Pastelería Isla (Granada, Spain)

    

Calle Carrera del Genil, 27
    18009 Granada
    Spain
    Phone: +34 958 222 405
    Website

This patisserie was the first opened by Casa Isla in Granada (the original was founded in the nearby town of Santa Fe in the 19th century) and it was one of the few patisseries in the city when I was a kid. The place was a hang-up place for families on Sundays, after Mass, and was one of those places you would go to buy your sweets for birthdays and presents.

This is not a posh in vogue patisserie place by any means, as it is an old very small cafe, with a very limited seating area. Still, it has some elements that remind the visitor of its former splendour years, with a lovely marble counter, the chandelier lamps, the framed Royal Appointment, among other elements of decoration. The chairs used to be the traditional wooden ones, round tables, which I miss, because they made the perfect old-style cafe and were way comfier than the current ones.  

They sell a selection of traditional sweets, cakes, slices, tarts, (and ice-creams and ice-cream tarts in the warmer months), but most people come here to have a coffee with a pionono or to buy boxes of piononos, which are delivered fresh every day and disappear every day way before closing time.So, what is a pionono? It is a small sweet that you will only find in this city, no other place in Andalusia, Spain or the world. They could have the same name, but they are not the same. The original Granada pionono is a historical piece of patisserie. The founder of Casa Isla, Ceferino Isla, was its creator. This man was very religious and wanted to create a special sweet to honour Pope Pius the Ninth (Pio Nono in Spanish). So, he created a small cake that reminded him of the Pope's shape: plump, roundish, short, its head covered by a papal cap. In 1916 King Alfonso the 13th, while visiting a friend in Granada Province, was offered some piononos with his mid-afternoon tea. He loved them so much that he appointed Ceferino's patisserie an official provider of the Spanish Royal House. A title that the bakery still holds.

The pionono is a golden small, short, plump spongy cylinder rolled over itself, slightly infused in syrup, topped by a round "cap" of toasted cream. It goes in one morsel, or two, perfect to date your coffee.  It  has a distinctive flavour, it is moist, mid level of sweetness, fluffy and very fresh.

Lately, the traditional piononos have been joined for some summery flavoured versions that are far behind regarding flavour and quality except for the citrus one, which I loved.

There are piononos in other patisseries in the city but they are not as good or fresh as the ones sold here.  Regarding other sweets they sell, varies from type to type. I like some of them and not others. I used to love their ice-cream tarts when I was a kid.,

Service changes from person to person, some of the ladies lovely some others a bit dry and matter of fact. Thank Gosh for the moist cakes :).

If you are lucky to grab a seat, you will stay here for a long time, as this is one of those places that, for whatever reason, keeps people there talking for hours. No joke!

This places is part of my emotional-belly memory. Even the things I don't like make it special to me.

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Rey Fernando (Granada, Spain)

   

Calle Reyes Católicos, 28
    18009 Granada
    Spain
    Phone:  +34 958 224 949
    Website

Rey Fernando is one my fav coffee spots in the city because of its killer location in the commercial Reyes Católicos St, but also because of their coffee  and cake slices.

The place is tiny, the preparation and display area occupying most of the premises, and the seating area is reduced to a few stools around the counter, and the upstairs seating area.

I love mousse cakes and slices so many o their sweets fit this bill perfectly. I absolutely love and recommend their Rey Fernando cake, as in my photo, which they also have with a white chocolate crust. I also like their piononos when they are fresh.

They have a lovely selection of ice-creams, gofres, pastries, frozen yoghurt, chocolate drinks, fresh juices, granita, and what is not.

The staff are very hard-working and lovely. They are matter of fact if you don't speak Spanish, as most of them have a very basic English, which does not allow them to interact with customers much. They are just lovely if you happen to speak Spanish or just make the effort to say a few words in Spanish.

