Meal Ticket: Urban Grind, Galway

On the road to the city of tribes, with the intention of trying something new, I tweet “Where should I eat in Galway? Apart from Ard Bia, Kai and Biteclub.” My phone starts binging and doesn’t stop until I pass Ballinasloe. When it comes to choice, Galway is good for food lovers. Dela and 56 Central look strong, but it’s lunch we’re after, and I’m called by the promise of good coffee at Urban Grind on William St . This independent coffee shop opened in 2014 and though its proprietors are primarily coffee nuts, they also like good food.

The Colleran’s Baked Ham (€6.50) comes loaded with melting Gubeen cheese and spiked with Dijon mustard. The Glazed Beef Brisket (€6.50) is a generous heap of tender pulled beef. The meat is delicious but the sandwich needed a little more fresh horseradish mayo or brisket juice to keep it moist. It’s the bread that elevates these sandwiches - It’s a rye ciabatta sourced from a trader at the Galway Food Market.

I was a little underwhelmed by the service and I would have liked a warmer welcome. My questions about the brisket on the menu and where the bread was from were answered without much warmth from our server. We arrived just after lunchtime so perhaps it was post-lunch-rush fatigue. The barista who poured our takeaway flat whites (€2.60 each) made up for it a bit with her more cheerful disposition. The coffee is made with Dublin’s 3FE beans, proudly displayed behind the counter, and are appropriately strong, but the milk wasn’t quite creamy enough for me. Though the debate on what a flat white actually is rages on, my preference is a small portion with strong coffee and really creamy frothed milk. Still, what I got at Urban Grind was a cup brewed with care and it was much appreciated.

Two sandwiches and two coffees set us back €18.20. The sweets are baked in-house and inventively feature local ingredients, such as the flavour of the meadowsweet flower in the brownies. They also sell 3FE coffee beans and a variety of apparatus for the coffee enthusiast, namely aeropresses and chemexes. And there’s a really lovely outdoor seating area in the back.