Planet Café is a place where men in suits wield packs of Marlboros like badges of honour and gabble business behind the clouds of smoke that billow from their lips. There’s a separate shisha area and yet there’s not a no smoking section – meaning you leave rather hoarser than when you entered. This is a shame because looks-wise this is a decent little café. The cool stone interior makes it something of an oasis and it clearly wins the local vote judging by how full it gets – a central city location doesn’t hurt, either.
On the other hand, the service is shoddy and the food is good to average. You get the feeling that not a lot of care goes into it. The tuna in the tuna salad arrives faintly tin shaped, the chips are rather soggy and the vast array of pastas, upon closer inspection, reveals itself to be one homogenous dish. A large selection of Arabic grills and a few pricier dishes with faintly European pretensions bulk out a menu that just doesn’t know when to stop. The sandwiches are halfway decent, but the cake selection is woeful. It’s sad because Planet Café and Restaurant is a place that could be so much more.