MIND
> The coffee preparation and quality varies depending on the barista.
> The place is crowded at Spanish coffee times, so you have to stand.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
Their piononos can be hiper-fresh or a bit stale. I guess it depends on the delivery days from the mother-bakery in Santafé, but I have seen noticeable differences in the level of freshness and taste depending on the days I have visited.
 
DOWNSIDES
Don't order churros! I have seen here cold churros being reheated, it is usually non-locals who come here for churros, not knowing that they have awesome churro places in Plaza Bibarrambla, three minutes away, prepared on the spot fresh all day long.

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Heladería Los Italianos (Granada, Spain)

Calle Gran Vía de Colón, 4
18010 Granada
Spain
Phone: +34 958 224 034
Website

Lost Italianos is one of the oldest gelaterie in the city and the most  renowned. It has been open for decades, and one of the highlights to enjoy summer for most Granadians. Seriously! You know it is spring time when... Los Italianos reopen every year.

The owners are Italians so the production of the ice-creams has always been Italian traditional gelato making, with light textured flavoursome ice-creams and crunchy delicious waffle cones. Lost Italianos were the first to bring unusual flavours to the city's ice-cream world, although nowadays other gelaterie have more daring and interesting flavours. Still, the quality of the gelato here is undeniable, the selection of flavours excellent, and the taste wonderful.

My favourite flavours are pineapple and crema tostada and their cassata.

Their servings are decent in size, and the prices fair.

Service is fast and friendly, despite the fact that the staff is at times overwhelmed by a constant flood of people all day long. It can be chaotic.

I hate cueing for anything, especially for anything edible. This is the only place in the city where you find cues and, if there is no a cue,  there is a human suffocating mass around. Something that always puts me off.

Michelle Obama stopped here for her ice-cream when holidaying in town a couple of years ago. I thought it was cool Michelle and I have shared the same ice-cream :P

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Lot 20 Bar (Northbridge, Perth WA, Australia)

200-206, William Street
Cultural Centre
Northbridge
Perth WA 6000
Website
Hours
    Mon-Sat 10am-12am
    Sun 10am-10pm

  

Lot 20 is all-in one café and bar located in the heart of the Cultural Centre. The place has a wonderful layout with many different micro-spaces created in their alfresco yard and indoors: cosy spots, hide-in spots, alone spots, eating-with-your-pal spots, girly spots, macho spots, couples spots. Spottified! 

The place is woody, retro-industrial, very colourful and with plenty of funny and quirky elements of decoration and artwork. The painting with the jugglers freaks me out every time, I swear. The toilets are great with all those black tiny tiles and the chromed piping ending in those bottles of white creamy soap, really cool.

The atmosphere is also very cool, not only because of the design, but because of the various clientele that visits the place, all ages, all dressing styles, all kinds of humans, that are seasoned and stirred up by a mix of retro music.  

Opening times are awesome - food, coffee and drinks available in the city centre any time of the day from 10am to 10pm. Beat that! And the prices are OK taking into account that this is Perth city centre.

One of the things I like the most about the place is that they add new dishes very often, so if you happen to go often, you will always find something new to try. I love that. It keeps me going to places.

FOOD

Lot Twenty has a mix cart of post-modern pub food, with plenty of vegetarian dishes, and they use local fresh produce, which is always a guarantee of freshness and flavour. They have a great concept about the dishes they offer, but the food has been yummy sometimes, OK others, and absolutely blah others. 

The top in my chart have been the Son in Law Eggs with chilly caramel dressing and coriander, so beautiful looking, so smooth in your mouth, sweetish and with a wonderful mix of flavours, colours and textures. The home-made terrine was great, fresh, soft, smooth and very delicate, perfect with the dollop of mustard sauce. 

The asparagus on potato foam with yuzu and kaffir lime "magic dust" were wonderful, very simply prepared and beautifully presented. I also loved the beetroot salad, a mix of fruit and veggie salad infused in the beetroot juice, which was delicious; mine had apple, orange, compressed melon, beetroot and another veggie that I could not recognise. The warm vegetables salad was very simple, but very healthy looking and tasty, the veggies cooked to perfection, not too hard not too soft.
 
