THE Cathedral Café has seen success after it was refurbished.
The popular eatery closed for five weeks before re-opening on February 27 with a new look and menu.
The refurbishment has seen a new counter put in as well as new furniture. The secret garden behind the café has also been expanded and cared for.
Café general manager Robert Mitchell said: “We shut down for five weeks and ran out of one of our small function rooms, the Paul Woodhouse Suite. So we set up a pop-up café, which was really popular with a lot of our locals and a lot of residents. And they’ve come on board and stuck with it.”
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He continued: “So we’ve got new counterspace, all new facilities on site, we’ve extended part of the kitchen to make it easier for us, because we do a lot of events as well for the cathedral. So being able to cater for this being fully operational, especially coming up to the summer months, and then expanding the kitchen to help out with the functions and the event side of the business.
“This is phase one, so phase two is our marquee out the back. Currently we have a single skin marquee, so currently we are looking to do a refurbishment on that next January, do a hard-shelled marquee, a more permanent structure, which again would extend that whole business site.”
The refurbishment has also come with a new menu for the café featuring local produce including Old Winchester Cheddar and items from Winchester Bakery. Despite the changes, old favourites such as pancakes, eggs benedict and scones are still available.
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Robert explained: “Our head chef Steve Wilson, he joined us in November, he has introduced a lot more home baking. So, all our cakes are baked on site. We do fresh sourdough bread which we use on our menu as well.
“We’ve got soup on every day, so we’ve got a ‘waste knot’. This is basically where the farmers are producing too much that they can sell to the supermarkets, so instead of them going to landfill – they're all fresh and nice – we take them to use them in our soups. So, it’s really good and it helps the environment.”
The Cathedral Café is open Mondays to Sundays from 9.30am to 5pm.
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