Pay
Per Person 4.90 euros for cake and coffee
Basics
Location
In not so many words
Hopes? Home-made cake.
First Impressions? Street art bookshop also does coffee.
A USP? An art gallery featuring street artists and illustrators and an extensive coffee menu for coffee buffs.
The food in three words? Sweet, indulgent, home-made
Can they get the staff? Yes.
Service with a smile? Yes, the waitress was both prompt and smiley.
Would you take your friends? Why not.
Rating for a dating? Location provides plenty to talk about for a second date.
Tip? Depends how long you spend there.
If you could change one thing, what would it be? Fewer laptops, more chat.
Going back? I'll probably take a coffee-loving friend along to see what they think.
In not so few words
Second breakfast beckoned after a street art tour courtesy of a friend in the know and so I was taken to Swinton&Grant. Based on the name, I'd have mistaken it for a beard-styling specialist but it is in fact a bookshop and a cafe. A bit trendier than my usual cake haunts but good to try new places with someone who knows your tastes.
Swinton&Grant's is aesthetically pleasing - it's well yet softly lit (fluorescent lighting being the enemy of anyone over 25, especially in the mornings) and there's a view of the aforementioned street art across the street. With just a few well-spaced tables, there was a pleasantly relaxed atmosphere, and the unobtrusive electronic music was at an acceptable volume level.
Crucially, there were three pleasingly home-made looking cakes to choose from. Clearly the red velvet is no secret in the area as there were only a few slices left. The menu has a range of coffees for coffee buffs, Guatemalan, Colombian, Ethiopian. Sadly, the milk is UHT. Perhaps real coffee lovers refrain from polluting their coffee with the white stuff. Evidently then I'm no coffee expert but I do know my cake, thanks to my ma's legendary baking, and her carrot cake is hard to beat. It's also hard to transport and so I bravely taste carrot cake around Madrid in the hope that one day, I will find the perfectly moist, carroty, cream-cheese topped cake.
What we ordered: chocolate cake, carrot cake, 2 normal coffees with milk.
Jen's chocolate cake looked like it was made from a packet, in a good way. Glossy topped, dark and spongey. She liked the decoration and the cake but couldn't quite finish it as it was so rich. I tried the carrot cake which had a promisingly conservative amount of topping (oh I've been fooled more than once by dry cake that hides between thick layers of over-sweetened philadelphia.) And it was pretty good; carroty and dense but not dry. The topping was a bit too sweet for my taste, I could see and feel the granulated sugar, but I've certainly had worse. And so the search continues.
Onto the clientele, people watching being almost as stimulating as coffee drinking.
Spotted that Saturday: English speakers, French speakers, Spanish speakers.Forever-Erasmus, single men hiding behind laptops, identically bearded friends avoiding speech and eye-contact behind phones.3 out of 5 tables were taken up by laptops,3 out of 4 laptops were macs.
All in all, Swinton&Grant is an ideal weekend spot for a coffee, a chat, and a spot of art.
HK
Per Person 4.90 euros for cake and coffee
Basics
Location
In not so many words
Hopes? Home-made cake.
First Impressions? Street art bookshop also does coffee.
A USP? An art gallery featuring street artists and illustrators and an extensive coffee menu for coffee buffs.
The food in three words? Sweet, indulgent, home-made
Can they get the staff? Yes.
Service with a smile? Yes, the waitress was both prompt and smiley.
Would you take your friends? Why not.
Rating for a dating? Location provides plenty to talk about for a second date.
Tip? Depends how long you spend there.
If you could change one thing, what would it be? Fewer laptops, more chat.
Going back? I'll probably take a coffee-loving friend along to see what they think.
In not so few words
Second breakfast beckoned after a street art tour courtesy of a friend in the know and so I was taken to Swinton&Grant. Based on the name, I'd have mistaken it for a beard-styling specialist but it is in fact a bookshop and a cafe. A bit trendier than my usual cake haunts but good to try new places with someone who knows your tastes.
Swinton&Grant's is aesthetically pleasing - it's well yet softly lit (fluorescent lighting being the enemy of anyone over 25, especially in the mornings) and there's a view of the aforementioned street art across the street. With just a few well-spaced tables, there was a pleasantly relaxed atmosphere, and the unobtrusive electronic music was at an acceptable volume level.
Crucially, there were three pleasingly home-made looking cakes to choose from. Clearly the red velvet is no secret in the area as there were only a few slices left. The menu has a range of coffees for coffee buffs, Guatemalan, Colombian, Ethiopian. Sadly, the milk is UHT. Perhaps real coffee lovers refrain from polluting their coffee with the white stuff. Evidently then I'm no coffee expert but I do know my cake, thanks to my ma's legendary baking, and her carrot cake is hard to beat. It's also hard to transport and so I bravely taste carrot cake around Madrid in the hope that one day, I will find the perfectly moist, carroty, cream-cheese topped cake.
What we ordered: chocolate cake, carrot cake, 2 normal coffees with milk.
Jen's chocolate cake looked like it was made from a packet, in a good way. Glossy topped, dark and spongey. She liked the decoration and the cake but couldn't quite finish it as it was so rich. I tried the carrot cake which had a promisingly conservative amount of topping (oh I've been fooled more than once by dry cake that hides between thick layers of over-sweetened philadelphia.) And it was pretty good; carroty and dense but not dry. The topping was a bit too sweet for my taste, I could see and feel the granulated sugar, but I've certainly had worse. And so the search continues.
Onto the clientele, people watching being almost as stimulating as coffee drinking.
Spotted that Saturday: English speakers, French speakers, Spanish speakers.Forever-Erasmus, single men hiding behind laptops, identically bearded friends avoiding speech and eye-contact behind phones.3 out of 5 tables were taken up by laptops,3 out of 4 laptops were macs.
All in all, Swinton&Grant is an ideal weekend spot for a coffee, a chat, and a spot of art.
HK