The two women met almost 20 years ago at the Auberge de Chassignolles in Auvergne, an old inn run by renowned British chef Harry Lester. ‘Laura had just finished cooking school and she’d done a season cooking there,’ says Lori. ‘I was a food writer at the time doing a story for the Independent.’ Lori had recently acquired four kiosks along the Regents canal and dreamed of turning them into some sort of café. She fell in love with Laura’s cooking and asked what her plans were when she got back to London. Might she be interested in this ‘little adventure’ she was about to embark on? ‘At that point [the towpath] wasn’t even paved,’ recalls Lori. ‘It was literally the Wild West.’
They decided to give it a go for three months ‘to see what we had’. There was no kitchen, but they made porridge and granola, a daily stew or soup, and the same brownies and olive oil cake that are on the counter today. Soon, they knew they were onto something. ‘Laura was like: [there’s] nowhere else I’d rather be.’
Over time, they installed a proper kitchen and the menu evolved to fill it, though the ethos remained the same. This was to be a place which revolved around real connection, a slower pace than the world of London hospitality tended to dictate, and a considered approach to ingredients. Today, the food is seasonal and made for you to take your time over at one of Lori and Laura’s few tables. There is a no takeaways rule and they don’t allow laptops, reasoning that if you have made it down here to this beautiful, scruffy little stretch the canal you should sit a while, talk to the person at the table next to you, order Turkish eggs and toast and then an unnecessary-but-nice chocolate chip walnut cookie.
Laura Jackson, co-founder of Towpath on a rainy day at the café
Scott MacSween
‘We just invite people to stay and sit,’ says Lori, who is originally from California. ‘It means there is a different feeling of community that I think feels nice for people.’ Community is central to what they have always tried to do here. It’s why they don’t just look after the café but cultivate the scrubby bit of land on the other side of the bridge too. It’s about ‘making your patch of the neighbourhood a little friendlier’, says Lori. Many of their customers have pitched in with the garden. A pair of local landscape gardeners often bring them the rejects from their fancy Notting Hill clients; one of their regulars brought them rose bushes. ‘It’s a bit of an orphan garden, and there’s a sweetness to that,’ says Lori.