Review: Nourish Café, Newbourne - wholesome dishes using locally sourced produce

French onion and thyme soup (Image: Archant)

I've been meaning to pay a visit to Nourish Café, in Newbourne, since it opened in March this year. Finally, we managed to get there on Saturday lunchtime.

After a week's holiday, we were all feeling a bit run down, and definitely in need of some nourishment. We'd certainly come to the right place.

Inside the cosy barn, there are wooden tables and chairs, a couple of comfy sofas and twinkly fairy lights.

We headed straight to the sofas, but thought better of it when we decided we'd be ordering hot food and moved to a table near the counter.

Mushroom stroganoff (Image: Archant)

We had another look at the menus and I noticed that a lot of locally sourced produce features on them - Revett's sausages and bacon at breakfast time and bread from Wooster's Bakery and Fairfields Farm jacket potatoes for lunch.

Many of the drinks are produced locally too - James White Juices from Ashbocking, kombucha from LA Brewery in Rendlesham, as well as coffee and tea from Bury St Edmunds coffee roasters and tea smiths Butterworth & Sons and cold brew coffee from Suffolk-based company Crude.

My husband Phil and I both had the Fairtrade drink Karma Cola (£1.80) - timely, as this month marks 25 years of the Fairtrade mark.

For £5.95, little ones can have a mini portion of the warming bowl, soup bowl or daily special served with a drink of squash, water or milk and a homemade cookie.

We chose one of the soups - sweetcorn and coconut chowder - for our daughter Jessica, and orange squash.

I fancied a warming soup myself on the cold and rainy day, and went for the French onion and thyme (£6).

For Phil, one of the warming bowls - mushroom stroganoff (£8.50).

Other options we could have chosen were a Nourish sausage roll (Phil had spotted these and said they were huge!) with red onion marmalade, Nourish cheese scone with butter and chilli jam, and a range of toasted sandwiches. A number of vegan and gluten-free dishes were available.

Jessica's lunch was brought out first, and the server who brought it out offered to take the cookie away for later which I was grateful for as she probably would have eaten that first!

Phil had taken her to the toilet, which was in the building behind and proved to be a bit of a novelty as two-year-old Jessica wanted to traipse back and forth to it several times just to wash her hands.

Finally she did sit down to try a bit of her soup and bread and I made a start on my soup. This thin, homemade soup filled with onions, and nicely flavoured with thyme, had a lovely umami flavour. I added a bit of pepper to it to balance out the saltiness. It was topped with croutons and served with soft Wooster's bread and butter.

Phil said the mushroom stroganoff was well seasoned and had a nice mixture of types of mushrooms. This was served with flatbread, but he would've liked the crusty bread I was tucking into with my soup.

Jessica was picking at her lunch so we asked for the cookie and Phil and I finished her sweetcorn and coconut chowder between us. I think if the same soups were on the menu again, I'd go for this wonderfully thick, sweet soup with fragrant coconut.

Of course, Jessica made short work of the rye and chocolate cookie. I managed to break off a corner to try - much to her protestation - and was pleasantly surprised as it was not too sweet and had the background earthy flavour of rye too.

With Jessica getting fidgety, we ordered some hot drinks and cakes to go - a Butterworth's Suffolk Special Blend tea and salted caramel and peanut butter brownie for me and a latte and millionaires shortbread for Phil.

I enjoyed this strong tea and crumbly, nutty brownie. But, on sampling Phil's cake, I decided I preferred the millionaire's shortbread.

I'll have to go back to try some of the café's other wholesome, homemade dishes, and sweet treats, on the menu another time.