Rating
In A Word
Smooth
Cuisine
Italian / Ligurian Fast Food
Appeals To
Those who require a ‘coffee shop that is not your average coffee shop’. Barbican inhabitants, students, financial people from Moorgate, people living in The Heron Tower above…
Impatient and somewhat discerning people who don’t like ‘conventional fast food’. People who dig Italian cuisine and who want to give Ligurian cuisine a shot
People who are playing ‘burger pokemon’ (credit to Charlie Hookson Skyes for this idea) – the Ligurian burger was unlike any other I’ve tried before.
What is Caterina and what is it doing here?
Despite its name, Caterina 55 is not an industrial band. At least not in the conventional sense (unless you count Ligurian fast food as industrial music).
Your initial impressions upon entry might be ‘why look, it’s another slick coffee shop’. This observation would be partially correct, as they do serve coffee (good coffee) – and they are slick, but there’s more to Caterina 55 than that.
The concept of Caterina 55 is ‘high quality fast food’ – true, they’re certainly not the first to do it, but what makes them a little different is that they focus on a lesser known type of Italian cuisine from Liguria, on the North West coast.
Caterina is about 70% coffee shop, 30% restaurant, and offers up a small but well chosen selection of ‘fast food’ that probably costs more and has better ingredients than the kind of fast food you’re used to. They also serve a bloody good Chianti. Is that a fast food outlet that serves Italian wine, I hear you ask? Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh buddy!
At some point Caterina is described to me as a “fully licensed coffee shop” – the best kind. Get your legal uppers and downers all in the same place. What’s not to like?
I arrive at 4.15pm on a wintery Tuesday, and the world is cold as fuck – I’m here to meet Simone, the manager. He’s an earnest Italian man in a red jacket. Stylish, friendly but relatively restrained by Italian standards. He looks a bit like an older version of one of my childhood friends.
Simone is very passionate about the foods of his homeland and seems to possess something of an uncanny ability for recalling food industry stats, such as McDonalds’ global turnover in the last year, percentile growth in the London restaurant industry, etc. He’s even done his research on Tasting Britain. Seems that nothing escapes this guy.
Simone tells me a bit of their backstory. The idea for Caterina 55 was born on the Ligurian coast, inside of a 2rd generation family owned restaurant called Panama. Caterina 55 is supposedly the brainchild of the proprietor of said restaurant, a woman called Caterina (seems legit).
Why 55? Because that is the year of Caterina’s birth. Her son in law raised some investor capital with the bold idea of bringing Ligurian style cuisine to London. Dreams eventually became digestible reality, and here we are…
The Atmosphere
Built into/next to the Guildhall school, this part of which is at the bottom of Heron tower. Like lots of tall, concrete stuff in Barbican, it’s a very futuristic building indeed – it looks amazing at night.
Caterina is staffed mainly by black clad people in their mid/early 20s and with Mediterranean accents. Said staff generally speak English to each other with said accents though at some point there’s some kind of small scale crisis and Simone lapses into rapid fire Italian. Downtempo Samba music in multiple languages is juxtaposed with the sound of construction coming from the nearby Barbican estate.
They’re also working on transforming one of the corners into a bar – hopefully making the ‘bar restaurant cafe’ hybrid thing work with a little more seamlessness. I guess they’re now beyond the embryonic phase but not quite at the ‘fully mature’ phase, so what I write here may not exactly be correct by the time you read it.
Inside has that feel of a snazzy new coffee shop. The decor reminds me of some kind of design museum.
And it certainly has a coffee shop vibe – the people here are usually solitary: reading or working. There are teachers & students from Barbican, some people from the nearby finance/business area of Moorgate. Simone points out a regular who is an ex Guildhall teacher, and I see a bunch of guys with cellos on their backs eating pasta. Though it’s rather quiet for most of the time I am there, It really fills up with students about 5:30pm.
The Food & Drink
Caterina’s menu is quite small and streamlined (in the fast food style), and everything is certified organic, and made on site. They also claim not to use any artificial ingredients (I guess that depends on how you define ‘artificial’)
Caterina are also working on getting ‘proper’ crockery and wine glasses – currently it’s the ‘plastic/cardboard aesthetic’ which is somewhat at odds with the quality of food and drink on offer. Especially if people come for dinner – they seem to have picked up on how it feels kinda weird drinking a £20odd bottle of wine out of a plastic cup.
There’s a tiny selection of Italian wines – one red, one white – and there will apparently be more in future.
Lunchtime is apparently the most popular period at the moment – which would make sense.
I’m not good at eating huge lunches, so here’s a girlyman selection of foods that I tried…
Ligurian Burger
A combination of smoked cheese and pesto is extremely distinctive. The beef is very fresh and a little pink on the inside. The kind of thing that might make one of the bigger burger chains lose their shit entirely but what I like very much.
Lentil Soup
Grows on me. It’s not particularly flavoursome, but it is filling. Actually, like most lentil based soups it is a bit too thick and filling for its own good (after a burger anyway). There are a couple of really strong bacon bits. Some starchy veggies. I would imagine that if Liguria is in the North West and on the coast it can get pretty blustery – ideal for cold weather of the moment.
Tiramisu
All I can say is that it tastes like every other tiramisu I have eaten and that is certainly not a bad thing. Inhaled.
The Verdict
Very promising. Seems like a very good spot to drop in for shit strong Mediterranean coffee on a cyberpunk tour of The City Of London. The food (based on my small sample size) is also promising – certainly fast, but also rather good.
I guess the big thing now is to see how their semi-transition to restaurant works out.
The Details
The Heron, 5 Moor Lane, London EC2Y 9AP
http://www.caterina55.com/