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Richard Brewer with staff at Gorgeous |
Learning to love the daily grind
There’s more to coffee than just cappuchino, writes Dan Carrier
TEA may be our national drink, but the coffee shop has been a feature on our High Streets since the late 1700s.
And the march of the coffee shop shows no sign of abating.
In a recent investigation, the Civic Society coined the term ‘Clone Town Britain’ – and referred to the huge number of chain-store coffee shops frothing cappuccino after cappuccino in our shopping parades.
But coffee lovers do not have to go for the mass produced tastes. Each area of the borough has its own, well-established, independent coffee shop.
Hampstead is known for the Coffee Cup. Highgate had the beautifully and somewhat eccentrically run Raj Tea Rooms, while Kentish Town boasts the Literary Café and Mario’s, Camden Town’s version was Café Delancey, and has since been replaced by the Camden Kitchen. Primrose Hill has, among the many restaurants in Regent’s Park Road, Café Seventy-Nine.
For Parliament Hill and South Highgate, Swain’s Lane offers Café Mozart and Kalendars side by side and a recent arrival when a former video shop in Swain’s Lane became a French patisserie – offering good quality coffee.
Dartmouth Park was one of the few areas the coffee revolution had overlooked – but now York Rise has a place of its own.
Gorgeous, which opened in a former hairdressers late last year, is run by chef Richard Brewer – and his mix of great coffee, freshly baked pastries and breads alongside a menu that offers a selection of Spanish and Morroccan cuisine offers the area something it has lacked.
He is already well known. His store ‘The Cook Shop’, next door to the café, has been open for two years and as well as offering fine quality breads, cheeses from the famous Neal’s Yard dairy in Covent Garden, it specialises in meals that professionals can take home.
As opposed to the conventional takeaway, Mr Brewer prides himself on making the kind of home-cooked food people
would like to eat but don’t have the time or inclination to make.
Mr Brewer, 36, who still has the barber’s chairs in his café, defended moving into a shop that had been a hairdressers for nearly 25 years.
But forget the shop front – Richard’s new café is no greasy spoon that serves nice coffee. His café offers home-made hearty meals like chickpea chorizo and black pudding stew for £6 for a large bowl, along with vegetarian meze’s – four for £6 – boasting such delicacies as roasted field mushrooms with rosemary and garlic or aubergine baildi (aubergine and tomato bake) with bread.
And Richard also has views on how we eat, as well as what we eat. He offers the chance to try three different dishes for £5 off the meze menu.
This Tapas-style of eating has become popular. Dieticians say eating a large number of small dishes plays a trick on the part of your brain that regulates your hunger.
Richard offers such delight as sweet potato tortillas, three different options of roast vegetables, pasta dishes available both hot and cold, boquorones – a Spanish anchovy dish – and couscous salad. Main courses continue the Morrocan and Spanish theme.
Richard said: “It’s okay if you’re not losing something – this was a hairdresser that wasn’t busy – and you’re moving into amenities that previously weren’t being fully used. I don’t agree with shops becoming offices – especially estate agents. As long as spaces are still being used as a commercial property I think it’s okay.”
Mr Brewer, who once worked at trendy New York restaurant SoHo House, and has cooked for the likes of Lucy Liu, Nicole Kidman and Lenny Cravitz. But he wouldn’t swap it for his own little café in Dartmouth Park.
He said: “I started off having my friends as my customers – and now my customers become my friends.” |
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