Cafe Strange Brew

So I finally sat in Café Strangebrew, yay! The menu is small, with breakfast served till 2pm and brunch and lunch items on all day. If you like eggs there’s plenty to choose from with baked eggs and variations of eggs benedict, eggs royale etc and a few varieties of french toast. Plus sandwhiches and soup. Coffee is supplied by Dear Green, tea from Tea Pigs and eggs from Corrie Mains farm which I love (my newsagent sells them and they are super tasty).
Today I had the bacon french toast which was huge! So big I couldn’t finish it, good to know about the big portions in future when I’m starving though. I actually wanted the eggs benedict with chilli hollandaise but there was no sauce left and there would be half our wait on another batch being made. Good to know they make that from scratch. My husband had the baked eggs with sourdough which looked good too. Missing out on a fifth star as we waited quite a while to be served and previous takeaway breakfast rolls were just standard. but apart from that it’s all good, definitely worth a sit in trip. Glad to have another decent café on our doorstep

I am writing this review from within a chrono-​synclastic infundibulum. The effort required to relate ordinary comprehension to the influx of sensory information while the coordinates of the mundane plane are utterly scrambled by the constant suffusion and intersection of the dimensions of past, present and future is so great as to occasionally totally overshadow the effort to make syntactical sense, therefore I apologise in advance for any points in this review where the sensitive film of coherency might be pierced by the ocean of chaos flowing from the abyss which is beyond all things.
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spiff
Café Strange Brew is a great Jerusalem of the elephant. I especially like the cataracts. The flavours are subliminal. Try the fried satin. One time I went there, it must have been about March 2^nd 1973. I was surprised to find Café Strange Brew under great cool palms in the Amazon, but hey, whatever. I asked for a glass of syntha-​mesc, to get ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence, but they were like nah brah try this vegan cake it’s great. It was. «Holy catacombs of the forgotten continent, this is great,» I said. They were like, nodding.
snoopy
watterson
Another time the twin suns of Alpha Centauri had given me a god damn migraine while I was bird-​watching and I was like oh geez am I in pain and so I went to Strange Brew and was like what ya got for twin sun cataracts and they gave me some french toast with cheese and I was like bring it and I ate it and it was good. Basically I wanna sum this up by just saying clamp spoons. The feathers were stuporous. I am greatly passionate about local harmonium interference patterns. Hang on to your neuroplasticity, it’ll get you out of a jam for sure. I can feel my hold on reality slipping — I am needed in a higher dimension — you’ll thank me later, circa 2149, I can’t explain now — suffice it to say… Café Strange Brew is a fractal soliton of improbability in an otherwise hamfleshed world.
Thanks for reading… OR DID YOU?

Ok, I may be being controversial here given the numerous 5 star reviews but I just didn’t love this place as much as I wanted to!
Very small space with only a few tables. When I went in with my wee boy there were 2 available tables but they were still littered with the previous customers rubbish. We took a seat anyway and the waitress did come and clear them quite quickly.
I went for the soup of the day, which was vegan friendly, Butternut and Chilli. It came beautifully presented topped with Spring onion and 2 doorstop slices of bread. The soup was fine, nothing special and not particularly hearty. Needed quite a lot of seasoning. After about 4 spoonfuls I found a huge wiry hair! The waitress really quickly changed my bowl for me and took it off the bill but I have to admit it did put me off a bit! The bread was absolutely beautiful though.
I took a Peanut butter blondie away which was delicious!
I just found the place a bit grubby. I know it’s a tiny independent café but it just wasn’t really up to much for me, which is a shame. Even after the table was cleaned it was still super sticky, I had to clean the cutlery myself as it was grubby looking and when the waitress brought our drinks she actually took our glasses away and brought fresh ones (without me saying) as she noticed they were dirty.
I may try again for a quick takeaway sandwich or something but don’t think I’d sit in again. Hate giving a poor review but just not that great.

