Please note, New Roots Café has now closed. Time Out Food editors, May 2019.
Sometimes, there’s more to an eatery than just the food. This is definitely the case with New Roots, a veggie café that donates all profits to a homeless shelter in Tottenham, Highway House, and its separate women’s shelter in Islington.
So, karma rating: off the chart. And the food? It’s pretty good. The café, staffed almost entirely by volunteers, has a small, simple menu of mostly North African and Mediterranean cuisine. Vegans have around four mains to choose from, though the most interesting sounding – a tofu and lemongrass kebab – was unavailable when I visited. The tagine, however, was on. It was full-flavoured and wholesome, with a cinnamon hit. But the star of the show was the very non-vegan three-cheese soufflé – rich and fluffy, with sweet onion marmalade cutting through the saltiness.
Let’s remember that New Roots Café is a community space. This isn’t haute cuisine and it’s not meant to be –it’s unfussy food made well, served to satisfy and not to be critiqued to the nth degree. All dishes come in between £3.50 and £6, too; the kind of prices that will bring tears of joy to anyone who has ever set foot in London. Especially when you remember where your money’s going.