How often do you see an inspiring food venue and promise yourself you’ll go and visit as soon as you can but never do straightaway? That was my experience when I became aware of social enterprise café CommuniTea Café located in the high street in South Norwood. Having a busy work schedule and working only in Croydon one or two days a week, I didn’t get much time to go and visit and see what they were all about. That is until one of the finalists of StartUp Croydon’s partnership project with BOXPARK Croydon, Amelia Matthew opened a month-long pop-up residency of her plant-based African/Caribbean fusion food brand Vee Tings https://www.instagram.com/veetings1/ in the café in March 2023. CommuniTea Café is a popular and calming little oasis and much more than your usual independent high street coffee shop. Founded by Reem Al-Awadhi and Amina Malik in 2018, the café is host to a community hub, a vegan pantry and an atmosphere conducive to well-being, support and collaboration. Rustic wooden tables are cosily arranged around and alongside the main counter which is adorned with coffee bean bags and jars of different teas with a view through to the small kitchen area. Cookery and reading books are scattered around the café for those wanting to take a break from virtual worlds; board games are available for customers too who want to feel like they are enjoying a home from home experience. The food offering is developing and the café is shifting to supporting local chefs to give them an opportunity to showcase and test their cuisines to a wider audience. When I visited to try out Vee Tings’ offering, I was greeted with a range of enticing and mouthwatering dishes on the menu. Having savoured Amelia’s delicious culinary delights as part of the BOXPARK Croydon project’s taste tests, I knew I was in for a treat and after a difficult choice I settled for the BBQ Jerk Tofu Wrap. Cubes of tofu had been carefully marinated in jerk sauce and cooked and combined with just the right amount of salad and shredded carrots which had been steeped in a warmly spiced vinaigrette. The flat white made with oat milk that I ordered to accompany it was served in a glass tumbler like a cortado you get in some mainstream coffee chains. It was full and creamy and the first time I had tasted a coffee made with an alternative milk. What’s even better is that CommuniTea Café use coffee from Pact Coffee – a sustainable and ethical coffee company sourcing beans directly from farms across the world paying, on average, 60% above Fairtrade prices. Feeling satisfied after lunch, I also bought a jar of Vee Tings’ fig and mango chutney which is just one of a range of chutneys, vinegars and condiments made with love and care by Amelia. Overall, the food and atmosphere were great and I would recommend a visit to CommuniTea Café to relax and take a moment from your busy day. As well as taking care of yourself, you’ll also be supporting local community projects and local food entrepreneurs. And if this has whetted your appetite and you want to try out Vee Tings food for yourself, get on down to the café quick as Amelia has another pop-up during May and part of June. She will be there Thursdays to Mondays 10am-5:30pm https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr1eW9DIgFc/. If you are a food entrepreneur looking for a pop-up residency, get in touch with Amina or Reem at CommuniTea Café 80 Hight Street, South Norwood, SE25 6EA https://communitea.co.uk/
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The Real Junk Food Project in Sheffield has been working to help use surplus food from supermarkets and other sources to provide to people on low incomes through various means. These include a 'supermarket' and two cafes Steeple Corner and Citrus Zest in the city where people can get healthy and nutritious meals on a Pay As You Feel (PAYF) basis.
