Looking up Bold Street from the Hanover Street end it was not very far up on the left hand side. Next door to Waring and Gillow who sold quality furniture and almost opposite the Kardomah Cafe which specialised in coffee - the fragrance was very nice and seemed to travel the full length of the street.
cica 1943.
Did you used to to the Kardomah? let me Know......
A walk down memory lane. I remember Kardomah well. Whenever my mum took my brother and I to Liverpool from the Wirral on a shopping excursion (big day out involving a walk, the bus to the underground station, then the train journey through to Central Station etc) we would have lunch at the Kardomah. I remember the long glass counter on the left of the cafe in Bold Street, with its rows of coffee grinding and weighing machines. The tables if I recall correctly were tiled for easy cleaning and had a high polish.
ReplyDeleteMy aunt, Edna McCullagh worked for Kardomah at the time - she was P.A. to the Managing Director, Neville Ross for many years and I remember she would occasionally bring home a new recipe to try courtesy of the experimental cook who was employed to try new dishes and see how they fared before including them on the standard menus. I think that the Head Office was originally in Liverpool as that is where the business was founded
My aunt was heart-broken when Charles Forte took over the business which was asset-rich as many of the Kardomah cafes were on freehold sites rather than leasing their properties which would probably be more normal nowadays. He saw the freeholds as a way of injecting capital by selling them and leasing back where he wished to do so. Investment acquisition in order to asset-strip was a comparatively new concept then - at least on the scale employed for Kardomah.
It's good to see that someone is keeping the memory of this great company alive. I recall the scene in Brief Encounter.
Best wishes
Sue Bailey (nee McCullagh)