Bread and Rutter: The Unexpected Café
Violet food critic Emma Rutter visits Cindies in the afternoon – and finds cuppas instead of clubbers
In an effort to reduce the amount of money I spend on coffee, I tried to be a little more creative in my choice of venue this week.
I found myself with 45 minutes to spare the other day and, with the above in mind, popped into the Unexpected Café in Cindies. It’s a pop-up café running alongside the Christian Union’s week of events, open from 2pm to 4pm – a bit of a strange time, if you ask me, but the ideal place to fix your mid-afternoon working slump.
"Being inside a club in the daytime made for a rather exciting change from the college library"
You probably already know how to get to Cindies (aka Ballare), but in case you’ve forgotten you’ll find a cheery Christian Union member in a navy jumper just outside the entrance who will direct you up the steps and into the heart of the café. Enclosed within the brick walls of the Lion Yard shopping centre, it hasn’t been blessed with the most pleasant of surroundings, but you soon forget about it once you step inside.
The café sticks relatively closely to traditional club lighting – pink and green-tinged lights – but is brightened up by the daylight flooding in through the open door and the strings of fairy lights dotted around the place. It’s full of nooks and crannies so you’re sure to find a place to sit, even if you have an aversion to leather sofas.
Fluffy cushions, tables and chairs provide adequate comfort for those of you hoping to do some essay writing, and the green booths to the left of the bar will provide a quieter space in which to work. You might struggle to read a book in here due to the dim lighting, but it wouldn’t have too much of an impact on laptop work or a date with a friend.
The dim lighting also has one other impact: it makes it difficult to see what you are eating. I picked what I thought was a plain sponge cake with chocolate chips – which, upon reflection, does seem a bit of a weird choice – but was deceived and ended up with a slice of sweet sultana cake instead. I have a soft spot for sultanas so this didn’t bother me, but it was a bit of a surprise!
My (unexpected) slice of cake was tasty and the slabs of lemon drizzle loaf and large chunks of chocolate brownie looked very tempting, too. They’ve even got vegan and gluten-free options: Oreos and coconut macarons, respectively.
With a suggested cake donation of 50p and free tea and coffee, this is a café well within reach of even the smallest student budget. Although the coffee isn’t quite up to the standard of last week’s coffee shop, it’s surprisingly good. You can choose between filter coffee... and filter coffee.
Alternatively, if those diverse options don’t appeal to you, you can order a freshly brewed tea of your choice. The staff are friendly, but not intrusive: there doesn’t seem to be any pressure to chat to them, but it was nice to see a friendly navy jumper by the bookstall in case we wanted to talk through any potential purchases.
Overall, I was rather impressed by this temporary café space. It’s cheap, welcoming and the novelty of being inside a club in the daytime made for a rather exciting change from the college library. It’s a shame that it’s only open for two hours a day, and for a week at that. It would have been interesting to see whether this pioneering, multi-functional café-club space could become a fundamental part of student life