Yet they know they can do so much more if they had the right facilities and infrastructure around them to be able to accept and use more food that is destined for landfill. That’s why they are currently on an exciting journey to create a permanent site in the heart of Sheffield that will set them up to help even more people and change their name to Food Works. In particular they are looking to
To help with their crowdfunding campaign they organized a great night at The Old Workshop, a converted industrial unit that now houses a bar and event venue in the Kelham Island district of the city. Billed as the Small Plates, Big Impact Fundraiser, they promised a range of small plates expertly put together by their head chef Brez Barwise and his team of talented volunteers. This wonderful selection included Pork & Apple Scotch Egg Mushroom & Pearl Barley Scotch Egg (v) (With homemade brown sauce) Ale-braised lamb shoulder croquettes with anchovy mayo Cauliflower cheese croquettes with hendos ketchup (v) Chicken & Black pudding terrine with piccalilli and toast Roast beetroot & goats cheese terrine with toasted hazelnuts and toast (v) Grilled chicken wings with zero waste hot sauce Buffalo Brassicas (v) Cheese plate with home made chutney, nuts, grapes & biscuits The venue was full yet still with enough room to feel comfortable with some great music and selection of mulled wine or cider on arrival. Between courses, founder and co-director Rene Meijer, explained how the new facilities like having an onsite kitchen facility would allow them to accept more food which they would otherwise have had to turn away. On the night, he mentioned that they recently had to turn away pallets full of cherry tomatoes which, if they had the production facilities in place, they could have accepted and turned them into tomato sauce. With a number of raffle prizes and silent auctions which were baskets and hampers laden with goodies for people with different discerning tastes from tea lovers, whiskey lovers to baking lovers, the evening raised over £1500 towards their target of £50,000. If you want to be involved and support them there is still time as the campaign is open until Christmas Eve – 24 December. To bag a reward from a thank you message via Twitter for £5 to a corporate support package to the value of £10,000 go to https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/food-works-for-sheffield and help them achieve their target. Now wouldn’t that be a lovely Christmas present – not only for them but all of the people they help across Sheffield every day. For those that are old enough to remember you might recognise a slight reference to Sidney Poitier’s famous line in the film In The Heat of The Night with the title of this piece. But unlike the scene which portrays a confrontation between two very different cultures in the deep American south, the same cannot be said of the different cultures and cuisines offered by the social enterprise Mazi Mas.
I’m very open minded about trying new cuisines I’ve never tried before as they open up new learning experiences and spark interest with wanting to find out more. That’s what happened following the first meetup of the Hospitality Sharing Network which took place at Mazi Mas’ pop-up restaurant at The Ovalhouse Theatre in The Oval, South London. The name Mazi Mas comes from the phrase Eláte na fáte mazí mas: meaning come eat with us in Greek; it is a social enterprise providing support, training and employment opportunities for migrant and refugee women through cooking good home cooked food but on a commercial scale. The women involved come from all over the world including Brazil, Peru, Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia and all have different reasons for settling in London. 'There was an amazing buzz and hive of activity' The short-term pop-up residency was provided by The Ovalhouse Theatre, a local community theatre providing opportunities to radical and experimental plays and performances for the last 50 years. Entering by the main doors we mingled with the theatregoers and ordered drinks from the small bar which is connected to the kitchen. To the left was the bistro style dining tables with decorative tea lights and water carafes ready and waiting. There was an amazing buzz and hive of activity from a predominantly young crowd with a range of languages and accents denoting a cosmopolitan attraction both for the food, play and the experience. The restaurant was fully booked but despite that, the activity that could be seen from the open kitchen where you could see the food being prepared was one of measured quiet, demonstrating the chefs’ confidence, skill and experience of cooking for well over 30 covers on a regular basis. 'Brazilian cheese bread – little balls of cooked dough filled with molten cheese that oozed out like lava' The starters remain pretty much the same each evening with the main courses changing daily depending on the chef cooking that evening. Cassava chips, Brazilian cheese bread – little balls of cooked dough filled with molten cheese that oozed out like lava from the Trindade archipelago and Borek, a Turkish filo pastry filled with feta and spinach. Each were served in tapas style dishes and just enough for one, although you could choose a sharing starter platter consisting of a selection of the starters on offer including baba ganoush, muhammara and borek. The evening we chose to meet offered us a selection of Ethiopian main courses – one meat option – Tibs, a stir fried beef stew dish - and one vegetarian – Mirkik Wat made with lentils. Both were flavoured with a spice blend used widely in Ethiopian cuisine – Berbere - which is predominantly ground chilli pepper with up to 20 other spices added. Both mains were served with a traditional bread/pancake accompaniment – injera – which was rolled up tightly similar to a hot towel you get served at the end of an Indian meal but traditionally injera is laid flat out on the plate and the food served on top. It has a very sour taste which complements the spicy and salty flavours of the other dishes. If you are interested in finding out more about Ethiopian cuisine, as I was, take a look at this comprehensive site http://uncorneredmarket.com/ethiopian-food/. A Bright Future If you are inspired to learn more about the role and how you could help them, go to their website http://www.mazimas.co.uk/ for more information and follow them on Twitter @eatmazimas. And if you get the opportunity, I would seriously recommend eating with them – you won’t be disappointed. |
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