system during busy times. Food is good but I feel it could be better , still no trail center cafe matches Llandegla. Place is clean considering the mucky bums of the bikers. Doesn’t ever deter me coming back and will do for few more years yet.

Lovely food. Staff very helpful and happy to serve you. Tasty food, lots of choice but not too much choice. Quick service Would defiantly go back.

Not your average trail centre cafe. Some nice dishes, imaginative and tasty. And a good price. And a range of local beers and ciders.

Stopped off for a bite to eat to get out of the rain and was impressed by the standard of the place. The soups were very good, service was quick and could take our dog in. The cafe does get busy especially at weekends but there is more seating than it first appears.

Ate here after doing some of the walks around the park...the staff were super friendly, the food was amazing!

We only managed a short walk in the forest on the way home, but we will return to explore this magical area soon. The bacon rolls and coffee are the best we have tasted and set us up for the journey home. We will definitely return for a longer visit next time. Friendly staff as well!

|As always the food is lovely here with homemade cakes. Menu changes each year we go but always good. Friendly staff

This is a simple little cafe in the Visitor Centre of this astonishingly excellent 9,000 acre forest park. The food is wonderful (with marvelous cakes baked by "real Welsh ladies". Now, fancy that !! An amazing activity is to sit at an outside table leaving a few little crumbs on the table in front of you. You'll be besieged by a slew of brave little birds. This place is well-run (the whole park is, actually) by knowledgeable and helpful types who are justly proud of the place. Don't miss it.

Went for our hike and thought why not, a nice sandwich cup of coffee and wedges, finished off with flapjack, well I was impressed, real cooked ham none of this processed rubbish on thick bread with fresh salad garnish and crisps, real coffee, and delicious flapjack, wedges were home made and had a lovely crispy coating on them, water bowls for the dogs, highly recommended total price was just over £18 will definitely use again.

Mejor hamburguesa en Snowdonia (venado carne), col y patatas fritas, gran servicio y muy agradable y los baños están limpios. Lo que lo hace mágico es la vista desde el porche de madera que rodea la casa redonda, donde se puede disfrutar de su hamburguesa y cerveza mientras observa las copas de Snowdonia. El lugar es un hervidero de actividad con los ciclistas de montaña, pero aún activo como un 'no', esta es la pena de moteros algunos gran placer.

No es especialmente simpático y bastante caro. No comprar el agua, ya que hay un grifo exterior y traiga un picnic si yo fuera tú. Los inodoros podría tener un limpio. Está un poco deteriorado. No hay una muy buena elección en el menú.

Paramos oír después de un caballo y antes de que nos dirigimos por un largo viaje de regreso a casa.

We have spent a week here in Coed-y and have visited the cafe on numerous occasions. The food is great and just what you need after a hike or mountain bike ride, hot, fresh and plenty of it. The portions are generous for the price. Dogs are welcome and the staff are wonderful. Highlights included the hot chocolate (go large), Victoria sponge and the lamb burger.

Called in on Sunday afternoon after a walk in the Forest. Service was good and the café was clean - tables were cleared quickly and wiped down ready for the next customer.

Nice food to be had here you can take the kids for a bike ride around the wood trails then come back for a bite to eat.Some nice home made cakes and a good cup of coffee.We often stop here just to get a coffee and a slice of cake as we pass.

Called in for a coffee after walking around the footpaths. All food is sourced locally and cooked to order. Super scones!

Very good stopover, any time of the day. We choose mid-morning and devoured nicely made bacon and free-range egg sandwiches with a filter coffee and cream. Sounds indulging, but you can burn it all off on one of the trails when you come out. Place is not over glamorous, but it's clean and the staff are friendly, and the food is good. Recommended.

Love this place,the setting,surroundings and the lovely staff...nothing too much trouble! We will certainly visit again when we're on our way to mid-Wales!

Staff were all friendly and helpful, food was lovely and came quick but was clearly fresh, all good quality as well! Everything was clean and tidy! Well worth the money! Highly recommend :)

After a cycle a warm room, coffee and choice of cake is just what the doctor ordered! There is seating outdoors but I felt a little chilly so sat inside. Plenty of food on the menu if you need more than a snack.

