Graces Cafe

Graces Cafe is the community cafe and catering operation based inside Slade Green and Howbury Community Centre, on the Chrome Road site that has long been the focal point for the small Slade Green settlement to the south of Erith. The structural difference from anything else in our directory is that Graces is not a commercial high-street takeaway — it is a community kitchen, run as part of the Centre's wider operation, with a side line in private catering for events, family parties and platter orders.

The offer is the proper community-cafe spread — cooked breakfasts and brunches, sandwich and finger-food platters that can be ordered through to the kitchen for collection, plus pastries, tea, coffee and the daily-special board that catches whoever is at the Centre that day. The Facebook page advertises catering and platter orders alongside the daily walk-in cafe trade, and the shop has built a small but real following with Slade Green residents who use the Centre for its library, classes and community groups.

For visitors using the Community Centre or the Library, it is the default place to eat without leaving the building. For people in the surrounding streets, it is one of the few day-time food options on this side of central Erith, before the parade of West Street takeaways opens for the evening trade. Honest, unpretentious neighbourhood-cafe cooking, and a useful entry for the directory at this end of the postcode.