Funky Bakery Brunch at Brummell Hotel

Funky Bakery Brunch at Brummell Hotel

There is a secret pleasure in being an interlocutor at the hotel breakfast. Gate crashing the mellow vibe of guests with damp hair planning out the day’s meanderings.

Funky Bakery has taken over the breakfast at Hotel Brummell. The peaceful courtyard is now flanked on one side by a large glass-fronted workshop, the pastry chef rolling out her creations facing outwards head bent. A stack of metal trays with glistening rounded pains au chocolate and moon-shaped croissants. Funky Bakers founder Seyma is of Turkish origin and the generosity of the Turkish breakfast is immediately apparent. A metal tray is crowded with an array of smaller bowls, some with charcuterie and cheese, one with fruit salad, another with spears of cucumber jutting out, large slices of watermelon, and a long seeded loaf perched next to a croissant like a Dali sculpture. After that, it’s a matter of discovery and deconstruction. Pastries come off first, a bowl of mato and honeycomb is unearthed. I pair ham with melon and the white cheese with nigella seeds with the watermelon. The flat whites we’ve ordered use a roast from Nomad Roasters.

There is a logic to a breakfast brunch arriving pre-curated and leaden on a tray like this. First, there isn’t the inevitable deterioration of the items as they linger on the buffet. In our age of inflation, doing away with wastage is an obvious bonus. And then there is the fact that for someone like me who is plagued with indecision or someone who wants to try everything the possibility of choice is done away with. All that is left is how and in what combination the breakfast brunch will be enjoyed.

The Funky Bakers brunch runs from 10:00 to 16:00. Long after the hotel guests have spilled out into the city, my friend and I linger. Enjoying the atypical coolness of the Brummell courtyard in August. After a while, the fire escape zig-zagging up the height of the building starts to give off a set in a Brooklyn summer movie feeling, I can only imagine the magic that happens when the string of lights is set off against the night sky.

I marvel at Seyma and how she stealthily continues to grow her concept. Going from the stamp-sized El Born bakery that served as a source of hope and sustenance for El Born during Covid, to her larger Eatery / Deli location on C/ Bailèn (61), to her latest outpost in Copenhagen. One of Redzepi and his disciples. There is a boldness to launching into a sophisticated market like Copenhagen that I admire which goes some ways to illustrate that Seyma’s continued success is not anecdotal but deliberate. I have an affection for women-led / created spaces. They tend to have a different tonality which I find worthy of seeking out and experiencing.

I wrote about Funky Bakers in 2018 (here)

Funky Bakery Brunch at Brummell Hotel
C/ Nou de la Rambla, 174
08004 Barcelona
funkyandco.com
hotelbrummell.brummellprojects.com