Following on from last week’s post: Café Culture in Lancaster: Part One, this week it’s time for Part Two where I will look at four more independent (or smaller) coffee shops/cafés in Lancaster. The same pricing scale from last week still applies.
Journey Social
Features: Excellent Menu
Price: £££
Journey Social is a lovely café/restaurant to be found just behind the library in the town square. With a diverse menu and excellent coffee, it’s a great place to go for breakfast, brunch, or lunch, but you will need to take your appetites – plates are (in my experience!) quite large! Also be prepared to pay that little bit more for the great ingredients and the from-scratch cooking. Journey Social is one of the more expensive on this list, but definitely worth it as a treat or a special breakfast out. I particularly like the avocado and pea puree they add to various dishes, and from the cake display I’m a fan of their pastel del nata.
Holm
Features: Scandinavian Cuisine, Great Cakes (Fika!)
Price: £
A small café that is now looking to expand because it’s done so well, Holm is a café/bakery that specialises in Scandinavian food and fika. Fika is the Swedish name for cake and a hot drink taken in the afternoon, and Holm offers a deal on this Swedish tradition. The café is also in a moment of exciting expansion, as they’re about to expand to the empty shop next door, taking their capacity up from only three tables, to quite a few more!
Last time I was there, mum had a dish with Salmon, pickled cucumber, rocket, cream cheese, and dill, with a lemon flavour. She enjoyed it, but she did say the portion was very large (she has quite a small appetite!). I had a bagel with cheese and salami.
They also home bake all their cakes, and we took home a tart with berries and crème anglaise, which was delicious with a cup of tea later that afternoon!
Atkinson’s Coffee House
Features: Great Coffee (own blend), Social Tables/Space, Dog Friendly
Price: ££
Atkinson’s has been coffee blenders and tea sellers in Lancaster for nearly two hundred years. Thomas Atkinson opened his tea warehouse in Lancaster in 1837, at which time his shop was one of six.
There are also three different locations of Atkinson’s in Lancaster. There’s The Hall, which is the original café next to the coffee roasting shop; The Music Room on Sun Street; and The Castle Courtyard which can be found (unsurprisingly) in Lancaster Castle Courtyard. The Hall is a huge space on the main road heading towards Sainsburys out of town with smaller tables to work at, or bigger communal tables for chatting with friends or other coffee lovers. I like going into the hall and seeing all the coffee making experiments that they have going on – it looks like an alchemist’s lab in there!
The Music Room is a smaller venue with an outdoor courtyard space which is gorgeous to sit in the spring and summer. The Castle Courtyard is a lovely café in an amazing historical location, but it’s worth noting that whilst it is all flat or ramped, it is a bit of a trek from the road up to the castle and it might be a challenge to someone with accessibility issues.
The Storey
Features: Social Space/Laptop Space, Garden Seating
Price: £
The Storey is a council owned building dedicated to the arts and learning. There are always exhibitions, classes, workshops, and other things going on within the building. There is also a little accessible café space with plenty of comfortable seating and tables for either enjoying a coffee with friends, or plugging in a laptop and catching up on some work. My old singing teacher used to have a classroom and singing space in the Storey, so I would often have a coffee and cake before going to my lesson. There is a little courtyard area where I sometimes sat outside in the late afternoon sunshine in the spring and summer.
The Storey Gardens are also worth a visit, perhaps with a takeaway coffee. The Gardens are perhaps one of Lancaster’s best kept secrets, and beautiful to take a walk around. I’ll be doing a whole piece about the Storey Gardens and the history of the place at a later date.
