With it’s white office ceiling tiles, complete with strip fluorescent lighting, you might expect Sticky Bun to feel like an alienating café space, something found in a shopping mall. Happily, the opposite is the case. Into this sterile streetside environment in Clonakilty town centre, Kay Burke has cleverly mixed up the space with painted wooden chairs, high and low stools, a jaw box sink, tea pots from Wall & Keogh, painted panelling, fire extinguishers, a large gilt mirror and a counter full of delicious foods that create an enticing atmosphere of deliciousness.
Along with their home-made soups they make their own sourdough bread, to be sliced each day into thick cut sandwiches, with delicious fillings such as croque monsieur made with ham they’ve baked themselves, or far flung flavours like Vietnamese pulled pork in a Clonakilty version of a banh mi.
There’s local jam for their home-made scones, a Clonakilty chocolate display, Gloun Cross milk for their coffees and loads and loads of lovely cakes, which is really what the SB is known for.
People pile in from roundabouts: office workers; parents with prams; pensioners and shoppers, and everybody feels comfortable here at any time of day. Sitting and chatting and eating here, you wonder why every café in the world can’t be like this, and feel like this. But, behind the casual bricolage style of food and furnishings, you have to recognise the enormous amount of work that goes into making everything from scratch and, thankfully, makes everything the very best that it can be.
