@HERE we are loyal to local. We want to bring lots of love and delicious food and drink to a long forgotten site in the heart of Crouch End.
HERE is a restaurant and bar where people can meet. eat. drink and share and we’re opening in Crouch End this autumn. We would love your support in return for some amazing rewards – for a pledge of only £50 you could recieve a lobster & fizz supper for two or an intimate wine and cheese tasting with Radio Two’s acclaimed food critic Nigel Barden. You could pledge just £25 and get a £40 voucher to spend with us! (silly we know) or pledge just £500 and get a year long delicious Sunday brunch for two (yes, that’s every Sunday for a year!). We’re offering money can’t buy rewards too – you can have your childs art immortalised on the front cover of our menu or have an intimate cookery class with our amazingly talented chef Jane (ex Nahm, Waterside Inn Bray and The Belvedere) or for just £50 you can have your name featured on our wall of fame and be invited for fizz and canapes at the walls grand unveiling. We’ve got live Jazz nights and even the chance to rent the entire space for the night, with wine, food and music – think anniversary, engagement or wedding. Just click on the links to the right to find out more. We hope you’ll support us.
(NB HERE CrouchEnd is our second site and so many of our rewards can be redeeemed in Berkhamsted too).
A bit more about us… we buy produce from neighbours, feature the work of local talent and celebrate the unique community that we love. HERE Crouch End will be run by husband and wife team, Pete & Karolin, who love the area so much they’ve decided to make Crouch End their home.
Our brilliant chef Jane Collins will cook every dish from scratch, bake bread, make cakes and smoke fish. Her ingredients are as fresh, local and seasonal as possible. Our cafe will be furnished with recycled, reclaimed and local materials. We will feature a range of local beers and ales and responsibly sourced and delicious European wines.
We’ve taken on the lease at 1 Park Road, Crouch End. It used to be a Morrocan restaurant and shisha bar, but it’s been vacant for nearly three years and has fallen into disrepair. We’ve already stripped away the Artex and revealed its Victorian past; grocery tiles and ceramic flooring, but there are holes in the walls and the roof leaks.
We want to bring out all that is beautiful about the space and will open HERE Crouch End this autumn.
We have to completely redo the toilets and the roof, the kitchen and the furniture, the air conditioning and new windows, the bar and the ceilings etc…. but there are some special things we’d like to achieve. In our dreams we’d raise £50,000 but every little bit counts…
If we get 10% of our dream then we’ll be very grateful – It will enable us to upgrade the seating.
If we get 20% of our total £50k ask we’ll be happy ! We’ll be able to upgrade the seating, wallpaper one wall with an ordnance survey map of Crouch End and fit our special signage.
40% and we can have our seating, map and our special neon signage and keep the beautiful Victorian (we think) tiles and treat the bricks and fill in the fireplace and maybe restore the chimney.
60% and we can have our seating, map and our special signage and keep the tiles and treat the bricks and fill in the fireplace and maybe restore the chimney and create our gallery area andcomplete the frontage.
80% and we can have our seating, map and our special signage and keep the tiles and treat the bricks and fill in the fireplace and maybe restore the chimney and create our gallery area and complete the frontage and fit a sound system (that means we can do justice to our live music and cool sounds).
100% of our funding and we will be so thrilled!!!! But we’ll also be able to have our seating, map and our special signage and keep the tiles and treat the bricks and fill in the fireplace and maybe restore the chimney and create our gallery area and complete the frontage and fit a sound system (that means we can do justice to our live music and cool sounds) and fix the floor and sort the lighting and set up a community board and try to do justice to how much faith and support you’ve put in us.
HERE Crouch End will be a sister to HERE Berkhamsted, the first HERE café set up by family friends three years ago, and both will be managed by Operations Director Pete Dyer and Head Chef Jane Collins.
We hope you’ll join us HERE
We love the Victorian grocery tiles and will be keeping as many of them as we can.
This wall needs alot of attention! It’s lath and plaster and needs to be fire proofed.
We’ll be opening the front of the cafe up with bi folding windows. And we’ll be changing the front door. At the moment it’s a wooden, carved, heavy duty door that looks brilliant and has been here for a long time – but it doesn’t let in the light and and will be difficult for buggies and wheel chairs. We are going to keep it though. You’ll have to keep an eye out for it!
P.S Is this you?
A mock up of how the front of the cafe will look…
And some of the dishes we’ll serve:
Stuffed chicken & pan fried gnocchi
Tuesday night is Steak Night @ HERE Berkhamsted.
A cup of Climpsons & Sons delicious coffee
Delicious European wines