Eaten here numerous times when Mountain Biking in the forest. I've always been impressed with their good honest cafe food. It's not particularly cheap but then again it's no greasy spoon. Although it can get pretty busy the service is good and the staff friendly and welcoming.

Excellent hearty food for walkers. Dogs allowed in cafe. Scones out of this world. Only down side, bikers have spoiler the area for walkers.

We went for a family lunch before following some of the hiking trails. We got a venison burger, a beef burger, and a chicken burger with some wedges and coleslaw. The cafe was busy but we still got a delicious meal within 10 minutes of ordering. The food was really good and excellent value too.

Lovely chicken mozzarella pesto hot wrap with salad & wedges. It would be nice to have a couple of child specific items, fish finger butty or mini lunch box maybe?

Wonderful find - a well-equipped centre for forest running and mountain biking with a great café attached. Large coffees really are large for only £3 and burgers (local beef, lamb and venison) for under £9. A Very popular place. Off the main road but worth the drive into the forest.

Great tea. Fantastic views. Lots of wildlife to watch and enjoy. Quite aware cafe with seating outside too. Views are breathtaking. Very quiet area as away from the main road too.

Rented bikes here and came back the next day for breakfast.Facilities are clean and modern and the food is very good. Views over the forest are stunning, especially from the outside terrace. Would definitely recommend.

Nice big breakfast at a really reasonable price, friendly staff, sets you up for a long days riding!

This forest is well worth the visit , either for walking or mountain biking , I actually hired a fat bike while I was there, loved it so much . Plenty of walking in the area . The cafe itself is great , staff very friendly . They have a large sitting area outside , the Robins , Sparrows, and other birds virtually take crumbs from your hand they come that close .

What a great place to visit. The case served great food but was expensive.overall an excellent place to visit. amazing walks, cycle tracks and running tracks

We had a good lunch at the cafe here before mountain biking! The service was good and the staff friendly. There is a good choice of meals, snacks and cakes. There is a lovely balcony which looks across the forest and you can watch the bikes!

We stopped for a cuppa and cake after a glorious woodland walk. The food was excellent, can strongly recommend the coffee cake and the staff were friendly and helpful. We sat outside on the balcony where there were water bowls available for dogs and the local robin and chaffinches joined us at our table waiting for crumbs. The view was stunning with the added bonus of nesting martins flying all around.

Well positioned cafe offering a range of food and drink for tired and hungry mountain bikers. Food generally good and very wholesome. Word of advice: go for a light snack if you are going out riding again as the portions are on the large side. A jacket potato with cheese or tuna will slow you right down!! The cafe's speciality seems to be the burgers and the one I had was great.

The lady on the till was really helpful and friendly. Nice food, lots of choice and gluten free options! Great views from the outside seating area, gorgeous to sit out on a sunny day.

Went here with teenage boys after a big ride - we were starving and not disappointed: Good quality burgers, wraps and more. Also had a nice coffee and cake. Recommended.

It's just what's needed after a ride round the trails. Good food with good service. It's all anyone wants really!

I love this place. We are so hungry after the trails that I am so happy this place exists. Nice facilities, clean toilets plus you could have a shower and freshen up for the journey home. It is a little pricy but apart from the car park charge the full day of mountain biking is FREE so cant really complain. Portion are good, very nice staff and food comes out fast. You must try THE BEAST BREAKFAST !!

We visited the cafe on Easter Sunday. It was torrential rain so the cafe was full and we had to wait to find a seat. Despite this the cafe was clean and service excellent. Looking through to the kitchen we could see a large staff team preparing hundreds of fresh meals. Being vegetarian we were very impressed with the menu. The falafels were deep fried yet not greasy at all. They were served with a warm pita, fresh lettuce, red onion, peppers, cucumber, a pot of sweet chilli sauce and another of houmous. It was good to be able to load our own pita and have it to our own taste. The portion was quite small but we'd ordered some potato wedges to share, they were crispy and the portion was large. Other members of the family order a panini, again they were served with fresh salad and also crisps, they were huge meals. The Americano coffees were good. A massive plus point for us was the fact they allowed dogs inside. We hope to be in Wales again to be able to walk in the woods in more pleasant weather.

