Tic Toc Café

Love, love, love the coffee here… and the flapjacks… great interior design…

Easily one of my favourite café’s and there’s plenty of competition. Quirky, kitsch interior is great. Delicious cakes and coffee. Yummy…

Tic Toc, another of the over-​busy Brighton hotspots, is known for it’s nestled Lanes location, and that’s really one of the few selling points here. It’s not that Tic Toc isn’t good, it just isn’t very special. The number of people that seem to rave about it always surprises me: I mean, it’s very nice inside, the food is very reasonably priced, and the location is fab for a spring/​summer cup of coffee, but that’s about it.
Maybe it’s that it used to be owned by the guys that now run Café Felice… in those heady days, Tic Toc was amazing, serving really exceptional, hearty Italian food for cheap prices. Now, Felice is overpriced, and Tic Toc is just a bit average, food and drink-​wise anyway. The atmosphere is still lovely, with a nice, cluttered, typically-​Brightonian set-​up (see Marwood and Nia for a similar set-​up), but is nothing special anymore. 2 – 3 years ago, this place was ahead of the curve, now it’s really nothing special anymore: no innovations means it now offers what everyone else does, in a more confined space, with none of its individuality retained.
Tic Toc is still a nice little place for a tea or coffee, but really nothing on some of the exceptional and original place nearby. Pop into Naked, up the Lanes, or wander through to Market Square.

Judging by appearance the Tic Toc café could seem like another one of the quirky and kitch cafes tat Brighton is full of. This in some ways is correct, but Tic Toc also offers an amazingly inventive and delicious menu alongside. It rivals the major chains with its gorgeous and large selection of coffees, as well as the other cafs in the area with fab dishes like Beetroot and Feta soup. They also have piles of heavenly cake.
It brilliance has not gone unnoticed though so it can get mega busy at peak times.

Great little spot! Good music, friendly staff, good coffee, and the Croque Monsieur was very good. Will go back — want to donate a goat!

I was very sad to see the End of the Lanes Café and their selection of 50 hot chocolates go, but this place is a welcome replacement in my opinion. I’ve never had anything amazing to eat here, but as sandwich options go they certainly give you something more interesting than the average café. Today I tried a chicken, peanut butter, pepper and chilli sandwich which was far too heavy on the peanut butter but a nice idea nonetheless. My sister opted for a more traditional bacon butty which looked nice and was much better value than other options. They have the sort of hot chocolate where you get a solid cube of chocolate on the end of a stick and melt it into milk yourself. I found this to be particularly exciting though I can’t quite put my finger on why! I was also pleased to see them selling a range of Fentiman’s drinks which are personal favourites.
May I also say that the decoration is just splendid. Had the place not been so bijou I would have attempted to run away with one of their delightful vintage formica tables. The same would go for the wallpaper, had it not been pasted to the walls. Oh, and any place that offers you a blanket in case you want to sit outside gets my royal seal of approval instantly!

Gallic insouciance meets no-​nonsense Brit attitude in this quirky little café. Whether your taste runs to a bacon butty or a croquet monsieur, posh cheese on toast or beetroot and feta soup, be prepare to eat in close proximity to your nearest neighbour.
The sandwiches rejoice in imaginative names the Lucha Libre (tomato salsa, avocado, chicken); the Braveheart (smoked salmon, cream cheese, dill, lemon); the Vespucci (tomato, anchovies, garlic, asparagus); the Innocent (cream cheese, radish, asparagus).
Don’t expect a fast food experience. As a note on the menu explains: We want to remind our customers that we only have a very small kitchen. The food is great but there’s only one chef. Therefore, waiting is very much part of the game here when busy.
Ça vaut le peine.

Adorably quirky café tucked into a corner at Meeting House Lane in the South Laines. I say quirky because the customers seem unusually thrilled to be there. If you can find a seat (I recommend an early or late lunch there) navigate to the counter past the smiley happy eaters to give your order to the waiter. Besides their selection of typically French Croques and light bites, I was pleasantly surprised by their range of hot drinks including 4 different Chai Lattes (which I love and drink even though I have a mild allergy to cinnammon! hehe) and an assortment of hot chocolates which are served as a mug of hot milk with a chocolate covered stick that you melt in meaning you can have it weak or deliciously rich. No wonder everyone is so smiley and happy.

