We’re lucky to have somewhere like Folk Suffolk on our doorstep. Cafe, shop, meeting place…it serves multiple purposes in one beautiful building located at Fornham Business Court, just outside Bury St Edmunds.
We’d originally only intended to visit most recently for a quick coffee. Coffee, however, turned into a leisurely lunch – and what a lunch it was!
Folk Suffolk is one of those places where you instantly step in and feel relaxed. The rustic decor is welcoming, and there’s plenty of comfortable seating – although the place is pretty much always busy, so it can sometimes be hard to find a table.
There’s a tempting display of cakes and pastries at one end of the cafe area – and just past the cakes, in view of the kitchen, there’s a small shop selling food and drink products and other gifts from Suffolk and beyond, as well as a dedicated service area for takeaway drinks.
I may have said “quick coffee”, but in actual fact, I chose one of Folk Suffolk’s current specials: their blackberry iced matcha. A decent strength to both the matcha and berry flavours here – an impressive start to our visit.
With food menus in front of us while we drank, it would have been rude not to take a look…and the descriptions, combined with the sight of the specials board and the smells wafting from the plates that the Folk Suffolk team carried past us to other tables, were enough to convince us.
The fry-up fan across the table ordered just that. At £15.95, the Folk Fry Up comes with two eggs, two rashers of bacon, baked beans, two sausages, garlic mushrooms, hash brown and a choice of white or brown toast. It all arrived piping hot and beautifully presented; everything was cooked perfectly, from the fat of the bacon to the yolks of the eggs. The quality of the ingredients was evident – and the kitchen team even made sure that the butter to accompany the toast arrived soft and spreadable: it’s little details like this that make a place stand out.
While a fry-up was tempting, the sight of huevos rancheros on the specials board quickly changed my mind.
It was a good decision.
Priced at £14.95, it featured two corn tortillas topped with a mildly-spiced chilli con carne, grated mozzarella, two perfectly fried eggs and chilli flakes, with a refreshing pico de gallo on one side, a cooling pot of creme fraiche on the other. A delicious combination of flavours and one that was perfectly balanced.
The fact that Folk Suffolk has a 1.5-hour table limit for parties of one or two, and a 2-hour limit for larger numbers, shows just how popular the place is. And deservedly so: with delicious food, welcoming service and a lovely environment in which to sit and eat or drink, it’s a real gem of a place.
