Ullapool-based New Zealand inspired The Cult Café shortlisted for Good Food Award
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New Zealand-style café The Cult has been shortlisted for the Good Food Awards, with voting closing on August 22.
The Ullapool-based café takes inspiration from the owner's New Zealand background, and their passion for good quality produce.
The café established in July last year in the premises of the former Tea Store, was fully refurbished in six weeks and opened last September. The café offers coffee, smoothies, and brunch style food, as well as their new burger joint menu running in the evenings.
The co–owners of The Cult Café, Zoe Maclunie and Stewart McAllister said:"We planned on doing a New Zealand-style café. Café culture in New Zealand is massive. It's a big thing over there, it's the equivalent of the UK’s pub culture. We were really focused on doing brunch style food with good quality produce, and also making it look good.
"We go out of your way to use good quality produce, which is sometimes is not easy and costs us more, but people get a better experience and they enjoy it. We wanted to have a place that we would enjoy going to ourselves.
Stewart, who has attracted over 1000 followers on Instagram and Facebook, said: "In the modern day you want the food to be Instagrammable. People eat with their eyes, social media is basically free advertising. People also want to show off the food they're eating when they're on holiday.
"But its also got to be backed up with flavour too, it has to look good in photos but also taste nice. We came up with name Cult and the hashtag #jointhecult, and we started building the brand from there. After that we asked Zoe's cousin Lauren Stuart, who works in prop design, and previously worked on the Avatar film in New Zealand, to design our logo.
Zoe, from New Zealand, said:"I would say our avocado smash is the most popular dish. It's unique, it makes me think of Australia and New Zealand, it's an ideal brunch dish. Our granola is my family’s recipe, and is used for the New Zealand Olympic rowing team, its the same recipe we use in The Cult, we know it works and the team win gold every time!
"We also want to adapt our menu to the season, in the winter doing seasonal warmer foods, things like soups, Sunday roasts and porridge. We want to do this especially for the locals, because it can be hard for locals to get in here in summer since its such a small place. We are really lucky with our staff, we have a really lovely team who care about what they do."
You can vote for The Cult Cafe in the Good Food Awards here, until August 22.