I liked their home-made onion rings and the fish and chips with the accompanying slightly spicy sauce dip - home-style unpretentious pub (oily) food and very filling. 

I had high expectations regarding the slightly smoked pork belly, but I had a ploff sort of moment. The produce was top notch, and the flavour of each separate item as well, but the mix was not complementary. The cardamom and apple gel was lovely in flavour, and nicely plated, but it was not enough quantity or texture to envelop with its flavour and moisture the very dry crunchy pork belly. The chestnut flakes were also lovely, but another dry element to add to another dry element, dry to the square, which prevented the pork belly from gliding down my esophagus toboggan style. 

The spiced cauliflower has been the main disappointment (absolutely ploff!). I love cauliflower, it is one of those vegetables that is easy to cook and morph into amazing things. However, the cauliflower was way too hard, the chunks too big, the dollops of herbed [sic] yoghurt sauce too thick to be easily spreadable and give moisture and flavour to the dish as a whole, while the wonderful pomegranate and nuts sprinkle were lost trying to seduce a frigid cauliflower. No chemistry, baby.  

I did not like the olives. Why anybody would choose mediocre olives over wonderful ones escapes me, like a butterfly passing by. Perhaps they should like olives first to choose good ones!!  

DESSERTS

Regarding the sweets, the Pear Friand was great! Very small (cute actually) but wonderful regarding flavour, moisture, texture and level of sugar. In contrast, the chocolate pudding sorta thing was a  "does he love me-does he love me not" sort of dish. A 3-dollar dessert really puts me in the mood of anything good, so I did enjoy it. On the other hand, what I got was, basically, jellied condensed sweetened milk zombified by a bit of Milo. You could think, genius! I agree! But I prepare similar things at home in summer and takes no culinary skills to do so; I was just expecting something beyond my poor-dessert-making skills, that happens when your expectations are expectant. And... why not calling it Condensed Milk Pudding so my imagination does not fly mid way to crash hard against concrete reality too soon? Anticlimactic!

DRINKS AND COFFEE

I love their wine and drinks chart, and the prices of the international wines are terrific for Perth standards. I absolutely loved the Lopez de Haro red wine, smooth like a nice kiss. 

Their coffee is well prepared and creamy, but the beans they use produce one of those "weakienikis" that we find throughout Perth. Perfect for you if you like smooth weak coffees. Otherwise, my easy-solution kinda solution is ordering a topped-up long macchiato instead of your usual flat white. I did so and I was happy with the strength an flavour of my coffee. Oh Wittgenstein you know how wording works on the tongues of people. 

SERVICE

Most of the staff are really welcoming, helpful, very friendly, and very cute! The problem is the organisation of the service at times. It was chaotic, confused and inattentive during my first visit, a bit of a disaster and got me annoyed. Fortunately, first impressions are delusive and I always give a second opportunity. Glad I did because the service has dramatically changed in my following visits, and these guys have been pampering my regal butt since then. Kiss Kiss. 

The main problem with the service is not the people, is that the dishes take quite a while to come out at times, no matter the difficulty in the preparation or how empty the local is. Almost half an hour for a dish of simple eggs is unacceptable. I wondered if they were helping the chicken to lay the eggs directly cooked onto the plate. Bang Bang. 

However, I mentioned the issue to one of the waiters, and my eggs were on my table presto!, and my second dish came 5 minutes after ordering it! The Sound of Music.  

That is willingness to please! Kudos to all them for the effort. The more I go, the more attentive they are to my needs, and that is always a great sign, and what turns customers into regulars. 

***

I will go back, I like the place, there are many things I want to try, like their visually enthralling burger and Dutch chips, fish and chips, and all the new dishes they are incorporating into the menu. They have so many different veggie and meaty things that is impossible not to like at least a few of them. Having said that, their food can easily improved, and needs to improve, it takes a willingness to work the textures and flavours of some of the more avant-garde dishes a bit better to do so. Nothing really wow. But you don't want to be wowed that often; otherwise your wows would be less genuine. 

