Pena - Glasgow City

I swithered whether to point this out to at the time but decided not to. The veggie haggis sandwich is really bad I’m afraid. You have to do something more interesting than just shoving veggie haggis on bread with leaves and tomato and toasting it. Check out Papercup on Great western road for inspiration. Very very disappointing.

I have visited before for a toastie and coffee. The toasties were perfect crisp on the outside and melted on the inside. The coffee was powerful and robust. The Japanese food from the pop up kitchen was tasty but not the most flavoursome Japanese in the west end. The staff were lovely and the location and atmosphere is perfect!!

As others have commented, this is a cute little place hidden down one of the lanes in Glasgow 's West End with the main crowd being locals/students. My partner was researching good places for brunch online and this place kept on popping up so we made a couple of attempts to get down but it was shut. The general consensus is get there early as if they run out of food, they will close, and they 're very popular! We finally got lucky on Wednesday and due to the lovely weather Glasgow has had this week, we even got a little table outside. Frankie was a delight and explained everything as we made it clear we were first time visitors, not regulars. She was having problems getting the window shutters up and apologised if it seemed a little darker than normal as usually they get lots of lovely natural light. Even though we 'd already grabbed our outside table, we were encouraged to have a look around upstairs. It 's amazing how much seating is up there for such a tiny looking place! Frankie is naturally very chatty and takes the time to talk to all of her customers and takes a real interest in them. She was in the cafe alone and investing this amount of time in your customers means Pena is not the kind of place to go if you are in a rush. The food comes when it is ready. We took advantage of the excellent £5 brunch deal that others have mentioned. We ordered the Pena Eggs which is essentially a mini frying pan of 2 fried eggs, with some red onion, some crumbled goats cheese, some dollops of pesto and chilli. You get this with any drink on the menu. All of the drinks are approximately £2 except for the masala chai which is home made and £3 so naturally I went for this to maximise the value of the deal and also because I love masala chai! My partner had a mocha with hers and said it was one of the best she 'd had in recent times. Another young gentleman arrived to join Frankie at work (I didn 't catch his name but he was lovely. Once again, he took the time to come and talk to us and ask us what we thought of the West End. He left a real smile on our faces. The food was absolutely delicious, was served a lot quicker than I expected, and the service and overall vibe was friendly, happy and unique. Don 't be put off if you 're not a student/not a local I 'm neither and my partner and I felt very, very welcome indeed! We will be back! :

The veggie panini they have is great. I can barely tell it's vegetables, very filling and tasty. I have also tried their espresso which I would rate as a 7/10.

Pena is great for Glasgow uni students as it is located right on campus. I like going there to do some reading or catch up with friends when I need a change from the reading room or library, it's nicer than the uni canteen. I like the decor and the upstairs area in particular, it's very atmospheric. Sometimes it can get busy but usually it's fine to work for a couple of hours. Coffee prices are all right for the area (everything is 2 pounds), and the 5 pound lunch deal which includes coffee is also very reasonable. They also host various other events, last weekend they had a Japanese pop-up lunch which I went to and it was excellent. The service isn't always perfect, I've had to ask for a forgotten order before and stuff like that, but I don't really mind because the place is really nice and the staff are always friendly. I prefer things to be a bit disorganised rather than super snappy and efficient. This place has a cosy feel to it which I enjoy.