“It’s incredible. We’re a bit dumbfounded to be honest – we’ve not even been open a year!”
Noosha Procopio was rightly over-the-moon to discover recently that the café she owns with her brother Peter (Procopio’s Pantry in Bury St Edmunds) had been named the best in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire in the Muddy Stilettos Awards.
It is, she says, the icing on the cake for the fledgling business, which the siblings put all their heart and soul into, trying to offer something just a little bit different from their premises at Langton Place, off Hatter Street.
And that includes offering pre-bookable Alice in Wonderland afternoon teas, gentleman’s teas (which obviously ladies can enjoy too), and pop-up events, including a pudding club.
“My brother opened Procopio’s in February 2020, just before lockdown,” says Noosha of the café's beginnings. “He’d been made redundant and decided to try it out, but then the pandemic hit.”
Peter was then based off the A10 at Littleport, in smaller premises.
“He decided to move and looked into Bury, but it was too much for him to do on his own...so I quit my day job (as a specification technologist in food manufacturing) to join. I’ve worked as a chef for the National Trust and I’ve always been interested in food and cooking...it made sense.”
The duo have a love of food and ingredients running through their veins, with family ties to southern Italy. In fact, some of the dishes at Procopio’s are influenced by their heritage – from authentic Italian meatball sliders, to pizza-filled toasties.
Noosha and Peter opened the café in Bury St Edmunds almost a year ago and say it’s been fantastic, with lots of regulars (some visiting daily) and glowing reviews from customers.
“It’s a very traditional-looking tearoom,” Noosha explains of their concept. “We’ve got rose wallpaper, and pretty decorated tables. We serve loose leaf tea in bone china. But I’d say the food has a modern twist.”
Everything as far as possible is made in-house, including the baked beans, chutneys, pickles and sauces, supplemented by local produce – be that Baron Bigod cheese, wines from Framlingham and Wyken Vineyard, Brewshed beer made in town, bread from Wooster’s or their baker in Brandon, or meat from the local butcher.
The day begins with breakfast and brunch, with a menu split into ‘sweet’, ‘savoury’ and ‘something different’ sections. “So we have smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on toast, we do shakshuka, and a delicious savoury bread and butter pudding with our own beans. That’s a Cheddar custard with spring onions, mustard and Worcestershire sauce. And customers really like our ‘French’ toasties, where we fill brioche with Nutella or lemon cheesecake, dip that in beaten egg, and fry like French toast.”
At lunchtimes, don’t expect a long list of the same old sarnies. Noosha rattles off her favourite plates – from Wooster’s croissants filled with bacon and Baron Bigod, or balsamic mushrooms and Binham Blue, to soup served in a cob bread made specially for them, rarebit toasties, and loaded wedges, topped with slow-roast shoulder of pork in their own homemade barbecue sauce.
“People love our pickles and dressings. In fact, so many have said we should bottle and sell our salad dressing,” Noosha beams.
Cakes and scones are displayed proudly in Procopio’s Pantry’s ‘cake cupboard’, and change very regularly.
“We like to change up our bakes every week, depending on what we fancy and the season. Something people come back all the time for is our scones. We have fruit scones, and our cheese and chilli scones made with fresh chillies and chilli flakes. Sometimes we make a guest scone too. We’ve had cherry and almond, chocolate chip, blueberry, rhubarb and custard, and fig and cinnamon. I served that one with honey mascarpone cheese instead of jam.”
Cakes she adores to bake include Hummingbird, raspberry and white chocolate brownies, chocolate fudge, ginger, date, walnut and banana, and Earl grey and lemon.
“Something that’s gone down very well is my toffee apple flapjack tart. It’s a bit of a creation of mine and was actually an accident! I made a mistake with some flapjacks and they were all crumbling apart, so I pressed the mix into a tart tin, layered it with apples and caramel and baked it. It’s become a firm favourite.”
To wet your whistle, tea is sourced from Butterworths, coffee’s roasted in Ely for the café, and hot chocolate is blended in-house with real chocolate and cream.
If you want to cool down, soft drinks range from Maynard’s juices, to Breckland Orchard’s Posh Pop. “And we’re looking into making our own peach tea and grapefruit lemonade,” adds Noosha.
Afternoon tea has become big news at the café. Priced at £18.95 (48 hours’ notice needed), Noosha and the team go to town, making fresh sandwiches, a fruit and chilli cheese scone, and four pieces of cake per person.
The ‘gentleman’s tea’ is £24.99 for half a Scotch egg, a sausage roll, a meatball slider, pulled pork slider, cheese, onion and chutney roll, a scone, and a small selection of sweet treats.
If you’re feeling spontaneous, Noosha says you can make up a mini afternoon tea when you pop in, ordering a sandwich, scone and slice of cake for £13.95.
Something she’s very very excited by though, is the Alice in Wonderland tea (minimum of six people). “We had a hen party wanting a themed tea. They came in and thought it would work perfectly for Alice in Wonderland, so we ran with it and that’s how we came up with this. It’s so much fun for all of us putting that tea together.
“We set the table up with grass and flower pots...teapots and cake stands. It’s quite a show.”
This tea is £24.95 per person. “You get a cream cheese and cucumber swirl, a savoury muffin in a cupcake case, a coronation chicken slider roll, ham and sweet chilli jam slider roll, scones spelled out with ‘eat me’, Earl Grey lemon cake made into a Mad Hatter’s top hat, cheesecakes with edible flowers, hummingbird cake buns, and a chocolate and almond Battenburg cake. Oh, and there are ‘drink me’ bottles too. I love getting to be creative.”
Special events will be a regular occurrence at Procopio’s Pantry. Plans are underway for an Italian night, and guests are already asking Noosha when her next pudding club will be, following a successful night in recent weeks.
“I think we’ll do pudding club once a quarter,” she says tentatively. “The last one was great. We served a savoury main course, then five different puddings. We sent out the hot puds first (sticky toffee and brioche chocolate pudding), then two cold puddings (lemon posset and passionfruit pavlova), and finished with our affogato.
“I just can’t get over how fantastic all the feedback has been.”
Procopio’s Pantry is open 9.30am to 4pm Wednesday to Saturday, and until 3pm Sunday.
Find the business on Instagram and Facebook.
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