Looks like East London's coffee houses are expanding their market. Workshop Coffee Co (formerly known as St Ali) is the second place we've heard of in as many weeks (Shoreditch's Ozone was the first) which is extending its menu to include interesting beers, wines and hot food in addition to all manner of fine roasts that they serve up during the day.
Workshop's Clerkenwell branch is now open until 10pm from Tuesday to Saturday (6pm Sunday and Monday) and they've brought in a range of craft beers and wines to accompany the new bar snack menu downstairs while also offering a la carte dining on the first floor.
In the upstairs dining room, where you can book ahead, guests can reserve a table to enjoy a 200g Dexter rare breed hamburger, supplied by Nathan Mills’ The Butchery Ltd, or whole smoked pigeon sourced from Capreolus in West Dorset, roasted and served with Puy lentils, confit tomato and bacon. The menu could also include starters of fried goats’ curd in panko crust, with beetroot and pomegranate, or quail, poached and grilled, with herbed cous-cous and sumac.
Downstairs in the bar, it's a walk-in only affair offering small sharing plates. So there's smoky eggplant with cumin and lemon, miniature corn fritters with spiced yoghurt or - and why would you want anything else - pig skin grissini. There's also a smaller selection of bigger dishes including the Dexter hamburger.
Craft beers are on offer from both Camden Town Brewery and the Kernel Brewery, while a compact and bijoux wine list ranges as they put it "from the simply delicious and approachable, to more interesting (and sometimes strange) natural and biodynamic offerings from Raef Hodgson or Gergovie Wines and 40 Maltby Street."
Workshop Clerkenwell is at 27 Clerkenwell Rd, EC1M 5RN. For reservations go to http://www.workshopcoffee.com/workshop-coffee-co.--reservations.html