Lovely coffee and delicious food, accompanied by very friendly service. I had free wi fi whilst I waited for my husband t complete a long cycle ride and was made to feel very welcome.

Lovely cafe with a good range of food and drink. Healthy options as well as burgers! Always stop by here after a ride, they also have showers in the building if you're messy after a mountain bike ride.

Brilliant day at coed y brenin with Cari Bach and lovely food in the cafe and nice to see smiling faces behind the counter , if your not a mountain biker or RUNNER it's worth going for the food and the amazing views

Stopped in for lunch. Good range of meals and snacks. Unfortunately I ordered the vegetable soup, the vegetables were very undercooked and rather too much salty stock used to give it flavour. None of the ingredients had been blitzed down so it was more of a veg broth than a soup.. My husband had a panini which looked and tasted very nice.

Brilliant centre with a great cafe. Staff very cheerful, happy and helpful, especially the manageress who couldn't be more helpful, even promised to come mountain biking with us

We have been a few times as a quick stop or when trying cycling. It's a relaxing place [the staff are a little too relaxed hence your 4 stars] and plenty to do. Not an intimidating MTB sort of place, more do your own thing...cycling, walking, eating.

Lovely building, great choice, good prices, what more could you ask for. No need to take your own lunch use the cafe. We had chicken butterfly with tomato on a bun with lemon mayo and a cake,. Cooked fresh and the cake happened to be gluten free not that it made any difference to the cake.

Not tidy on the day we visited. Tables not efficiently cleared.Very dry scone, but coffee and flapjack ok

You can also hire Bikes from here lots of differnt trails you can follow, they are all colour coded from Blue lightest to Amber hardest for bike trails, there are also walks too...Lovely place bike riding can be a bit of rough terrain making some sore bums at the en, but well worth it..

If biking at the park you tend to look for suitable food and quickly. This cafe ticks both boxes. The facilities are clean and organisation very efficient. Significantly it is biker (mountain) friendly. Fantastic

This is a little gem of a cafe. It offers a good range of well priced food, which is all locally sourced, some of it from the Coed-y-Brenin forest itself! Always clean but busy at times.

Good choice of food and drink lovely views of the wood. nice clean toilets. Excellent base for running walking and biking

Called in with family to use play area before heading home. Ordered some take out coffees, the regular cappuccino was served in a similar sized cardboard cup to Starbucks or Costa. However, the cup was around a quarter full with coffee and up to about three quarters with froth. When I asked the server if he could top it up he was uninterested and insisted this was a correct serving after poking about in the froth with a teaspoon! Couldn't be bothered to argue but funny that the latte my wife had was more like a normal serving. Both coffees were equally weak and watery. I don't mind paying over the odds for the fact it's an isolated tourist spot but at least offer a reasonable product please, and take customer feedback seriously without smirking.

We where just driving down the road and we needed somewhere to walk the dog .I need lunch and order a lamb burger with wedge it's great if a little pricey.

Spent a week mountain biking at Coed-y-Brenin in March this year and visited the cafe on a daily basis (sometimes twice a day!). We happily ate our way through their delicious cakes, soups and burgers. The service was quick, the staff were friendly and helpful and even shared their recipes with me! It's not cheap, but that didn't put us off.

Good choice of food. Excellent quality and fairly priced. Staff friendly and helpful. Fairly slow to be served and it wasn't very busy. At peak times think they need more staff throughout the cafe facilty.

Visited Last Saturday, Good Day Out On the Trails. Party of 7 of us arriving different times We though we might have a post ride meal, I joined the queue 15 long 40 mins later finally able to order 3 drinks, decided to opt out of the the food as been watching the very slow system of information to kitchen back to table an very long wait ( food looked ok ) not much work by staff - time to lean time to clean This Cafe has a captive customer base - not much customer service - this could easily be improved - Good alternative is to put this cafe out to tender - Natural resources wales gets a good income - Customers gets good efficient service - Contract can be re-let if not up to scratch.Or Is the manger of this facility is not managing - "due for retirement"Someone please address this service deficit Coed Y Brenin is a fantastic day out rain of shine this is my 8th visit !

