Eating Out : Hummus Again - 19 August 2024

We returned to that friendly cafe I wrote about here nearly a month ago.

To save a bit of money this time I ordered the hummus and tomato basil sandwich, but this time I asked for no side salad. They gave me the sandwich in the same sort of paper plate with a paper knife and wooden fork. I didn't need the cutlery and so I decided to take it home with me. I felt bad about throwing away ‘single use’ cutlery without even using it !

I enjoyed the sandwich but felt that my money saving strategy was not worth it as I missed the crunchy lettuce and beetroot. My sandwich order also looked a bit bare and incomplete. Fortunately I chose to have a hot drink this time - a decaffeinated latte which saved the day.

My drink came in a very attractive paper cup. While waiting for my friends to finish I took a couple of photos of it to share :

I found it a bit intriguing to see this watercolour style manatee artwork on a cup because we don’t have that sort of water mammal in this country. I liked the background colour and smiley face of the drawing though.

The other side of the cup read :

I’ve always been attracted to packaging : shapes, colours, uses, and materials that packaging comes in. Later on at home I did a little search to see what I could find about this cup. Unfortunately I didn’t really find a clear website for the designer, Phoebe Russell. I wanted to see what else she’d done and where she was from.

I found some information here which shows that the cup is part of a set of three designs. It’s not clear whether the designs are by the same artist though. Interestingly for 500 cups it would cost nearly £70 or 420 Steem, and for a pack of 25 cups it would be nearly 48 Steem.

The website states that the cups are made from plants, but again it's not clear whether that just means paper rather than plastic and that they can be commercially compostable. As a consumer it makes you feel better to know the 'plant bit', but the cup clearly read ‘commercially compostable where accepted’. This caveat probably just means that it will eventually just get thrown away anyway.

I must remember to carry my own cup next time I visit this cafe as they may give me a discount. It seems to me that I should also carry a knife and fork to avoid the paper ones. Also if I really wanted to do it properly, I should probably also carry my own sandwich to save money.

Thank you for reading !