When the Food Blog was last on Barrack Lane, in June 2012,
work had only recently started on the nearby Admiral Building and only the unit
nearest the building site was occupied (Cafi BARICS). Barrack
Lane, part of Cardiff’s Retail Enterprise Quarter, is owned
by Linc-Cymru, who specialise in the affordable housing, social care and health
sectors. Along with 27 small residential apartments, there are 9 retail units
along the lane. These are now all occupied by local businesses. Four of them
are dedicated to food and drink.
The Grazing Shed
1 Barrack Lane CF10 2GS
After Cafi BARICS closed, this end unit was taken by The
Grazing Shed, which opened in Sept 2013. This independent burger joint uses local suppliers and has an
innovative ‘Super Tidy Burgers’ menu. The burger menu splits into beef, chicken
and a smaller vegetarian section. It was my first visit, so I started near the
top with a Spicy Uncle Pedro (pictured), though tempted by the Rasta Hen
and other creative burger options. The bread is locally produced in an 'artisan bakery', making for a superior bun, and the
sauces are homemade. The burgers are more rustic than gourmet, of a piece with
the cobbled-together wooden décor. Ideal if you want quick
alternative fast-food (Food Hygiene Rating 5: very good. Feb 2014).
The Magic Wrap
3 Barrack Lane CF10 2GS
The Magic Wrap is a local business founded in 2008 by Ed Jones.
It specialises in wraps of a heathy nature, using Lebanese khobez bread and
plenty of salad in the fillings. The website describes the bread as ‘made with
unbleached flour, light, soft and low in salt and without any added fat,
artificial colourings or flavourings. It is also suitable for Vegans’. You can
make up your own combinations or go for one of their suggestions. The current
favourites listed on the website include Falafel, The Bilbao, Brie and bacon,
Spicy Jamaican, Piri piri chicken and the Chinese-style The Emperor with
mixed-herb chicken. The Magic Wrap also has an older outlet in Cardiff
University Student’s Union (just along from the Sherman Theatre) and a
recently-opened outlet in Cardiff Bay (Food Hygiene Rating 5: very good. Jan
2014).
The Gravity Station
9 Barrack Lane CF10 2FR
This ‘take-away bottle shop and tasting bar’ is owned by the
Waen Brewery of Llanidloes, which was started in 2009 by Sue Hayward and John
Martin, and has that breweries ‘hand crafted in Wales’ beers on tap and in
bottles. The Gravity Station stocks the regular T.W.A. (3.7% ABV) and the
ever-changing range of seasonal Waen beers, which currently include Snowball
(7.0%), which is a chocolate, coconut and vanilla stout, Chilli Plum Porter (6.1%), Blackberry stout (3.7%) and Pamplemousse (4.2%).
I sampled some Mistletoe & Waen from the tap, which contains fortified wine
and has a pleasing chocolate-port-like flavour. There are bottles from a range
of other Welsh breweries available to take-way, including Celt, Otley, Pipes
and Untapped, along with a well-selected range of beers from Belgian
(include Trappist ales), Germany, Holland, England, Scotland and the USA. As
well as some Waen brews, I took away a bottle of Scottish brewery Harviestoun’s
‘Old Engine Oil’. Live acoustic music can be heard here on the last Friday of
every month (they had Harri Davis on the bill last week).
Bramina
9 Barrack Lane CF10 2EF
This small independent Italian café does good Italian coffee
and cake. Founded by Daniela Francesca Ferrari and opened in July 2013, the
emphasis here is very much on home-made food: traditional breakfasts and lunchtime
pasta dishes, with daily-changing sauces, along with soup and paninis. Outdoor
seating in a sheltered and relatively quiet corner of Cardiff city centre, which
is just around the corner from The Hayes (Food Hygiene Rating 4: good. July 2013).
Loyalty cards are available in all four of these local Barrack
Street businesses. I suspect they all have their regulars. It's good to see this street flourishing now the Admiral Building
has opened. Indeed, with FED soon to join The Smoke Haus along Mary Ann Street,
this part of Cardiff is definitely on the up.
Previous post on Barrack Lane:
http://sfnottingham.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/caffi-barics-cardiff.html
A blog post of two halves today, firstly with information
about a European initiative to reduce food waste and then a look at how food waste
is collected here in the Vale of Glamorgan (Wales).
The European Week of Waste Reduction (EWWR) starts today (22-30
Nov 2014). This initiative aims to raise awareness about sustainable resources
and waste management. In particular, it encourages people, either through a
group (e.g. public authority, NGO, business, educational establishment) or as
individuals, to take actions to promote waste reduction. The annual EWWR was
first launched in 2009 and has been co-funded by the European Commission’s
LIFE+ Programme.
The EWWR’s Prevention Thematic Days 2014 focus on the issue
of food waste and how to prevent it. Around one third of the food produced
globally is lost or wasted, which makes no sense economically or ethically, and
represents a massive loss of resources: land, water, energy and labour. Over
100 million tonnes of food are wasted annually in the EU (2014 estimate), a
figure that is expected to rise if active measures are not taken.
A number of EWWR food waste factsheets can be downloaded, which cover
areas such as food donation campaigns, gleaning and eco-restaurants: http://www.ewwr.eu/en/support/thematic-days-2014-stop-food-waste
The Eco-Restaurant concept, for instance, aims to optimise a restaurant’s
performance in all environmental aspects, including waste prevention, reducing
energy and water consumption, and reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions. In terms
of food waste, customers are encouraged to take left-over food away in paper
‘doggy bags’, customers should be offered tap water (in preference to bottled
water), and more consideration should be given to different plate sizes on the
menu.
The information for a Zero Waste Lunch aims to help you
dramatically reduce the amount of food and packaging that ends up landfilled or
incinerated. Avoiding unnecessary shopping and buying in bulk, making use of
reusable bags and containers, reusing left-overs and composting food waste all
contribute.
Food can be composted at home or via a local authority food
waste collection scheme. Here in the Vale of Glamorgan, kitchen waste is
collected weekly from the kerbside. Residents in the Vale can go along to the
farm where it is processed near Cowbridge (Cowbridge Compost Ltd) and pick up
some of the compost for free. We spread a load of it around when we established
the Nightingale Community Garden in Dinas Powys.
The recent background paper on Waste Planning, part of the Vale
of Glamorgan Local Development Plan 2011-2026, stated that the Vale handles
59,780 tonnes per annum (2012-13) of municipal solid waste, of which 5,459
tonnes per annum is food composting. It aims to increase the amount of food and
garden waste being processed, and use some of it to generate bioenergy, through
the creation of a new Anaerobic Digestion (AD) Treatment plant, in a joint
venture with Cardiff Council.
In an announcement, unfortunately coinciding with the EWWR,
the Vale of Glamorgan Council have said that it is to ration the biodegradable
green bags they supply to households for food waste (Penarth Times, 20 Nov).
This will make substantial annual savings, they say, because some people
request unfeasibly large numbers of them. Although the local FOE group have
attached the Council for this decision, it does make sense to issue a limited
number of free bag rolls to households with the option of buying more.
The Vale’s
kitchen waste system can seem a little overcomplicated. It involves a
small caddy in the kitchen, into which biodegradable bags are inserted and a
larger caddy to put roadside with the sealed bags in it. What I learnt recently
is that you don’t really need the little biodegradable green bags at all,
because you can just line the bigger caddy with newspaper and chuck everything
straight in there. So don’t get too hung up on the little bags, just get as much
kitchen waste recycled as possible!