While the food was lovely and the cafe was clean and well laid out, the attitude of the staff was terrible. Everything seemed to be too much effort and on one occasion when they got our order wrong, the staff member serving us sighed before removing out dish, and then proceeded to complain to his colleagues about us in front of us and other clients. Very disappointing

My boyfriend and I ate at this trailhead café after our ride. We sat on the balcony at the back with great views over the forest.Food was lovely and the service was quick and friendly. The prices were better than what we're used to paying at our local joint back home. Nice end to the ride!

Just what's needed when you are going up north on the bike :)It's really a walking/mountain bike centre but we call in on the motorbikes and nobody bats an eyelid. It's lovely sitting both inside and out for a while. Good clean facilities and all easy to access.

Try and choose good weather for a visit.Trails well marked,giveyourself plenty of time.Fortify yourself at the cafe,or carry foodwith you.You can also get lost when ti gets dark in the forest,soa torch and compass are handy.

Good food, bit pricy but good choice. Nice setting, they even let you bring your dog in too! After a hard days riding the café is a very welcome sight!

I enjoyed it had cakes drinks etc. Just like an average cafe. What was good was that the allowed you to bring your own food and eat it in the provided seating area.

Drove a long way to have lunch here and really looking forward to it after all the tourist blurb we had read. My snack arrived with a slimy rotten salad garnish, my husband didn't get his complete order and had to send it back to be completed. The cutlery was filthy & not washed properly. My husband asked to see the catering manager who came to our table. The excuse for the rotten slimy salad was because it came out of a bag! I think the cutlery that was left was taken to be washed again as the couple at the next table had to wait for some. The price is very high for this kind of meal, but as the location is so isolated, where else can you go? I also don't think there is much evidence of locally produced food as advertised. This could be such a fantastic place to eat if it lived up to the claims it makes - the location is amazing, but sadly we won't be going back.

I've had food & drinks here on many occasions and I think it's good for what it is. The coffee is excellent and the food is alright.There can be a long queue to place your order, but otherwise it's ok. The meals are fine but nothing special, but the cakes are very good! The service has always been ok when I've been there and they have a drinks loyalty card system.Outside, balcony seating is very nice, but on one or two occasions the pleasant waft of burning wood chip is replaced by the smell of the reed-bed sewerage system...

The service was excellent at the centre. Good choice of food and staff were very helpful and friendly. Prices were as expected for a cafe at cycling centre. Would recommend for a lunch or just cup of tea and cake.

We have visited the cafe many times over the years as a family whilst cycling in the forest and, whilst the range of food on the menu is now much better than it has been, the actual quality of the food and the level of customer service has not increased to the same level.We visited on a busy Easter holiday weekday and they seemed I'll prepared for the lunch time demand. It was a lovely day and we grabbed one of the last tables outside. The young female on the till couldn't have been much more unhelpful, we asked about the food, she walked off to ask others, returning by standing several feet away and staring at us! We tried to order food but were told we were standing in the wrong place and had to move four feet to the right to be next to the till! The girl couldn't take the order and finally a colleague came across and at least he had an idea of what he was doing. Food time was ten minutes..After 25 minutes the food arrived and it was OK is about the best I can say. Veggie sausage is best avoided as it was full of oil / fat, falafel in pitta also OK. Pricing a bit high for the quality.When will places like this realise that the welcome from staff and their ability to deal with your order in a pleasant and knowledgeable way creates an important impression. Average food and pricing means that we will be taking picnics from now on.

Very disorganised ordering system. I would not like to visit on a weekend! Took an age to get served. Staff very helpful and friendly. Food was very disappointing considering the cost. Falafel was dry and a very small portion. Burger was similarly poor and didn't come with the yoghurt as described. Very expensive for what we got.