Gluten Free Hot Spot: Society Cafe

I’ve decided to do a new section for my blog: ‘Gluten Free Hot Spots’ I really want this blog to develop into a Gluten Free resource, as well as providing you with ma’ tasty dishes. So every month or so i’ll be highlighting cafe’s, restaurants, eateries, deli’s, shops, you name it – wherever there is consistent Gluten Free i’ll be there. To ensure that there will always be Gluten Free options i’ll be interviewing, or how i like to put it, ‘chatting’ to the owners on their views. I also want to pick places that are quirky, full of friendly people and which provide customers with more than a stop-and-go.

Sound good? Excellent.

My first pick of the bunch has been a favourite for a while. I’ve been heading into Bath quite a lot for work recently and it’s become my second home-i mean- my ultimate place to stop; it is Gluten free cake heaven. Society cafe aims to provide a spot where you can relax, stop by for a few hours….

..perhaps with your kids- they have a section all set up for them downstairs?…

..or with your university friends to chill out downstairs discussing photography, foreign cinema and the like in front of their awesome projector screen?

…or simply with your partner to read the papers, people-watch, and share their indulgent signature Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake at 11am on a Sunday.

Just because you can.

I spoke to one of the owners Jane Campbell-Howard, about their Gluten Free cakes of heaven.

I had a Battenburg Cake. Gluten Free. See what i mean?

Hi Jane, how are you and what’s your beverage of choice today?

A flat white made with our full-flavoured E6 blend and organic milk from the pasture-fed Jersey cows at Ivy House Farm. It’s so naturally sweet and full-flavoured – milk like it used to be.

Tell me about your lovely cafe. What inspired your creative and funky interior and more importantly the type of food and drink you offer to your customers?

We love café’s, have spent many hours in them all over the world. Infact, one of the first dates that Adrian took me on was to a café in San Francisco called, incredibly, Squat and Gobble!! It was a brilliant place – clean, simple, fresh. Pretty much all the things we had in mind when setting up Society. We also love idea of being part of the local community which is why we have found somewhere with a lot of space where we can put out inspirational books, art, magazines. People can relax, people-watch, bring their laptops, children, friends and family, chat and make new friends. It’s a fun place to be.

The food and drink has to be of the highest standard and we are really proud of all of our suppliers. Every single item that we have chosen to offer our customers has been very carefully selected. It was a long process but well worth it.

For us gluten intolerant folk, it’s ever so handy to be able to rely on a coffee shop / lunch spot to offer a gluten free option. Is this something you always had in mind?

So many people prefer to eat gluten free cakes and biscuits so it was definitely part of our plan. We had no idea how popular our gluten free cakes would be and so we are now swapping most of them over using GF flour or ground almonds/hazelnuts in place of flour and hope to be able to offer more biscuits soon too.

Do you make the gluten free cakes in-house or do you have a very lovely baker you wish to thank here?

Our cakes are made by the lovely Celia at The Bath Cake Company. We work together to create our cakes and our fabulous Signature Chocolate Cake, layered with salted caramel was not something she had been asked to do before. It is heaven on a plate! We are also all about championing British cakes – Parkin, Battenberg, Somerset Apple Cake. We’re proudly bringing back these old favourites!

You do just gluten free options for cakes at the moment- would you consider creating a gluten free sandwich?

Mmmmm…. We would love to and I have beeen asked this question once before and the sad truth is that there is simply not enough of a market – at the moment anyway. Although GF bread is fantastic now, non Gluten Intolerant folk won’t touch it and so we would end up with too much wastage for it to make sense. Instead we are working on a range of GF salads that will be on offer within the month.

I hear you may be turning Society Cafe into a chain and opening stores in other areas of the U.K- which i am sure would delight lots of my readers, where would these plan to be?

We are looking at several places in and around the South West. Nothing is concrete yet and I don’t want to jinx it! You’ll be the first to know when it’s all confirmed!

Just a perfect place to go.

http://www.society-cafe.com/

Society Café
4 & 5 Kingsmead Square
Bath
BA1 2AB
View map

Tel: 01225 519074
contact@society-cafe.com

Opening times: