I've been here a couple of times before as with their café in Waterstones, Fountain Street. It's nice to see the current growth of city centre coffee shops which care about filter coffee, especially single origin coffee. In the case of this branch of Ground, on the corner of Queen Street and Wellington Place, it is almost opposite the site of the former all-too-short-lived Brew Bar, where I was first introduced to Aeropress, Chemex and Siphon coffee from a variety of single origin beans a few years ago, before any of those items really caught on in Belfast.
There were two single origins available today in Ground. I opted for Kenyan rather than whatever the other one was (Guatemalan?) because I've so often found that I particularly like African coffees for depth of flavour. I still do.
On previous visits to the branches of Ground in Belfast City Centre, I have always had a cake or traybake with my filter coffee, e.g. carrot cake, caramel square or lemon drizzle cake, all of which have been pleasant. Today it was the turn of one that I hadn't seen before - Nutella Cake, which I would be equally happy to have again. I was asked if I wanted it heated, which I hadn't thought of when asking for it but it suited the heating very nicely, with some Nutella on the inside. I was also asked if I would like either fresh cream or ice cream with it. I chose the fresh cream. Here was one aspect in which I felt that Ground let themselves down slightly, by serving what appeared to be aerosol cream. I do think that it's classier to have a more densely-textured, less-volumised, less-aerated cream than what comes out of a squirt gun and that it would be more in-keeping with the standard of coffee available.
I've still to try any of the savoury food in Ground but it looks good so that might not be a long time from now. read more