Wednesday 11 March 2015

A radical approach to eating lunch at Saltaire Canteen

 

On our visit to family this weekend, we stumbled upon a revolutionary new cafe in Saltaire, a lovely village to the north of Bradford (and a UNESCO World Heritage Site - I recommend a visit if you're ever in the area).

Saltaire Canteen opened on Victoria Street in 2014 with a mission to reduce food waste by using what they call 'intercepted' food: surplus food that would otherwise be thrown out by local supermarkets and food producers. The food is cooked on-site to provide an ever-changing menu (which was entirely vegetarian the day we visited), for which customers can then 'Pay As You Feel' after eating. In other words, pay what you can afford and what you think the meal was worth. Even better, if you can't afford to pay anything, you don't have to. As their mission statement says, "Spending time in a cafe, eating a good meal, watching the world go by, is a simple thing, but it's often outside the means of many people we live in community with." All profits are fed back into the parent company, Shipley Food Project, which runs the local foodbank and promotes healthy food initiatives in the area. Pretty awesome, right?

The food was great, too: I went for a simple Margarita Pizza (not vegan, sorry!) with salad while T had one of the two vegan options, vegetable hotpot with a sweet potato crust. Both were tasty and filling and the hotpot was packed with flavour. Eating a delicious lunch and supporting community initiatives in one fail swoop? Count me in!

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