Hackney’s newest home-bake art café has opened up on Wilton Way, expanding on its very successful Broadway Market stall.

The Venue
Located on Wilton Way in relative suburbia, Violet is the new coffee shop on the street that already has Wilton’s Café a little further along. However, the two couldn’t me more different and Violet makes the most of its large converted house by using the ground floor as an informal kitchen bakery-cum-coffee bar and the floor above as a relaxing retreat from the flour-covered work surfaces and sugary displays below. The extra seating on the first floor is good for groups on weekends and an isolated getaway during the week.

The Atmosphere
As sugary sweet as the cakes they serve, only the cynical won’t be won over by their do-it-yourself homeliness and friendliness. Hip locals come for coffee, while families come for the cakes, presumably given to their kids as treats for being so very well behaved. You can guess the target market too, with magazines like i-D, POP and AnOther Magazine all on display and keeping those moneyed creatives coming back. Cynical? Never. Not when there’s Talking Heads on the stereo.

The Food
Organic flours, sugars, vanilla beans, fruit and vegetables - it’s safe to say that everything here can be traced to whence it came. Everything that’s on offer is baked in-house, in ovens that keep a warmth running through the cafe that will definitely be appreciated come winter. There are daily special sandwiches (grilled cheese and spring onion on this occasion, served on sliced sour dough) that are great lunchtime treats. Chocolate brownies, rose and pistachio whoopee pies, butterscotch blondies, lemon poppy seed cakes and banana buttermilk slices decorate the counter, and those are just some of the delicious looking offerings labeled with weird and wonderful names.

The Drink
Homemade lemonade supplements an impressive range of coffee that includes piccolos, lattes and a mean flat white. The beans are good quality and match most of the reputable coffee spots in the area, of which there are many.

The Last Word
Cakes, coffees and music wrapped up in a sweet shell of DIY craft style. What’s not to like?

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