Now Open – Exciting Café Restaurant at Gloucester Food Dock Offering the Best Locally Sourced Produce

Acclaimed Cirencester dining hub, Roots + Seeds Kitchen Garden, is thrilled to announce the opening of its second sustainable dining hub, Roots + Seeds Café & Kitchen at Gloucester Food Dock.

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This all-day café restaurant welcomes everyone, including dogs, and serves coffee, breakfast, brunch, and lunch Tuesday to Sunday. Its brasserie style menus of modern British dishes with influences from further afield, continue to offer Cotswolds-sourced produce from trusted suppliers and growers, along with the very best, home-grown, fresh produce picked daily from its own kitchen garden, with additional produce grown specifically for its menus at Cirencester Royal Agricultural University’s new, seven-acre No Dig Market Garden, also located in Cirencester Park.

The new market garden is run by Cirencester Royal Agricultural University’s Zero Dig project – an innovative form of regenerative horticulture that will help to educate 1000 agricultural students per year in agroecology and regenerative farming, in a collaboration between FWAG SouthWest, the RAU and Zerodig Earth.

Roots + Seeds head chef, Sam Idoine, has created the all-day menus available to eat-in or Grab and Go for the Gloucester site with new head chef, Chris Bidmead, overseeing generous and regularly changing dishes from classic brunch options, sandwiches and salads to more substantial dishes such as burgers and fresh pasta. There’s also a ‘Specials Board’ of delicious ‘Field to Fork’ dishes dictated by the seasons and what’s best on the day.

*Vegetarian and vegan dishes are available on every course and all dietary requirements are catered for. Its children’s menu features both healthy options and perennial favourites.

Everything is freshly made to order and includes locally reared beef, lamb, pork and poultry from Jesse Smith Family Butchers, game from the Bathurst Estate and its neighbours, fresh fish and seafood delivered daily from Brixham in Devon, home-grown produce and locally foraged ingredients.

Roots + Seeds Gloucester has a fully stocked bar including award-winning Roots + Seeds London Dry Gin, made by R+S co-founder, Sam Lawson-King and used for Sam’s sensational cocktails muddled with his own homemade shrubs, cordials and mixers using locally foraged ingredients. There are also top-notch wines curated by local wine company Talking Wines, including award-winning Woodchester Valley and beers by Gloucester Brewery and Cotswold Lakes Brew.

Situated on the ground floor of a beautifully renovated Victorian brick warehouse overlooking Gloucester’s historic Victoria Basin, the Roots + Seeds Gloucester site design is inspired by the local vernacular with a nod to the Victorian greenhouse aesthetic in keeping with the ‘kitchen garden’ ethos. Light and air throughout, the rear of the space features an original exposed brick wall features wooden banquette-style seating lit from above by ‘nautical style’ metal wall lamps. The opposite wall is clad in white painted shiplap complemented by black and white Victorian-style patterned tiled floors with marble-topped bistro tables and Hans Wegner-style Wishbone chairs in walnut.

The front half of the space will feature a dedicated café space with a pea green painted coffee counter with faux marble top, lit from above by pressed glass ‘Trifle’ pendant shades. To the front, full-height windows offer views over the harbourside. Seating up to 60 covers inside and outside on a large, outdoor terrace overlooking Victoria Basin, with stylish wooden furniture and pretty sun brollies interspersed with planters filled with cottage-style planting to enhance the overall palette.

"We are just so excited to be able to open our second restaurant at Gloucester Food Dock,” says Roots + Seeds Café & Kitchen co-founder, Toby Baggott. “Not only is this area a successful hub known for its superb independent food outlets, but it’s also a wonderful and historic location with fantastic views over Victoria Basin.”

Roots + Seeds Kitchen Garden, Cirencester opened two years ago this week, and has since celebrated receiving two accolades; ‘Start-up of the Year’ Award at the 2024 Gloucestershire Foodie Awards and ‘Best Restaurant in the Cotswolds’ at the inaugural Slow Cotswolds Awards 2024, and chosen by Bradt travel guide publishers, which published its ‘Slow Travel Guide to the Cotswolds’, written by Caroline Mills. **Roots + Seeds also won the ‘Highly Commended’ Award in the So Glos Lifestyle Awards 2024, ‘Chef of the Year’ category.

“Our focus at Roots + Seeds has always been about engaging with the wider community, offering a fun, lively, family-focused environment and celebrating the fantastic fresh produce grown in our own 1/4 acre kitchen garden and from our amazing suppliers within a 25-mile radius. Growing our own food also helps us achieve yet another goal of creating a low to zero food waste restaurant.”