Havva Sofi and her husband Hasan Mustafa own and run River Gardens Café, which I feel is currently the best café in Greenwich with stunning views across the River Thames. Havva was involved with her uncle’s restaurants growing up, which sparked a love of food and more recently she owns and runs a local hairdressing salon which helped inform her business acumen, and she’s always had a passion for hospitality.
“I had a dream to open a café on the River Gardens site,” she says. “I talked my husband Has into it.”
Looking for premises, they saw this spot while walking their dog by the river and knew the area well having lived in Blackheath and Greenwich over the years. Havva recalled she had a instant vision when she saw the potential for a café on the site but had to push hard to make her vision a reality.
Havva and Hasan are a hard-working family with two children, and this is a husband-and-wife family-run business. You can tell from the moment you step into the café that there is pure love and heart and soul poured into every cup of coffee and every bite of delicious, homely food. They have a strong focus on locals and community which shines through in their excellent customer service and attention to regulars and locals particularly.
They opened River Gardens Café in August 2019 which went well, but then lockdown came. They decided if they were to stay afloat, they would need to open for takeaways only during the first lockdown. They were one of the only cafés doing that in London and even made the newspaper which brought more locals to the venue to support them. The team even provided bread and milk to residents during the lockdowns to help. Havva looks positively at the time and says the lockdowns helped create a bond and respect between them and the local community, which now supports their café regularly.
The trick to their successful business model now, which is flourishing particularly at weekends with the busy London brunch crowd, is to constantly ‘evolve’. They have developed their initial café into more of a restaurant model, also offering cocktails, ice cream, and even doggie ice cream. They are evolving into entertainment too. For example, one Mother’s Day they had a pianist on site increasing the ambience, and they would love to put on more musical entertainment going forward. They are hosting quiz nights too, to raise money for their chosen charities.
The key is also the staff: their head chef is very passionate about food, according to Havva, and she says she hires staff on the ‘person they are’ not on the ‘position to fill’.
Their food is delicious, well-made, home-made, with good portion sizes. Locals often say that their fluffy moist carrot cake could be the best in London.
To experience the delicious home-made food and drink at River Gardens Café is well worth a trip down the beautiful river path from central Greenwich to their site on the river in East Greenwich. There is a stunning view of Canary Wharf, with outside dining – there’s no excuse not to treat yourself to this delight of a café.
River Gardens Cafe, Unit 2, 20 River Gardens Walk, Greenwich Peninsula, SE10 0FZ; rivergardenscafe.co.uk
By Polly Morgan