Tag Archives: Park College

The Coffee Shop @ Park College

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Like most people, on our rare work from home days we love nothing more than getting the grey matter by having a tuna melt while watching ‘Loose Women’. However, we recently decided to revisit a delightful and little known vegetarian café next to Kennington Park. 

Park College is an establishment that helps young people with additional needs (primarily autism) enter the world of work. On our previous visit we saw young people gardening, repairing bikes, and working in a design space. The Coffee Shop is for folks interested in the hospitality/catering trade, and the students cook and serve all the food with the assistance of dedicated staff. This includes sandwiches, muffins, cakes, paninis and quiches. And they’re mightily proud of their hot beverages and happy to help with your selection. 

My dining partner was once again Karen from Finance, who always enjoys a comp’ed meal. She had the falafel, roast veg and spinach wrap with houmous. This little vegan delight was presented as a wrap, and the abundant Mediterranean peppers were rounded off by chunks of falafel and mounds of creamy houmous. Your scribe had a mozzarella, tomato and spinach panini. The mozzarella was balled, rich and fresh with zingy tomato and mayo. 

While it might not reach the thrilling heights of having edible tableware (see previous post), The Coffee Shop at Park College is a relaxed and chilled environment, where you leave knowing that you have helped build a career for vulnerable young people.  It’s  open Monday to Thursday 9:30am to 3:00pm and Friday 9:30am to 1:45pm, term time only. They also have a very large Instagram presence which showcases their catering business. They also sell a sell a range of merch, from greetings cards to key chains to, um, bird huts. And we all love merch, don’t we? 

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Coffee Shop at Park College

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Congratulations! If you’re reading this then you’ve probably survived until 17 May. But let’s be honest here, Britain has actually enjoyed ‘being British’ over the past few months. You know you have a secret survivalist thrill when it comes to eating a salad nicoise in 10 degree weather with horizontal rain knocking over your glass of Pinot, or sitting on a bench in Kennington Park drinking your Espresso while getting concussed by tiny hailstones. But all good things must come to an end.

While we all yearn to return to our favourite dining establishments if we can get organised enough to book, we’ve found a lovely café/coffee shop where you don’t have to book and you can also make a difference. The Park College is a local educational institution dedicated to helping young people with autism obtain hands on skills that might turn into paid employment. On our trip we saw students gardening, repairing bikes, and working in a design space. However, the purpose of our visit was to visit the coffee shop, which is open Tuesday to Friday from 9:30am to 3pm. 

The coffee shop at Park College offers breakfast fare including croissants, toasties, cakes and vegan sausage. For lunch, fare included jacket potato, falafel/hummus wrap, and chili jam and goat’s cheese roll among others. Your scribe opted for a mozzarella and tomato sandwich with black olive pesto, served on ciabatta. The students were making the sandwiches with the close guidance of mentors. The work in the café was obviously geared to the interests of individual students, with some in the open kitchen and others on the serving and collecting money side of things. 

As you can see, on our visit inside eating just wasn’t gonna happen,  so we ate our very generously proportioned ciabatta in their outside area. And while we’ve all enjoyed the character building elements of eating in a gale, it will be nice to eat inside again, and especially with the knowledge that you are helping to build careers for vulnerable people.  

The Park College can be found in Kennington Park Place.