Confectionary bordello
Satisfy your sweet tooth with a visit to Paphos’ latest addition – a traditional, British sweet shop
This place should, by rights, be X-rated. OK, there’s no dodgily-dressed ladies lounging around on chaise lounges ready to extract large sums of money in return for certain favours, but this rather innocent looking establishment right in the heart of Paphos is a ‘confectionery’ bordello.
Open the door and inside you gaze upon rows and rows of glass jars, all crammed with sweet delights, the majority of which I thought had fallen from grace, but no, these goodies are still being made to the same old-fashioned recipes, all that’s been lying dormant is our lust for them.
All the colourful, filled jars standing proud on the shelves of the Sweet Bees shop represent the golden age of British confectionery and it’s here a desire for nostalgia can be fed (in addition to making your dentist very happy).
It’s like walking back in time – as a child the sweet shop was the absolute centre of my life, armed with Saturday pocket money, I’d make a bee line for it and indulge in my first mind-altering experience in the form of a bag of space dust (a sherbet-like chemical concoction that cracked and popped on your tongue with alarming noisiness and seemed to fill your head with wild unpredictable sounds). There were also the candy bracelets and matching necklaces, not forgetting a bag of love hearts plus a quarter of midget gems.
Bronte and John Haver, owners of the recently-opened Sweet Bees, have sweet talked their way not only into the expat market but also the Cypriot one as gaggles of local school kids pour into the shop each lunchtime to try out a bag of jaw breakers, gob stoppers, liquorice boot laces, bags filled with sweet toffee peanut, barley sugars and even Edinburgh rock.
When I was in the shop, a group of British tourists came in to stock up on supplies of mouth-puckering acid drops, coconut macaroons and toasted tea cakes with a bag of aniseed balls on the side. It’s that kind of place, you go in thinking, ‘I’ll just have a bag of bonbons’ then you see another customer’s order of rum and raisin fudge being weighed out on the scale and as you can sample sweets before buying, you will end up trotting off with a rosy glow, clutching your stash of nostalgic goodies.
The trip itself has to be a bit of a secret really – who wants to let folk know that a grown woman drives all the way to Kato Paphos just to satisfy the deep urge for a good, long suck courtesy of bag of rhubarb and custard humbugs, or even better, a gnaw on a lucky potato (this is a dubious looking brown object flavoured with cassis, which has been steamed and covered in cinnamon powder…wonderful).
As for dental problems resulting from over indulgence, as long as you clean your teeth after eating such delights you won’t do any great harm.
For those with problems re sugar, the shop also has a good range of sugar and glutton-free goodies.
As for the empty calories derived from eating sweets, my own firm belief is that they are not ‘empty’ but are, in fact, jam packed full of joy!
Sweet Bees
Tel: 99 818253 or 99 818246. Near E&S Supermarket. Open: 10am -5pm Mon-Fri and Sat, 10-2pm
