Vote for us in the Urban Food Awards

UrbanFoodAwards_webWe have been nominated in the Urban Food Awards, run by Sustain, in the Most Innovative Food Producer category. Please do vote for us – we’d really appreciate your support.

Vote for us here.

This is why we said we should win:

The Stepney City Farm Cafe is a community cafe within an urban farm. Our mission is to educate our farm visitors and local residents on healthy, sustainable eating by providing affordable and nutritious meals made from both farm produce and sourced from ethical and local suppliers. We focus on plant-based foods but also provide ethically raised meats that we cure and prepare on site. Our menu changes frequently, based on seasonality and availability of produce, as well as our sales.

The Stepney City Farm Café provides affordable and nutritious food for the local residents of Tower Hamlets and our numerous farm visitors. The café’s aim is to educate the public on the feasibility of sustainable ethical farming and eating.

We achieve this through our rotating seasonal menu that makes use of our abundant farm produce, which is grown for both public sale through our shop, a community share scheme (Stepney Greens), and use in our dishes. The café team works closely with our gardening supervisor on what is being grown and harvested each week. What we do not grow and produce ourselves, we source through our trusted local and certified organic suppliers, including Brockman’s, Flour Station, Rookery Farm, Goodwood Dairy, Suma, and the Ginger Pig. Not forgetting our extensive drinks selection, we have Climpson’s Coffee, Joe’s Tea, Jaz and Jules hot chocolates, and Dalston Cola, to name a few. Even our crockery is local, made on site by one of our resident ruralartists, Jessica Joslin.

Our menu has a strong plant-based focus, featuring at least one vegan dish every day, usually more. We also take into account other dietary needs and aim to provide gluten-free and raw options. This extends to our baked goods and ice creams as well. Our kitchen is globally focused with many ethnic dishes regularly featured, ranging from ricotta gnudi to quinoa black bean burgers to pork and leek dumplings, all of it freshly prepared on site.

Our meats are also smoked and cured on site, including our bacon and sausages for our infamous Sunday Stepney Brunch. On the shop side of things, we make jams, chutneys, and various sundries for purchase. Our shop also stocks eggs from our chickens, ducks, and geese as well as meat from our goats, lambs, and pigs in the autumn. We were instrumental in the creation of the Pig Idea and have participated for the past three years, and will continue to do so. The café aims to minimise waste as much as possible and we compost all our food waste on site and use compostable disposables when necessary. Our compost is supplemented with wood shavings from another one of our resident rural artists, the Green Wood Guild.They also provide us with the wood for our on-site smoker.

We are not only an environmentally responsible organization, but socially responsible as well and we pay all of our staff London Living Wage. We take on volunteers and provide them with both kitchen and front of house skills, which provides them with transferable skills for future employment and the ability to continue eating ethically at home.

The café is a community hub, bringing the residents of Tower Hamlets together for various weekly gatherings. On Thursdays, our resident knitters Nic and Jane share their skills and craft, on Fridays we have Frogprince Baby Music, and Saturdays feature a farmer’s market. The Stepney City Farm Café embodies the idea that everyone can eat well, for their health and for the environment, no matter their dietary needs or income level. It is one of our core beliefs that good food is accessible to everyone and we incorporate our ideals into each and every meal we make and every coffee we pour.

Through spreading awareness of sustainable farming and eating practices, we empower people with the ability to make choices and to improve their lives and their communities.