Catberry

Catberry is a Ghent patisserie and coffee bar run by Amélie Badie, who went vegan in 2014 for environmental reasons and started baking her own cakes because she could find so few good plant-based ones. She has made cakes to order since July 2017, and in 2022 Catberry opened its first coffee bar in the centre of Ghent, a green room with a terrace. The name joins her two loves, cats and sweet things.

Everything at Catberry is plant-based, from the milk in the cappuccino to the brownies on the counter. The counter changes daily with cupcakes, brownies, carrot cake, frangipane and lemon poppy cake, made by hand in the atelier with seasonal and local ingredients where possible, and chickpea water from the kitchen goes back into new bakes. The menu adds breakfast and all-day brunch, with granola bowls, pancake stacks and toasts, a lunch of soup and toast, and high teas by reservation. Bento cake workshops, a Haunted High Tea and a Cat-O-Ween dessert buffet run through the year, the room can be hired for events, and calm dogs on a lead are welcome.

The coffee is a Brazil roasted by Dees Koffiebranders in Bruges, chosen to match the Dryk plant milk. It goes into espresso, macchiato, doppio, long black, cappuccino, flat white and latte macchiato, with filter coffee and decaf, and a list of seasonal lattes from speculoos and pumpkin spice to orange cardamom. Milk is pea or oat from Dryk, or coconut from Alpro. Dees Koffiebranders roasts the coffee Catberry serves.

Photograph: Catberry