A new gathering place for SMU
On Friday April 8, 2005, SMU Hillel, the Dallas hilltop University’s Jewish students organization, conducted Shabbat (Hebrew for “Sabbath-day”) services and dinner in the coziness of Café Granat’s on McKinney. Thirty-seven people-including students and the extended family and newly adopted Russian children of Hillel Director Rabbi Heidi Coretz, crowded into the corner shop for a taste of couscous with apricot chicken followed by gourmet orange-cake. The food and overall ambience of the event were well received, judging from the diners’ standing ovation given to the café’s owner and his wife.
It is only a matter of time before Café Granat’s receives more adulation from the greater SMU community. This small coffeehouse, which doubles as a kitchen and bakery, has recently enjoyed a growing amount of student activity. Among the SMU groups outsourcing food services to this fledgling café, the University Honors Program has set a date later this month to have a reception honoring its Richter Fellows there.
Increasingly, students who have had previous experience with SMU’s catering services are finding the convenient and affordable Real Food On Campus menu to be limited; the food served at the MSA banquet, the Religious Life Banquet, the IMF Banquet and the Gartner dinner with Lynn Hunt was remarkably similar.
However, what RFOC lacks in creativity, Café Granat’s makes up for with panache: frequenters may discover an almost unlimited selection of sandwiches, pastries, coffee and tea drinks, all served to the highest degree of perfection for the same price as on-campus catering.
In addition, students are encouraged to make this location their study spot, thanks to the café’s free wireless internet and late operating hours. “The store hours last until 9pm unless there’s a need to stay open for the patrons,” stated the owner, David Granat, while pounding dough to make fresh focaccia bread. Refusing to advertise by conventional means, Mr. Granat prefers to let his food and his customers speak for themselves. “Since Torrefazione and Café Talenti have gone out of business, SMU students have been looking for the next big hangout spot to go,” said Danny Tipton, second-year Engineering and Math major. “Some people like Tempest Tea, added third-year Lama Soueissi, a major in Advertising at Meadows, “…me-I will not meet my project groups anywhere else but at Café Granat’s.”
