New cafe and restaurant serving plant-based food will open in village near Chesterfield

The business, which will be open in four to six weeks’ time, will replace a former sandwich shop on Church Street.

Owner Neil Angus, 50, paid £49,000 for the property and estimates that he will spend at least £10,000 on renovation. He said: “I’m excited. The building is so beautiful and has so much character, it has a real old-fashioned feel to it. The unit is quite small, which I like – it makes it a bit more personal.”

Neil plans to welcome the public three or four days a week to his cafe serving cake and coffee during the daytime and a restaurant offering meals at night. Parties of up to 12 diners will be able to have the whole restaurant to themselves as Neil plans to take only one big booking per evening.

Peanut stew with South African yellow rice and a French roulade, Somalian green chili pesto, sweetcorn custard, North African orange breakfast cake and Italian ginger cake are among the specialities that Neil will be cooking on the premises.

His new cafe/restaurant will be called Kūko and is named after a sky fox in Japanese folklore.

Neil said: “Moving forward in another part of the business, I am looking to get my cakes into places like Pharmacy and Ottolenghi in London. Five months ago I turned down a trial as a dessert development chef at Ottolenghi’s NOPI restaurant...it wasn’t the right time for me.”

The entrepreneur has sold his house in Baslow to invest in Brimington where he has also bought a flat, five minutes away from his new eatery.

He previously ran a plant-based cafe, known as Contandino Atleta, at the sports field in Baslow and pop-up restaurants in the village hall.

Neil has followed a plant-based diet for more than 15 years. He said: “I was quite ill and had my thyroid removed and was in intensive care for three weeks. My digestive system slowed down while I was in hospital, my body wasn’t working property because I couldn’t take any thyroxin medication and piled on about four stone. To lose the weight, I decided to cut fat out of my diet completely and go walking – it took me about three months to lose the weight.”

A former bathroom designer and semi-professional athlete, Neil graduated in business studies from Sheffield University. He bought his first house for £35,000 on Abbeydale Road in Sheffield then sold up to move to Baslow.