Enjoy amazing scones and the cheesiest toasties, all through a window at The Cottage Window Cafe in Fife.
A Leven cafe serves up amazing scones, toasties and homegrown salad from its window. Brian Stormont discovered the story behind The Cottage Window Cafe for the latest in our Street Food Scran series.
Serving customers throughout the various coronavirus lockdowns of the past year, The Cottage Window Cafe in Leven, Fife, is a popular pit stop for many.
In common with many enterprises during the pandemic, The Cottage Window Cafe had to find a different way to trade.
And they found that serving customers through their 19th Century cottage window was the perfect way to keep them in business and feed hungry customers, too.
The cafe, which serves up refreshments, scones, luxurious home bakes and cracking cheese toasties on chunky bread, is ideally situated close to the Fife Coastal Path.
Regeneration programme
Martin McDonald, operations manager with FEAT Trading CIC, the charity that operates the cafe which has been open for just over two years, said: “One of the most important reasons is that we did a community engagement exercise which saw members of the public tell FEAT what they wanted to do with Silverburn Park as part of the regeneration programme.
“One of the things that was pointed out was that it would be great if there was somewhere you could get snacks and coffees, a wee bite to eat. That was a main driver for it.
“FEAT is a mental health employability charity and we were looking at any ways possible that we could help folk get into work.
“As well as having the horticultural volunteering, it was an idea that we could have some catering and customer service volunteering as well so that folk could use that to get a different experience, learn new skills and hopefully be a springboard for them to get a job in the catering industry.”
Serving through The Cottage Window
They haven’t always served through the window, but changes that took place when the coronavirus pandemic took hold forced the move and other operating alterations, too, which have been well received.
“We had part of the cottage that was called the Flaxmill Tearoom and during the coronavirus pandemic all sorts of things changed.
“We weren’t having folk indoors and our sister charity decided that the way forward for them was to start working from home more or in community centres. They also took the Flaxmill Tearoom as one of their offices,” revealed Martin.
“It forced upon us the way that we work a little bit, but also during lockdowns and all the regulations we had the perfect way of serving customers.”
And another change was reducing the menu to what hungry customers were enjoying the most – scones, in particular, whetting the appetite.
“We used to be a little more extravagant in our menu, doing sandwiches and hot rolls, all kinds of stuff but lockdown started and we were really, really busy.
“We had queues down the edge of the walled garden, and to make members of staff comfortable, we had to cut back on the menu. What we decided to do was focus on the best sellers,” continued Martin.
“Mainly that was scones. We have quite a bit of local fame for our home-baked scones. We are always told that they are the best scones they have ever tasted.
“Secret recipe”
It is a secret scone recipe which attracts customers every week to the premises. However, you have to be quick to get your hands on some as they sell like hot cakes.
“We make them very luxuriously with a secret recipe for the fruit scones and we make the cheese scones really decadently by piling them high with strong cheese, black pepper and loads of butter,” said Martin.
“They are usually hot out of the oven as people queue to get them and then they fly out being sold out really quickly. There’s sometimes a few disappointed people later in the day.
“One of our volunteers, Jules Herd, runs her own bakery, The Old Station Bakery. She produces some really extravagant looking cakes.
“She is a volunteer who started off with us who really got a taste for baking, got excited about it and wanted to do more. She takes a lot of orders for her own business, supplies us as well, works in the cafe and is a great ambassador for the park.
“We also do coffees and another staple is our toasties – nice thick bread, golden brown with a mixture of cheese.
Homegrown salad
As well as using their homegrown produce to make salads and more, The Cottage Window Cafe team combine other ingredients that they pick up locally, too, to create their dishes.
Martin said: “As we come into summer we are now serving our homegrown salad as well as we have an amazing little veg garden around the back of the cottage where we take our lettuce, spring onions and herbs from.
“We are serving that as a dressed salad. We also have strawberries and a special we are doing is our fruit scones with jam and cream and a sprinkling of fresh strawberries over the top.
“We had an ethos when we started that we would use all local ingredients, but because we are a charity and on a budget, and at times back then could be a little quiet as we were just getting started, it wasn’t really cost-effective.
“What we decided to do was grow our own and that has really come into its own and when we can we will use local suppliers for particular things.”
Map of street food vendors in Tayside and Fife