EMERGENCY!

Coffee takeaway cup size is minuscule ridicule. Fix it! You need at least a large cup to make any coffeeholic happy!

NOTES OF INTEREST

* Free Wi-fi for those who just communicate with their antennae.
* No PayWave. Wave your fingers athletically to introduce your PIN, instead

FLEETING THOUGHTS

>> I hope they have big umbrellas for the patio area once summer comes, because the place is already hot, and you don't want to seat al fresco to get hot.<<
>> How many steps or kilometres do the waiters do going upstairs/downstairs the kitchen the whole day? Good workout!<<

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David Jones Store (Perth WA)

This is my favourite store in Perth for many reasons

WONDERFUL THINGS ABOUT MR JONES
+ Location Location, in the heart of the city, so there is always easy to visit if you happen to work in the CBD.
+ Size, big but not too big.
+ Posh Classy Factor.
+ Brands Factor. Some of my favourite brands have stands here, Allanah Hill, Ted Barker, Karen Miller, Oroton, and many fancy international designer clothing I like to look at.
+ Display style. I love the way they exhibit their stuff. Open, touchable, stylishly placed.
+ Shoes Section. It was reorganised and renovated a few weeks ago and is looking even more splendid. They have a mix of posh and medium-range brands, and it is my pass-by favourite area in the store.
+ Millinery section, which is great always, also very expensive, but especially wonderful in the weeks previous to the Melbourne Cup. Unlike other shops selling millinery in the city, they do not inflate the prices for the season, and the quality and design of their fascinators is way superior.
+ The stationary area.
+ The cosmetics and perfumes area, which has a mix of surf and turf, but with very posh and exclusive products (Tom Ford, Bottega Venetta, Joe Malone, among many others.)
+ The high-end designer clothing on the 3rd floor. Stupendous.
+ The toilets on the third floor. Like in the movies.
+ Their Christmas decorations seasonal sections. Fabulous.
 

MR JONES IS REALLY SURPRISING
++ Their sales and discounts are fabulous, and apply to seasonal stuff, not to last year's unwanted stuff. I especially like the discounts at the shoes and watches areas, Oroton and Allanah Hill stands.
++ Did you know there is a BreastScreen WA on the 3rd floor at the David Jones Rose Clinic? Yes, I know, it surprised me as well. Let your breast to be squeezed in style...
++ Oh, I cannot forget their food hall and gourmet area. Descend into a  pleasure-oh-able state by using the escalator!

MR JONES' AIDS OF CAMP ARE AN INTERESTING BUNCH
Most of the ladies at the shop are lovely, and willing to help even though sometimes by doing so they have to go out of their way or out their own stand.

However, it takes two uptight inattentive rude ones to make you forget the nice ones. This is the way the brain of humans work, not just mine. I have found examples of staff looking down at customers, passive-aggressive comments on the product being too expensive for you (as if they knew what the budget of the buyer is!), staff so interested in talking to other fellow-staff members that forget about you, put the beeping machine in the bag, or do not say hello or thank you, staff who get annoyed because you just make a question or because you ask something that "their divinities" think you should be asking. So It is a mix of things. I don't find that at Myers, you see, so if the price is the same or similar I will go there because the staff are friendlier.

Some of the stands don't have staff until mid-morning, so if you want to buy something, you won't be able to do so. Thanks for making me save my money, Mr Jones.

NO-NO, MR JONES!
-- Poor book section. But I guess that not many people to to David Jones for the books. My guess. 
-- Mac dominated electronics area... some people don't like apples and prefer oranges.
-- Some of the staff's behaviour towards customers.
 
FIX IT FOR ME, PLEASE, MR JONES
= Clean and repair the toilets on the second floor more often! They are the most popular with passers-by, and I have found them sometimes dirty, with no hand paper, with some of the flush not working, a bit smelly. You know, not very posh at all.  
= Train and and select your staff better, they represent your brand. Unless you want to be the brand of the uptight butts, do something to avoid a minority that give a bad image of David Jones' customer service.

