Syrian cuisine is known for its diverse and flavourful taste reflecting the history and culture of the country. Examples of Syrian cuisine include: Hummus: A creamy dip made from blended chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, and garlic. Kofta Kabab: consisting of grilled meat, the lamb is mixed with garlic and parsley, grilled and served Falafel: made of cilantro, yellow onion, garlic gloves, cumin and coriander. These dishes are not only delicious, they are also rich in flavour and traditional spices. Kibbeh is considered to be the national dish of Syria, this dish is made from onion, ground beef or lamb,burgul, onion puree and spices, the dough is processed, whilst all ingredients are added to the burgul. The product is then baked, fried, cooked or grilled. At Plateful Café, every meal is a celebration of flavours, community, and creativity. All Syrian cuisine dishes have a story. It could be a cherished family recipe or a new chef or individual discovery, the food of Syria claims a rich cultural heritage and spirit. This means cooking which celebrates Syrian culture and community, but also cooking which brings together all communities and cultures here at Plateful Cafe. Please join us as we continue to explore this food adventure. Please stay connected for more recipes, stories, and culinary adventures. Also don’t forget to subscribe and follow us on Instagram for our latest updates!
Good day everyone I hope you are enjoying your summer. At Plateful Café we are as busy as ever despite not having a permanent place yet. We are exploring different opportunities to secure at least a commercial kitchen to continue to cook for events and make our products. We are in consultation with Magdalen Hall in SE1 to cook for their events and the same with Stanstead Lodge in SE6.The first event at St Magdalen is on the 10th of August when we will be providing all the food for their Summer Fayre. We have also started a new collaboration with Pistachio in the Fields cafe and are thrilled to sell our merchandise at their Care for Calais fundraiser on August the 15th.They have also graciously agreed to display and sell our paintings in the café for one month. We are also looking for new premises to share with GRACE Refugee Aid and are exploring the use of kitchens in local schools after school hours. We were thrilled to be at the Rising sun collective street party on the 13th of July and forge new collaboration.The street party was a huge success with our food selling out in 4 hours.We cant wait to go back and take part in a Latin Fiesta this summer which we are planning together for August. We continue to cater for the events and this month we are delighted to cater for University of Central London on the 25th of July. We are also starting to cater for wakes.The first wake is on the 10th of August to celebrate the life of Anne Hignett our long-term supporter and volunteer who passed away in July.Anne was an incredible lady who helped for years with cooking,driving, assisting the café and befriending.Anne recruited also other helpers and supporters and to this day they are still supporting our charity by mainly attending our dinners. She truly cared for our beneficiaries and showed a great commitment to their long-term future.She strongly believed they should have the same opportunities as everyone else, rebuild their lives and play a full part in the local society and economy.She was so incredibly happy when we opened the Café last September and visited regularly to have lunch or dinner, bringing family and friends. She was always there and every week she gave at least 2 hours of her time helping with whatever needed doing.We are all missing her incredibly!She was very generous to the very end by also donating her car to Plateful to be driven by one of the refugees when we start a take away service. We are so sad she is gone and may she rest in peace.We will ensure her legacy continues when we open a take away service. We will persevere and continue in our efforts to find a permanent venue with your support and care.
The idea behind Plateful Cafe is simple. We employ refugees with a talent for cooking and they use their skills to share amazing food with the local community. People who could otherwise wait years to enter the UK workforce find meaningful work more quickly, and Londoners benefit from the amazing culture they bring with them. But as much as the idea is straightforward, putting it across visually is not so much. We wanted to show that Plateful Cafe is the place to come for vibrant, healthy food and that doing so will benefit the community. The design also needed to work across the organisation, from the cafe itself to our catering and our market stalls. That’s a hefty brief. So, we kept it simple. We focused on three core parts of our mission and grew the design from there. The Plate As obvious as it sounds, the plate is central to everything we do. A full plate means you’re fulfilled, safe, and not wanting. It also implies arrival, togetherness, and the ability to provide to others. Our plate is one of variety, filled with food from many sources and cultures. We were inspired by an Arabic design to form the border of our logo. This design will show up all across our brand, from jam labels to banners. The Heart But Plateful Cafe isn’t like other cafes – there’s a lot more to it than the tableware, which provides things for people to consume. Somehow, we needed to show that this food is connected with refugees. That it has a social impact. And that it is a warm place of welcome. How better to show this than with a heart? One that isn’t cutesy or kitsch but that unashamedly sits at the core of everything we do. Just like the cafe itself is refugee-led, the logo revolves around the heart at its centre. The Beetroot A plate and a heart go some way to describing our charity, but they miss one crucial thing – our cooking. This was the most difficult part of the design. Should we focus on the process of preparation, with utensils showing the expertise of our chefs? Or should we focus on the chefs themselves, with a chef’s hat? We tried both options, but they weren’t quite right. In the end, we decided that it’s the food itself that helps our chefs connect with the community and vice versa. The humble beetroot shows that we’re a family kitchen, not something manufactured or artificial. Our food is healthy, handmade, and unique. And the cafe itself helps refugees in south London put down roots and flourish in their new environment. Our first design went through a couple of mutations before we were happy with it. We took inspiration from our very own pickled beetroot for the colour palate, and got help creating a custom font for the typography. But the core elements were there to stay – a full plate, a kind heart, and quality, fresh food that helps the community grow.
Firstly, let’s establish what is Plateful Café? Plateful Café is a social enterprise that connects refugees and local people through a shared love of good food. Our primary objective at Plateful is to establish a physical café where we can serve food lovingly created by our Refugee Chefs. There were a couple of motivations at hand when we decided to set up Plateful Café. First let’s start with the obvious – fantastic food, food is as close as we really get to a universal shared language. In the absence of a common language, food is such an interesting insight into another culture: from the extraordinary precision of sushi to the shared eating experience of Injera, a food popular in Ethiopia. We wanted Plateful to be an insight into the lives and stories of the Refugee chefs who lovingly create the dishes. Whilst much of life is sadly left behind when you are forced to flee your home, knowledge and recipes remain. In this way, food for many of us is so much more than just what’s on your plate. Secondly, the unfortunate reality is that in many charities that involve refugees creating and selling their products, the refugees themselves are detached, or at worst removed, from important decisions and directions the charity takes. At Plateful we are committed to ensuring that every decision we make not only puts the interests of Refugees first but, crucially, is made with Refugees. Finally, we wanted the café and our events leading up to its formation to be a springboard for greater social and cultural cohesion. Today, more than ever, we seem to live in echo chambers. We socialise with the same people, see the same views on LinkedIn, go to the same restaurants. Plateful Café aims to be an antidote to that by creating a space where people from different backgrounds can come together, regardless of social status or background, to share a love of good food. The pay-what-you-can pricing system and the location of the café in a community-owned pub are designed to encourage this kind of interaction. Our Valentine’s Day Dinner on the 15th of February officially marks the start of our journey and it is exciting. We know the journey will most certainly not be a smooth one, but we’ve got a fantastic (growing!) team and we’re all united by a common goal: spreading world flavours by refugee chefs. If you are free, we’d love for you to join us for our dinner later this month: not only to try delicious food but to meet a community of like minded people, all committed to making our society just that bit of a nicer place to be. We hope to see you there.
