Casgliad - Contemporary Welsh Design

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Welsh food, drink, and design, in one place - Braf!

Here at Casgliad HQ, we have decided to do even more to support small Welsh businesses.

We have decided that one way to do this every month is to pick an independent Welsh cafe as the base for our monthly meeting. A place that will inspire our ideas and thoughts and where we can plan for the next month, with good food and drink to fuel the ideas!

This month, we resoundingly agreed to choose Braf café, Dinas Dinlle.

We had followed Braf on Instagram for a while. We were impressed by the ‘Scandi Welsh’ feel of the interior and exterior, appealing to our love of Contemporary Welsh Design, Welsh homeware, and Welsh artwork.

Their social media images are captured beautifully by the talented Kristina Banholzer Photography.

We were also impressed by their celebration and use of local food and drink producers. Knowing this, we knew that in supporting Braf, we would also be supporting a wide range of Welsh food and drinks producers and businesses.

We arrived just after 10 am, the opening time, on a Saturday.

The perfect Elfyn Lewis painting on the wall as we entered further affirmed our decision to choose Braf!

Braf was very quickly bustling. We were lucky to have got a table without booking.

Braf is a real Community Hub with an attached studio space that hosts yoga, pilates, baby yoga, baby sensory sessions, and yoga and meditation for children.

The café was alive with energy. It was clear that this is a pram-friendly café, proudly listed on the Caffis a Babis Instagram by Anglesey-based author Gwen Saunders Collins.

We chose the local ‘Cwt Mwg’ smoked salmon (from Y Cwt Mwg Smokehouse – Anglesey) and eggs on toast and the kale, mushrooms, and egg on toast to fuel our ideas. We are big fans of Poblado Coffi, so this seemed the natural choice to help the ideas flow! We were delighted by the flavours and generous portion size of our brunch.

All in all, a very successful business meeting!

Braf cafe is just a stone’s throw away from Dinas Dinlle beach, recently voted as one of the best beaches in Wales for a paddle in our recent Instagram poll.

It is the perfect starting point for a brilliant day out. There is free parking opposite the cafe directly by the beach. You could choose to walk off your tasty treats with a walk along the beach or opt, as we did, for a short drive into the mountains.

We parked in Rhyd Ddu and earned our brunch with a picture-perfect walk up to the summit of Mynydd Mawr with stunning views of a snow-capped Snowdon.

Who said it wasn’t possible to combine business with pleasure?!

Sara Griffiths