Katie’s Blue Cat, Pan-English Cafe, Kreuzkölln*

Do you know a good thing when you see one? I do.  Katie’s Blue Cat is one of those good things.

Even though it’s only just opened, it feels like it’s been around for a while maybe because of how coherent their offering is or how together their staff is.  Which is in stark contrast to a lot of the independent start-ups that open up around the city which have a habit of  putting the cart before the horse. In other words, they open a café, they know they are going to do coffee and something sweet (good margins on those babies) then they stumble through a motley crew of baked goods from around the world, a sunken cake here, a cupcake there, a hodge podge of stuff that doesn’t compel me to buy (why should I when I know at home I’ve got something better which inevitably uses superior ingredients, most of them organic and fair-trade). K.B.C.’s is clear: a “pan-English” inspired baked goods shop, with excellent coffee.

They do three things, which got me: the milk, the biscuits and their clear positioning. They use organic regional milk to make their cappuccinos, which is a huge deal because why boast about good beans (they use Bonanza here) then serve it up with bland long life milk? My cappuccino was smooth, so smooth that I was caught entirely unaware when a huge caffeine induced bout of euphoria hit me a mere half hour later, masked in the creaminess of the milk, I hadn’t had any indication of the bite that shot of coffee was going to take.

On to the biscuits, I like cake, I do, but I find it difficult to commit to a whole slice, that and more often than not, it’s too sweet for me. K.B.C.’s serves up a selection of about 6. Mostly doing away with the usual suspects in favor of cowboy cookies and Earl Grey shortbread biscuits.May I have a word with you about those Earl Grey biscuits? I ate an entire biscuit. Which may seem like I’m stating the obvious except that I rarely eat and entire anything or even half a thing I order (mostly because since leaving my 20s and a good chunk of my 30s behind me, I also seem to have misplaced my lightning speed metabolism but also because life is too short to eat just okay tasting stuff). These biscuits were tremendous, the Earl Grey gave them a chewiness and the flakes of salt I came upon every now kept the sweetness in check. Let’s just say, I’m a big fan. Read more of this post

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