With Bristol being home to some amazing coffee shops and cafes, it can be hard to choose where to go - but at least having so many means you don’t have to walk too far before you find one. Walking around Stokes Croft one weekday, I came across many different independents that seemed really popular with the lunchtime crowd.
Keen to try one of the many independent businesses in the area, I set out to find one that served lunch but also wasn’t too busy with queues. After wandering up and down the road for a while, the cool-looking Elemental drew my eye.
The cafe, which used to be home to a little pop-up bakery, serves coffee, sandwiches and pastries but also doubles up as a greengrocer, selling produce which has been sourced locally. The ‘non-profit community-led enterprise’ was originally started as a ‘positive local response to the arrival of Tesco and the riots in Stokes Croft' in 2011, according to a welcome message on one of the walls inside.
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It looked interesting so I headed inside and asked for an iced latte to go with the sandwich I had picked out, filled with mature cheddar, tomato and apricot and ale chutney. My lunch as a whole came to just £6.40 - the sandwich was £3.50 while the latte was £2.90, which is definitely less than you'd expect to pay in some of the bigger chains.
Finding an empty seat right by the window, I tucked into my lunch. The atmosphere in the bakery was pretty chilled-out and calm, perfect for those wanting to sit and read a book or even do some work as there were a few customers on their laptops.
The food was really tasty - I hadn’t tried apricot and ale chutney before but it was the perfect sweet-yet-savoury addition that made the cheese sandwich so much better. My latte was equally good and I had finished it before the ice even had the chance to melt.
As I was sitting enjoying my lunch, I noticed that while there weren’t many sitting in, there were a lot of people coming in to grab a pastry to go or even buying a couple of products from the shelves. From bags of pasta to different milk options and even fresh fruit and veg, they had all the basics you could find in a supermarket but from small local producers in the area.
They describe themselves on social media as 'grocers, roasters and toasters'. The overall experience in the cafe was great, the staff were friendly, the food was amazing and the prices were not too expensive - I would highly recommend this to anyone passing through the Stokes Croft area.
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