{"id":21693,"date":"2017-12-13T19:41:45","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T19:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=21693"},"modified":"2017-12-13T19:41:45","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T19:41:45","slug":"the-power-of-bread-brunch-at-the-roasthouse-in-poplar-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/the-power-of-bread-brunch-at-the-roasthouse-in-poplar-union\/","title":{"rendered":"The power of bread: brunch at the Roasthouse in Poplar Union"},"content":{"rendered":"

The beautiful reality of \u2018Just Bread\u2019: baking workshops and a small cafe bakery chain with a conscience enabling refugee women in London to support themselves.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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The sunlight gleams through the thick glass of the large windows, when I step in the Roasthouse in Poplar Union. It is just a few minutes away from the City, in London, but it seems far from the chaotic agglomeration of lights, voices and steps characteristic of Canary Wharf. <\/span><\/p>\n

The chitchat of the people sat at the tables blends with the humble noise of the coffee machine. The kitchen is open, so that everyone can see the food getting prepared. Two women move resolutely around the kitchen tools, mixing puffy dough in metallic pans. <\/span><\/p>\n

Nawal (not her real name), overlooks, with a friendly smile and a firm voice. She prefers not to be named, nor recorded. She brushes her dark hair back with her fingers before accepting to talk to me about her experience with <\/span>Just Bread<\/span><\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Nawal is a refugee who took part in a 10 week baking course in a partnership sponsored by the <\/span>British Refugee Council.<\/span><\/a> \u201cJust Bread\u201d<\/span><\/a> is the name of the project, created in 2014 by Charity worker Liz Siena from her passion for baking in a multicultural environment, offering a baking course to refugees and asylum seekers and help them enter the job market. Embraced and hosted by the <\/span>E5 Bakehouse<\/span><\/a> ever since, <\/span>Just Bread<\/span><\/i> grew far beyond a baking course, into a means for refugees to support themselves in a world extremely reluctant in accepting \u201crefugee\u201d stamped right-to-work visas. The success of the Bakehouse led to the opening of the <\/span>Roasthouse<\/span><\/a> in Poplar Union in September 2017, to offer continuity to the program and help refugees work in a healthy environment.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image: Giulia Trinci<\/p><\/div>\n

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Image: Giulia Trinci<\/p><\/div>\n

I order a flatbread, one of the signature dishes at the Roasthouse, and a coffee. The barista has deep blue eyes and a warm look. He accepts timidly to be photographed, drawing beautiful leaves of milk without the need to focus too much on it. He says he is into photography too; he makes documentaries. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Image: Giulia Trinci<\/p><\/div>\n

The flatbread tastes amazing with seeds, olives, boiled eggs and goat cheese sprinkled on top. The perfect twist to the usual brunch. \u201cDo you like it?\u201d Nawal appears with a smile and takes a seat at my table. In her fifties, she came to London a few years ago, from one of the Middle Eastern countries. She is naturally talkative and needs little direction or prompt from me in telling her story: \u201cIn London, whenever you need to go to the grocery shop, you just walk out the door. In my country it\u2019s not that easy, there is less freedom.\u201d She looks up for a moment: \u201cAnd\u201d a glance of a smile crosses her face: \u201cI am gay\u201d.<\/p>\n

Middle Eastern countries, ranked last at a global level in the <\/span>WEF Gender Gap Report<\/span><\/a>, are infamous for their restrictive laws towards women. In the worst cases, women must obtain a male relative\u2019s permission and be accompanied by a male in order to take public transport, apply for a job or even to access healthcare. Moreover, homosexuality is <\/span>illegal<\/span><\/a> in 10 of the 17 Middle Eastern countries, six of which impose the death penalty upon conviction of the \u2018crime\u2019: \u201cI lived in secrecy for all my life. You cannot be gay where I come from\u201d. When I ask her how her family reacted she moves her hair back: \u201cMy family doesn\u2019t know. I don\u2019t want to upset them. I told them that I had got a working visa\u201d She laughs nervously, scrolling her head: \u201cwhen they come over I just behave\u201d. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite having a masters degree and willing to work in any environment, for a whole year she never received a call back off the plethora of submitted applications. After a couple of negative experiences, underpaid and treated more like a number than a person, she found the <\/span>Just Bread<\/span><\/i> initiative through the British Refugee Council: \u201cIt\u2019s not easy to be a refugee. In my CV I wouldn\u2019t mention it. But when they see your ID they don\u2019t call you back. Or maybe they just didn\u2019t like me.\u201d She is glad to have found the Bakehouse: \u201cIt\u2019s a lovely environment to be part of. They don\u2019t treat you like a slave. They treat you nothing less than anyone else\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Open only since September, the Roasthouse, as well as offering a daily menu, now collaborates on a weekly basis with Borough Market, producing 500 organic flatbreads a week for <\/span>Gourmet Goat<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image: Giulia Trinci<\/p><\/div>\n

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Image: Giulia Trinci<\/p><\/div>\n

I look around before heading back. The sunlight gives the furniture a warm glow, music plays lightly in the background. Hanging on the walls silent photographs telling a story that we are used to reading in the sterile reality of the news, made of numbers and confused faces. It is overwhelmingly intense, yet refreshing in a way that I might not be able to fully explain, having the chance to interact with individuals that met a reality we will never understand, from the gaze of our muffled, privileged existences. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Image: Giulia Trinci<\/p><\/div>\n

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Image: Giulia Trinci<\/p><\/div>\n

Words: Giulia Trinci<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The beautiful reality of \u2018Just Bread\u2019: baking workshops and a small cafe bakery chain with a conscience enabling refugee women in London to support themselves.   The sunlight gleams through the thick glass of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":21984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,56],"tags":[979,1262,1481,1993,3425,3769,5029,5198,5300],"class_list":["post-21693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-food","tag-bread","tag-charity","tag-community","tag-e5-bakehouse","tag-just-bread","tag-london","tag-project","tag-refugees","tag-roast-house"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}