This is a lovely little coffee place in the heart of the Lanes.
I don’t understand why people continue to frequent Starbucks and the like when there are places like this and Red Roaster around.
As well as great coffee, they do a good range of food here — with a good range of sandwiches and the like.
Staff are also very friendly, which obviously helps the atmosphere. A great place to linger and recharge your batteries.

The Tic Toc café has a really continental feel and is inspired by the café culture of Amsterdam. Its cosy inside with a quirky décor of clock themed bitsys. Its a typical Lanes café in that its popular and often busy, but unlike a lot of cafs in the area customers come back for the menu as well as the convenient location.
They have fab outside seating which is great for catching some rays in the summer or smokers in the winter. The menu is modern European with deliciousness like croque monsieur and home made soups

On probably the worst day that Brighton had ever seen — the morning after the Halloween night before had done a good job of trashing the streets, and the wind and rain whipped in for good measure, my friend and I retreated to her local café. Here.
We didn’t get off to the best of starts, the Tic Toc Café and I, through no fault of those running it. The electricity wasn’t working, they said, so no coffee or hot food. Tea and hot chocolate all good though! We decided to stay anyway — I’m always snared by the appearance of fresh mint tea on any drink menu — merely breathing in the steam makes me feel as revitalised as one of those beachside hippies doing yoga at 6am. With a monster hangover, this is no mean feat.
As soon as we’d ordered though, I noticed there was another couple sitting inside — the female of which was talking as loud as were humanly possible into her phone. I hate this. Turns out she’d just got engaged. I shot her a few withering looks anyway, already appreciating that I was probably going to hell for not being happy for her. The spoken news that her battery was running low and she had to go ranks as one of the most relief filled moments of my life. Good luck to the poor bloke.
Anyway — I digress too far. By this point I was well settled into my leather sofa, French cartoon coffee table book on lap, minty goodness being lapped up, last night’s adventures being dissected. I realised that the Tic Toc was in actual fact, despite our poor start, a lovely place indeed. The kind of place you’d want to spend a decent slice of a day with a pile of newspapers and a good friend. The food looked pretty good too.

Brighton is full of cute and quirky cafes.
It’s also full of individual and well established coffee chains.
It’s rare that you stumble across a place that combines the two however — which makes Tic Toc Café something of a gem. Situated on the corner of The Lanes, just a minute stroll from Jamie’s Italian and Food For Friends, it’s an adorable place to grab a big mug of java and catch up with friends. If you’re after some food to go with your coffee, Tic Toc also sell soup, open and closed sandwiches and daily specials. I had a beetroot and feta soup that was delicious but fiery — since it had a generous pinch of horseradish!
As for the style, Tic Toc is retro with a modern twist with bright yellow, leather booths, an old battered sofa, vintage wallpaper and twinkly fairy lights. I would have given it 5 stars for the coffee, soup and service alone but the fact they were playing Gene Vincent and The Beach Boys the whole time I was there made my afternoon!

The sign on the door quotes JP Sartre as saying Probablement the best coffee in Brighton. He’s right, it is good coffee, and the beef, gruyère and celeriac open sandwich was pretty delicious too. charming French owner, friendly, attractive American Apparel wearing staff — what more could you ask for? lovely!

This place is too cute. The guy that runs it actually lives in London but commutes to Brighton to run this gem of a tea shop. With an array of super tasty cakes and delights its a perfect lunchtime or afternoon shopping stop off.
Not only fantastic home cooked food but there is free wifi. This place really couldn’t get more lovely. I’m glad I’m here all weekend I will totally be back again.

What would you rather have… a coffee or a goat? (Take time to ponder in depth…) Because after 10 stamps on Tic Toc’s loyalty card, you can donate your loyalty card toward buying a goat for a family in Africa. No, really. Baaahhhhh!
The problem is, Tic Toc’s coffee is so dang delicious that you’ll probably have trouble making this honourable decision. «Hmmm, a life changing gift for a starving family in Africa, or a fix for my caffeine addiction?»
Speaking of life changing, today beet root soup with feta cheese filled a gap in my culinary lifetime that had been left empty for 27 years. (It was followed by a nothing less than divinely inspired ginger molasses cookie.)
They must be fattening me up in case they can’t find enough goats…