On Friday 11th of September a new restaurant arrived in Teddington. The local, independent community restaurant and bar Café Benedict finally opened it’s doors after Ben Phillips and his team started a pop-up espresso and ice cream bar out of their front window back in June. The pop-up sold fresh sourdough, delicious coffee, Jersey ice cream, fresh pastries, cronuts, shakes and smoothies over the summer to give Teddington a taste of what to come. This innovative idea received a big welcome but this wasn’t always the plan.

Originally Ben Phillips had planned to open back in May but when they were building the restaurant, lock down happened so they disappeared for 3 months to come back with a new idea because the enthusiastic restauranteur wanted to be doing something and sell something so the first thing he did was open out of the window.

Ben Phillips is experienced in the hospitality industry as he started selling pizzas in school to make some extra pocket money and then went on to start a place in the city with his friends from university when he was 23. After working for 20 years in restaurants Ben decided to do it for himself rather than working for others so he got the idea to start a brunch place.

Ben Phillips says he has always liked Teddington and that it has a nice vibe with lots of independent shops on it’s high street so he chose there to set up. After a collaborative effort from friends and family and lots of hard work to build the idea into a reality Ben started to employ people and bring some of his employees from Benedict’s sister bakery, the Toast Rack in Wandsworth, over to Teddington. Despite the struggles with having to reduce the number of tables and increase technology to take staff’s temperature each day, Ben and his team still opened to give Teddington a slice of different with their modern brunch style menu.

Café Benedict serves a wide range of dishes of which lots are vegan and vegetarian. Ben says he is real sucker for the Benedict burger which like most things is named after him although to his slight embarrassment. However the most popular dish is the Eggs Benedict which since opening over 659 of them have been served. Ben has been delighted with the wonderful reception they had from Teddington and says it has been a great relief to be able to employ lots of new people when many are loosing there jobs.

In the future Ben is hoping to get another one in the pipeline but waiting for a few months to see where Café Benedict takes him. However he said there probably won’t be another Café Benedict as he likes the independent vibe but he still would like to find a site near by after a good look around.