Meeting Place restaurant focus

Edward and Nancy talk about their new venture.

why the passion for food?

Why wouldn’t you be passionate and interested in food? Food is a crucial part of one’s life, it fuels, comforts and nurtures us. We could not live without it and, therefore I think, everyone has a passion. Ingredients, eating out, making our customers and my family happy with food, seasons, and chefs I admire are what inspires me.

I am a huge fan of simple and well cooked food with a slight nod to a bygone era. A time when chefs like Simon Hopkinson and Alastair Little were huge. Carrying on from them, the likes of Jeremy Lee and Trish Hilferty are still going strong. And they adhere to the classic and traditional approach without using fads and technology to create great food.

My favorite dish to cook is risotto. It’s a real test of skills and it can still elude me at times. When you get it right and think it’s just a handful of very humble ingredients that’s even more exciting. All that forms a basis and a reason why I am passionate. Starting work at 7 a.m. with a load of raw ingredients and slowly turning them into finished dishes, breads, chutneys, desserts is what gets me excited. It’s the journey of hard work from starting to the end product.

the journey here

Edward started working in the kitchen 20 years ago and hasn’t really looked back. He started washing up in a Worcester pub and has worked his way up. The Glasshouse, Belle House, The Lemon Tree, and The Marwood are among some places he worked in Worcester. Five years in London working for a popular and well known pub group starting as a Sous Chef. Then working up to a development role to write menus, train kitchens and open new pubs.

Nancy also started out washing up in a kitchen before moving onto the floor to serve food and drinks to customers. Nancy has worked at The Swan@Whittington and The Marwood. Following her design degree designing watches and jewelry for well known brands followed. Traveling the world and a five-year stint in London in creativity and account managing roles for Urban Outfitters and Topshop to name a couple…..London was where we both met.

why open a café?

We have been planning our café for about three years. Being optimistic and positive people we feel that life goes on so why not. Given we have a fantastic team, awesome family and friends around us who have all been great it was a great idea.

Food-led cafés are our ideal place to eat as they are informal and can be great. We also felt a lack of decent quality food venues which are welcoming, flexible and understanding of children and young families.

The bulk of our planning was done during the summer lockdown. Then an offer to buy from Calum & Jacky (who have been so kind and helpful) cemented our opening. And so the Meeting Place café in Worcester was born. Our vision with Meeting Place is Simple Food Simple Coffee. We want to be approachable, flexible and welcoming to all customers old and new.

and why open in the middle of a pandemic?

We get asked this a lot. We have been inspired by our fantastic hospitality industry and how everyone out there has adapted and positively opened their doors to welcome guests in a safe fashion. Given a pillar of our business is Community, we feel we can be here to offer a safe, calm and upbeat atmosphere for anybody. Although we call ourselves a café, a rough translation of the word restaurant means to restore.

Three hundred odd years ago restaurants started to open up in Paris to offer simple food to restore people’s spirits and nourish them. We strongly believe our industry is fantastic and plays a very important role in people’s lives which is needed now more than ever in these turbulent times…

what next ?

As soon as the good people at Worcester Council grant our license to sell alcohol we will start to stock local beers and ciders as well as wines and a small selection of small batch spirits. This will also enable us to open for supper nights. We will have a small menu with starters, mains and desserts. We will be offering fresh fish from Lyme Bay, fruit and veg from local farms and rare breed meats from The Butcheress.

As December is only around the corner, we are taking bookings for our Christmas menus to facilitate festive parties. Moving forward to next year we wish to start the second phase of our business which will be event catering. Meeting Place At Your Place will be a bespoke service offering tailor-made drinks and food packages. Whatever occasion and location – basically we will do whatever our customers ask…