Kaf Coffee
5 Hyndland Street
SUCH are the risks of dipping into weekend micro-cafe culture these days that we decide to eat before we go. A cunning plan to ensure that whatever delays, queues, general low energy, high patience obstacles strewn before us we (well, me) will be able to chill on down and go with the probably inevitableness of it all.
And so it’s only right to exclusively reveal that en route to Kaf today we stopped on nearby Kelvin Way at the MacTassos food truck (they’re not vans anymore man) and while standing there scarfed down two of their fine fresh gyros, all pillowy, soft pitta encasing pork and chicken, tsatsiki, tomato, onion, parsley and, of course, halloumi chips. A mere £3.90 each. Yumster.
Fully prepared now for what may lie ahead we descend deep into Glasgow's west end and in particular the bottom end of Hyndland Street, which is nothing if not always interesting. As predicted Kaf, which is not much bigger than a shoe, is quite frankly heaving. There are at least four people siting at one of the tiny two seaters, three apparent strangers sitting side by side at the counter, and we queue by flattening ourselves against the wall and allowing other customers to randomly slide in between us to order takeaways.
Normally this loose leaf attitude to customer control massively increases queue jump tension but remember we’ve already eaten and arrived pre-chilled.
Anyway, as though the planets have suddenly aligned four people get up to leave at the same time and virtually empty the place. Hurrah. Before we know it we have politely micro-shuffled into a table and a cheery waitress is politely asking me if it’s okay that my black coffee today is from their batch filtered, hand-cobbled, triple-soaked…yadadayada something, er something more.
Eyes fully glazed in acquiescence, Luca and I settle back to watch them stuffing fresh mint leaves into a pot for his mint tea while simultaneously firing up the internet on our phones – not banned in here though laptops actually are – to work out what we’ve just ordered. Seriously.
Pickled chilli babka French toast? What? With feta, za’tar roasted cauliflower, dukkah, sumac onions and garlic lemon tahini. Apart from putting just about every single recently en vogue Masterchef ingredient into one single sandwich and also scoring about 500 in online Scrabble just what on planet food is this?
Okay, the babka is probably more Bake Off (Season 4 Episode 3 to be precise) and a usually sweet, yeasty, bready dough twisted and turned so the layers (usually choco, cinnamon) turn into attractive swirls. You get the picture? It’s a pretty one. When it arrives in some very attractive pottery the bottom is strewn with toasted Egyptian hazelnut-based spice mix while the top of the French toast, yes, it is French toasted, is garlanded with those crimson sumac onions and tahini.
You’re right. This is potentially £8.50 worth of complete silliness but apart from a few bland and slightly eggy bits where the salty feta hasn’t fully penetrated all the parts of the babka, and a long struggle to find any of the promised (and frankly needed) pickled chilli we kind of like it. It’s fun. They even throw in some completely unscripted in the menu pomegranate seeds.
We are on much more familiar territory with the house-cured salt beef sandwich with house sauerkraut, dill pickle mustard mayo and served on thick white tin (that’s the bread, incidentally). Wrapped in greaseproof paper and served in a portion that could easily feed two this is comfort food par excellence. A super succulent sandwich with a rich, thick kick from the layer upon layer of good salt beef, all cut with the requisite amount of American mustard. A tightly bound and pretty satisfying sandwich. Excellent.
There are cakes and bakes, granolas, egg Benedicts and eggs with soldiers on the menu, but by now we’ve seen enough. It’s a bit leftfield is Kaf, but it’s worth a go.
Kaf Coffee
5 Hyndland Street
Glasgow
Menu: There’s the pickled chilli babka French toast, home-cured salt beef sandwiches, cakes and bakes. Interesting. 4/5
Service: Friendly and still managing to be reasonably relaxed on a Saturday afternoon when the place is heaving and everyone is doing five different jobs. 4/5
Atmosphere: Pretty much all in white and the size of a shoe, yet clean crisp and reasonably cozy layout. 4/5
Price: We paid £7.50 for that salt beef sandwich and it was worth every penny, a heady £8.50 for the chilli Babka’s curiosity value. 4/5
Food: Caring and careful attitude to what they serve shows in the detail. Go for the salt beef if you don’t fancy the culinary weirdness of the chilli babka. 8/10
24/30
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