Welcome to Cafe Cognito

Our menu shows examples of what we have here “in cognito” being offered on a daily basis, it’s not exhaustive by any means, as all of our food is prepared fresh daily, therefore subject to occasional change, and we have daily specials on offer. Please keep an eye on our specials board or our Facebook page!

We try to source as much as we can from local suppliers and producers, we use the Bread Maker for all our rolls & bread, Turriff’s Fruit & Veg and Castleton Berries to name but a few.

About us

Cognito was an idea hatched whilst on a very rare holiday (so actually having time to spend ON the business rather than IN it) we also knew that our very good friends and neighbours Rocksalt & Snails were moving location to concentrate on their Ballater business... I live locally and thought it would be a great shame if we lost our "community meeting place"!

I ran a local business called The Gift Room Too... and knew it would have an effect on that too, so the obvious conclusion was to "build it and they will come", we have never looked back! We closed the gift shop, had a full refit and within three weeks we were open as Cafe Cognito.

I must admit we love being in the heart of the community and welcome our friends, neighbours and local business community, seeing old and new meet, first dates, engagements, weddings, the birth of new babies and unfortunately the passing of some of our regular customers too, but we love sharing in the good times and being there for folk in the not so good times.

We have a varied team of old (some quite old) and not so old, local and not so local, some full time and some part time students – most of the team live locally so have a vested interest in building relationships and getting to know their neighbours too!

We even have a drink "A Dennis" named after one of our good friends and another good friend even thought of the name Cognito (unfortunately I can't take the credit for that genius idea) and such a great name it is too!