Customers flowing in as riverside pop-up cafe restaurant returns

A POP-UP café, bar and restaurant on the River Thames opened for a second year on Friday.

Lockdown Lodge, which is on the towpath on the southern bank near Hambleden Lock, has attracted almost twice the number of bookings for sit-down meals than it had on its opening weekend last year. It is run by Minna Hughes, a 20-year-old student who came up with the idea after having to cancel her gap year plans because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The venture is based in four converted shipping containers and consists of two storeys with a licensed walk-up bar on the ground floor serving drinks and takeaway food to eat at picnic tables. The food is available seven days a week while the bar closes on Mondays. Chef Jimmy Garcia is serving a fine-dining menu in a covered seating area on the upper deck from Wednesdays to Sundays. Two sittings have already sold out.

Miss Hughes began moving the containers from her father Chris’s yard in Binfield Heath after marking out the site. He owns a firm which provides catering kitchens to events. She said: “The sun slowed the set-up because it was so hard to work in the heat but thankfully everything came together for us. We were shuttling everything back and forth on a truck.”

Visitors at the launch included chef Paul Clerehugh, who runs the Crooked Billet pub and restaurant at Stoke Row. Miss Hughes said: “He was lovely about everything we were doing and told us he was impressed, which was high praise indeed. We’re really pleased with how everything has gone so far and look forward to what the next few weeks will bring.”

Head chef Adam Teal said: “Walk-up trade has been pretty good considering the weather at the weekend and bookings are up by 85 per cent on where we were a year ago so we’re very happy.”