The Jabberwocky Restaurant

Not just a plan, not just a scheme scribbled on the back of an envelope. This is a real life announcement. We have been working towards this for months, and had to keep everything under wraps until now. It’s official. Coming to Leamington Spa: The Jabberwocky Restaurant.

In keeping with our historical methods for achieving, it isn’t going to be as simple as a kitchen in a building on a street in a town. That’s been done.

Although as kitchens go, it has a pretty fantastic one.

Instead we are taking our street food and adding it to that of Cake Doctor. He is a fellow old-van-owner who shares our DIY attitude to making your fortunes. He also has an excellent home-converted Transit Mk 2 ambulance, which surely makes him one of these most street food of street fooders. Crucially, he likes coffee, which to my mind is just pretentious tea.

We are then inserting this delicious combination into Queensway Court, Leamington Spa. It’s an assisted living development for the over 55’s. Open to the public, welcoming to the community and full of folks who will hopefully enjoy Barny’s fine-ass cooking as much as I do.

Street food in an old people’s home is not something I would have ever really though would lie in my future, but it makes sense. Firstly, this is not an old peoples home. It’s a block of flats, all privately owned, all by local people who want a bit more community and need a little less space than the family home. The development company behind it want a fresh, local caterer who won’t provide jail-house slop. We want a Jabberwocky restaurant where we can serve toasties, tea and all the other foods that make us happy. Leamington has tons of cafes, but down that end, where the retail park lurks, the best you can get is a chain coffee and a defrosted vac-pack of cake.

Here’s what the Jabberwocky Restaurant will be: We will have a 40 cover restaurant on the ground floor of the building. It will be called the Mock Turtle, who doesn’t have a website yet but can be followed on Twitter. There we will serve a menu of toasties, cafe food and hot daily specials. Over the other side of the atrium is the cafe, which will necessarily be branded like a chain, but will serve Cake Doctor cake, which is the best kind of cake.

This is the cafe. With Barny (l) and James (Cake Doctor, r.). Barny is actually performing “stayin’ alive” by the Bee Gees.

We’re opening at the beginning of April, which is soon, and will be serving 7 days a week, 8:30am until 2:30pm. The cafe will be there for you cake and coffee needs from 9-5. Lunchtime Manwich? Why yes. Sunday lunches? You’re on. Not even in a toastie this time. That’s been done.

I have no idea if the residents will like our food. We’re into uncharted water here. We will still be upholding the same principles on local sourcing, quality food and fresh cooking, which I’m very proud of, but which historically doesn’t match the stereotype. We are also going to be the first of this kind to be run by street food traders, and the first to be actively seeking to attract members of the public to eat with us as well.

This will mean that the Beast will not be roaming wild quite so much this year, but it’s not even remotely the end of street food. I couldn’t give it up. It does mean we are stepping down from organising Scoff, because Time. 2015 is going to be a pretty busy year, and it would be lovely if you could join us for the ride.