Cracking wee café that’s just opened in Shawlands. While it’s not the biggest space in the world, its a great place to spend some time.
The big caveat to this 5 star review is that I haven’t tried the coffee, so if this is your main thing then I’m not able to give you any guidance. It’s Dear Green coffee that they use, which I’ve heard is good, but how good a brew they do is something I can’t comment on. Having said that, I recommend that you go and try for yourself.
As I’ve said, it’s not a massive space — one table that will seat 4, and about another half a dozen tables that seat 2. In spite of this it doesn’t feel too cramped, and you don;t feel like you’re eavesdropping on other peoples conversations — we were sharing the big table with other couple of folk and you would hardly know. The decoration is simple but relaxing, with some cool wee touches that stand out, and the music was cool enough that you noticed it (Reservoir Dogs soundtrack) but not loud enough that you focussed on it.
The main draw here for me was the food. The café isn’t doing anything particularly fancy: it’s standard café stuff like cooked breakfasts, sandwiches, and the like. What it is doing is selling you good, comfortable (very) tasty food at fantastic prices, basically like cafes used to do. The all-​day breakfasts are around the £5-£6 mark, which is unheard of nowadays, and my sandwich was a pretty big doorstop one, and was about the same price. A branded mug full of chunky chips is an extra £2 on top, and they were;t taking the mick with the soft drink prices.
This definitely isn’t a case of you getting what you pay for. As I said, I really liked what I had, and the price was just a bit of an extra bonus. If you’re in Shawlands and you fancy a snack and a drink while you read the paper (or give the dog a rest — it’s dog friendly!) then I can’t think of a better place to try.

This is definitely my new favourite place in Shawlands! The food is awesome, the coffee is strong, the playlist is always on point and the service is always with a smile. I’m looking forward to hanging out in this place more!

Really cute place. Fits in nicely with the Southside vibe. Good coffee, good food and friendly staff. Will definitely be coming back!

I’m a bit in love with this café already, after just one (quick) visit. I needed lunch but didn’t have much time, so just popped in for a takeaway sandwich and soup.
There’s quite a bit of seating actually — probably space for between 15 – 20 people and they’ve made good use of the space so it doesn’t seem crammed. But this time I was taking away so just ordered at the counter. The takeout menu has rolls, french toast, cooked breakfasts, sandwiches, soup, macaroni and of course drinks and cakes. If you’re eating in, there’s also bread & dips and egg dishes available.
I really need to comment on just how cheap their full breakfast options are — I’m used to paying between £7-£10 for a full breakfast but here you can get a full cooked breakfast for £5.75 (medium size) or big for £7.50, and only £5 for a veggie breakfast. Bargain. I’ll be back for the breakfast this weekend so will update about that once I try it.
I got a roast chicken sandwich and cup of potato soup to takeaway. Everything is freshly made and as I said above, prices are very reasonable. I resisted the temptation for cake but there was a lovely selection of brownies, sponge, scones as well as a couple of vegan options.
The sandwich was awesome — a good amount of chicken, nice mayo and mustard tang and some spinach leaves in there too. A very filling lunch — so much so that I ended up saving the soup and having that for dinner! Potato & cumin flavour which was just delicious and didn’t need any seasoning.
If you’re after a hot drink they do Dear Green coffee and Tea Pigs tea — winning combination! As I said, I’m a bit in love already so I’m sure I’ll be back very soon!

This café has recently just opened in Shawlands and we were lucky enough to get a table late this afternoon. I knew they had available a tasty vegan-​friendly bakewell tart — which is made by a vegan friend of mine who has her own cake business — so guessed they’d also have vegan savouries. I opted for a spinach, tomato, and avocado sandwich, and swapped the siracha for beetroot hummus. They also have another couple of veggie sandwich options, and meat options including bacon, chicken, salmon, or pastrami. Chips or soup can be added to a sandwich for an additional £2; they ran out of the potato & leek so tomato & basil was offered as an alternative.
They have Teapigs tea and Dear Green Coffee. I opted for a matcha soy latte as I spotted it on the menu and fancied a hot drink that was a bit more unusual than an americano; it was beautifully presented but might go for something else next time, I haven’t acquired a matcha taste and needed to add sugar. They have a fridge stocked with a good selection of sodas including the usual Irn Bru etc., and also some Fentimans flavours.
They have one toilet cubicle — the café isn’t that big — with hand towels available (no awful low powered hand dryer). Staff are friendly and attentive. I’m not out in the Southside that often for coffee but will definitely be back.