Aligned with the over-priced tourist junk shops and the themed pubs about the ankle-cracking cobbled streets of Bratislava's beautiful Old Town, sat another tourist trap bedecked with old-timey portraits of what I'm assuming are of people who never existed, stained glass windows, and regally painted flourishes adoring every free space possible: the Konditorei Kormuth café.

Perpetually swarmed with people leering through the window to marvel at the migraine-inducing interior and touted as a "must-visit" by online reviews that all spouted the same tripe that it's the best place in the known universe, I straightened up, rolled my shoulders back, and marched in like I owned the place. Immediately I was stopped from taking more than a single step through the door by a young gentleman dressed in the manner that the decoration spoke and thrusted menus into my unprepared hand. Before I even had a chance to register what on planet Earth was going on, we were explained that there was a €13 minimum spend per head as if it was a backstreet all-you-can-eat shitbox. Instantly displeased, we were escorted to our seat where once again the young man told us that absolutely no photos are allowed. Below are some pictures because I am a renegade and fuck the system.

The café was marketed as being as old as time itself, preserving the original structure and domed ceilings, and so on, but so was every other shop in the Old Town. A shoe shop selling Vans just down the road had the exact same architecture, as did multiple other cafes. The only notable difference here was the amount they spent on paint and artists to turn an incredibly underwhelming coffee and cake shop into something you'd find in a try-hard theme park.

I opened the menu to see which two items I could get that totalled exactly €13 because, despite previous statements, I respect the system. But my blood thickened to a crawl when I saw the outlandish price for a coffee: €7 for a standard Americano and €9 for a special coffee. As my vision became enshrouded with the dark clouds of demise from the painted peripheries, I ordered the Kaffee Pozsony special coffee, hoping for one last beautifully special moment before "death by price" stole my last breath.

The coffee arrived not long after with as much fanfare as a fast food joint worker being forced to deliver a tray of food to a patron that just spat on them. I wondered if I would have been treated with a sliver of reverence had I not so obviously tried to order items exacting €13 like the cheapskate I am. I'll never know, because I'm not ever going back there.

The beverage was held in a hand-painted glass looking very much like the instant coffee and whipped cream that my sister and I would make as children thinking we were living the life of absolute luxury. I was not impressed. But what dragged that state further towards the ground of dismay was how remarkably plain the coffee was. I've had fancy coffees before; a double shot of espresso welcoming a variety of milks and flavourings where you get the initial taste of matcha, or sesame, or whatever the "fancy" is, which would be soon followed by the bassy and slightly bitter note of espresso. Here, however, it tasted exactly how I thought it looked - like Nescafé and UHT milk. The whipped cream on the top was frugally drizzled with Amaretto syrup and definitely wasn't the hand-whipped double cream of which I expected for this price, and unless the egg liqueur was just sugar, I didn't notice it. And for this price, I really wanted to notice it.