About us

A roastery, its café, its counter

A brick house in Vieux-Lille, a black wooden shopfront, a roaster in the back room. Lucie reopened it in 2017, with Malo doing the baking.

The café wall: backlit metal shelves, cups, photographs and plants

Vanacker? The name painted on the window since 1931.

Achille Vanacker came from Ypres with a gas-fired roaster and three sacks of green coffee. He painted his name on the window in gold letters and sold his coffee by weight, in brown paper cones.

The roastery closed in 1994. His granddaughter found the shopfront behind a metal shutter, the oak counter intact, and the roasting ledger kept by hand until the last day.

The roastery: coffee cherries, a scoop of beans, the grinder, the bowl of the blend, the portafilter

The dark green glass partition, its enamel lamp and banana leaves

A cup and a small posy on the pale wooden shelf

The café

Wooden shelves under the lamps, jars of beans, a long table by the window and a few small round tables. People read the paper here in the morning, work a little in the afternoon, and talk about the coffee they’ve just had.

The back room

The fifteen-kilo roaster, stacked jute sacks, the grinder and the tasting table. Malo bakes back here too: at night for the croissants, in the morning for the cakes.

A tray of golden croissants out of the oven

At the counter, the steel kettle pours into a row of filters

Lucie’s rule

Coffee roasted this week, ground to order, drunk from a warm cup.

The story of the house

1931
The roastery
Achille Vanacker sets up a roaster in the back room; green coffee arrives in jute sacks.
1962
The counter
His daughter Simone adds a counter: people drink their coffee standing as they buy their beans.
2017
The door reopens
Lucie reopens the house with Malo: the roaster at the back, the café at the front.
This morning
The first batch
The roaster heats up at seven, the first filter drips at eight.