The Hill Station Bold Vision

Top marks for a well cooked breakfast sandwich, so good I went back the following week and had it again.
The vegetarian breakfast sandwich is good enough but not amazing.
As for kids, they’ll do what you want, which, for us, was beans on toast.
On the down side, I ordered a flat white and was given a regular black coffee because the waitress had entered something wrong and no she didn’t change it. But hey, we all have bad days.

Nice rest stop after a walk to the top of the hill. Look up at the ceiling art. lots of model planes crashing into buildings including the twin towers. Really nice soup let down by my fresh orange juice being from a carton which was off and tasted really bad. café was packed with a middle class crowd and lots of buggies (three wheeled). Good prices also.

Relaxed and friendly. Sit on you own and contemplate the art or the views. Sit with friends and share ideas and stories. Sit with people you don’t know and discover something new.
The menu keeps changing — global, seasonal, healthy, affordable.
The art keeps changing — new local exhibitions every couple of weeks
And there are beginning to be extra events in the evenings — plenty going on at the heart of the hill

The Hill Station is a café cum restaurant set up by local residents for the community. Bold Vision, a unique Community Social Enterprise, spearheaded the initiative. Fascinating as this all is, let’s talk about the food! Seasonal food cooked on the premises incudes, Welsh Cawl (lamb and pearl barley stew), grilled Haloumi and chick pea salad, Harira (Moroccan lamb stew), Moong daal with rice and a flatbread, several other vegetarian and non-​vegetarian options as well as a range of soups, snacks, cakes, cookies and breakfast fry-​ups of the posh variety! Prices vary but for £5 or less you can eat well here. The standard is unwaveringly high solid and authentic flavours combined with the freshest ingredients (many grown locally by residents) and served with excellent coffee and tea as well as a range of soft drinks. As yet, the café is unlicensed but if you want to bring a bottle feel free (subject to a £1.50 corkage charge). There is something about sitting at the top of Telegraph Hill, with the café doors wide open and a cool breeze wafting in. Views fom the hill across London are unmatched, spanning Battersea to Wembley, and east to Canary Wharf and the O2 Dome. The café came about as a result of local efforts. Local residents provided the seed funding and the labour to renovate a disused undercroft below the local community centre with Bold Vision acting as organisers pulling together the planning and design and build stages and further fund-​raising activities. The Telegraph Hill Community Centre (
) is also the central hub for the Telegraph Hill Festival, an annual arts and comedy festival which usually takes place every March/​April. The Hill Station will embark upon a further phase of development to increase the seating area, provide a better equipped kitchen and serving area and toilets too. The absence of loos lends me to rate this place 4 stars, though it really ought to get 5 for the quality of food and welcome. Disabled access has been thought through and seamlessly assimilated into the design, no patronising ramps or lifts here come straight in! This is such an inspiring and bold vision. It deserves to succeed. UPDATE: 30^th October 2012
Hill Station now has a unisex toilet, accessible from within the café. The extension to the café has also gone well, increasing the seating area, expanding the kitchen and also providing a handy performance stage for evening events having been to a couple of events there I can testify that it really works well. The premises are now licenced, so if you fancy a beer or a glass of wine, you can. Kitchen and waiting staffing have increased so service is now faster and more consistent, which is also good news. I continue to go there it’s a much loved local resource, long may it stay that way.