Restaurants / Old favourite
St Werburgh’s City Farm Cafe – review
The route to St Werburgh’s City Farm from Bristol24/7 HQ in the Paintworks is a tortuous one by bicycle.
There’s a sneaky shortcut over the bridge across the River Avon to Sparke Evans Park coming up by Avonmeads Retail Park. But then there’s St Philip’s Causeway – a mile or so of flyover with lorries juddering passed followed by the Lawrence Hill roundabout and Easton Way.
But then take a sharp left rather than traversing Junction 3 of the M32 with the cars, traverse the middle of the roundabout where food markets have been held and chai wallahs ply their trade, onto Mina Road, and a tunnel underneath the railway line brings you out into a different world.
A world of Hobbit houses crossed with touches of Dali and Goya, Narroways Nature Reserve, woodland glades, allotments spilling down slopes, the sound of chickens clucking and children laughing.
St Werburgh’s City Farm itself is currently in the middle of their largest building programme since opening in 1980 which will see a new structure providing three teaching classrooms, a training kitchen and a covered demonstration courtyard.
And then there is the cafe, which on a recent lunchtime was a hive of activity. On one table a mother was taking photographs of her young son’s chocolate moustache after a particularly enthusiastic drinking of his babycinno. More youngsters bounded in with excited tales of their playground exploits.
Elsewhere, the conversations were calmer, taking place underneath hanging baskets and tree roots which look as if this cafe has grown organically from the ground.
That’s where much of the food on the menu here comes from including the heap of salad leaves next to my moussaka (£9.50) – layers of lamb raised in the farm over the road mingling with aubergines and a delicious creamy sauce.
A gluten-free polenta cake (£2.75) was a little too dry but had a splendidly gooey middle and a generous sprinkle of almonds on top.
In 2008 the cafe won the Observer Food Monthly award for outstanding ethical achievement. As much food as possible served at the cafe is organic, fair-trade, wild and local, including eggs, meat, vegetables and salad from the farm. Anyone with surplus from the nearby allotments can trade it at the café in return for something to eat or drink.
After too short a time, it was time to get back on the bicycle for the journey back to reality. The spell broken. But the magic of St Werburgh’s City Farm never far away.
St Werburgh’s City Farm Café, Watercress Road, Bristol, BS2 9YJ
0117 908 0798
is needed now More than ever
All photos By Darren Shepherd
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