Outside the Box, Ilkley

Have you ever thought you’d like a local café that welcomes you, your granny and your kids, where you can hang out,  read the papers, chat with friends, bring your baby. A place that puts on bread-making classes, sewing bees, a cooks club and a writers workshop, and naturally serves good coffee and simple but good, nutritious food,  Well Outside the Box is just such a place, and that’s why their strapline is ‘more than a just a café’.

Outside the Box opened in 2013 as a community café and charity created by a team of good people called Ilkley Community Enterprise Ltd., to provide a cheerful place to meet and eat and support people with a learning disability.  Adults and young people with special needs work in the café with the aim of helping them ‘achieve  their  potential  and  lead  more  independent  and  fulfilled  lives’.

The work experience bit is all well and good, but what about the food I hear you say. Well it’s homely, good value, well made simple food with porridge, granola, croissants and home-made jam for breakfast, soups, sandwiches, mushrooms on toast, frittatas, salads, that kind of thing through the day, with cakes to finish: flapjacks, muffins, scones and maybe fruit cake, chocolate and banana cake or a delicious lemon polenta cake. The décor is new and bright and modern, the walls plastered with notices of upcoming events and as you might imagine with so much going on,  there’s a real buzz about the place. Open Tues-Sun 9-4pm