SOME FREE SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS, MR JONES
>> Why are you opening half an hour later than Myers? You just want me to save money, right?
>> Update your bag section, your wallets section, and your medium-range watches section. There is something called Internet shopping, a magic world where one can buy many of this stuff cheaper because they are last season stuff in the Northern Hemisphere. Think about that when you choose the items you want to display.
>> Remove cheap brands from the cosmetics section... like Revlon. I Buy Revlon a lot, but not from here but from the Chemist Warehouse at least 30% off. The products are not displayed as nicely, but they are the same products. Why not having other brands? I mean DJ is posh, right?
>>  Their stockings section used to be the most glamorous hosiery piece in Perth, and a drop by for me. However, with the refurbishment of the last weeks, it has been dramatically reduced to stands with boring pricey tights. You can still find some of the fashionable stuff online, but not in the city. This being the case, Myers is at the moment more appealing and more varied, so I will be spending my money there... Your fault!
>> The OPI stand used to be exclusive in Perth. Now, it is not. Myer got one, and they are making reductions and sales on the whole range quite often, so unless you match that, Mr Jones, I will be heading that alley.Your fault!

I love you David Jones (and I curse you at times, too).

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Maletas Martín (Granada, Spain)

Calle Obispo Hurtado, 20
18002 Granada
Spain
Phone: +34 958 253 006
 
This is one of those shops that are disappearing from the city, an old traditional family operated leather and luggage shop. Local and international franchises and the big stores' tough guys are making life difficult for businesses like this, so one has to give big kudos to these little shops and buy from them. The owners' children won't continue the family business; they, as many others, have left the country and are working in "more important" things overseas.

The shop's space is minimal, and the shop's space is crowded and nothing to rave about. What you can rave about is the service your get from the owners (Manuela especially), who also happen to be the shop attendants, the variety of luggage they have, and the pricing. Moreover, these people know their trade, where the suitcases are made, material of the handles, anything you need to know about suitcases or leather goods. Old times savoir faire.

They have been specialising in Samsonite products since... forever, but they have some beautiful trendy arty luggage items by other brands, Ágata Ruiz de la Prada's being my favourite. Pricing is fantastic for Samsonite and good priced for other brands.

They also have a small selection of basic leather goods, some of them branded, some others unbranded, made by hand from the leather itself to the stitching. Awesome quality at good prices. However, I found most of the stuff a bit boring for me, perhaps perfect for my mum or my grandma if I had any alive.

I bought my new cabin suitcase from here, great brand, great quality, great price. Hurrah!

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Baba-Shop (Granada, Spain)

    Calle San Antón, 16
    18005 Granada
    Spain
    Phone: +34 958 521 638
    Website

Baba-Shop is a must stop for me each time I visit Granada.

Tucked away in Calle San Antón, this bazaar has an ample shop with a large but non flashy shop window.

This would have been my perfect shop if it had existed when I was at University as it has everything that my younger self (a bit hidden now underneath my more glamorous me) loved and love: unique pieces of clothing and jewellery, colour, textures, earthy stuff, alternative fashion, world jewellery and decoration items, new-hippy, hipster, grunge - Paradise! Their website does not make justice to the shop.

I don't wear the sort of clothing they have or most of their accessories any more, but I do still wear and purchase some of the pendants and jewellery they sell, which are always beautiful and original. I super-love their silver jewellery cabinet, which is not too expensive for foreigners (a bit for locals).

This is a pricey shop in general, which offers sales just on sales periods. That is possible because they have a loyal clientele who returns over and over again, and prefer to pay for one unique alternative piece than for three mass-produced ones.

The attendants are matter of fact and won't bother you in your browsing unless you want them to open the magic cabinet or bring something down from the upper shelves. Browse peacefully, buy if you want.

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