Crafty – formerly known as St Martin’s Coffee Shop – is an independent cafe and restaurant in central Leicester. It is the home of burger specialist, Crafty Burger. The cafe operates Tuesday to Sunday during the day, while Crafty Burger makes an appearance on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings only.
The cafe is a spacious, laid-back place set out over two floors and is perfect for relaxing with good coffee, breakfast, brunch, tea, snacks and lunches. It’s an ideal venue for doing a bit of work on your laptop, chilling out with a book or meeting up with friends for a chat.
Crafty Burger‘s origins date back to September 2014, when Chris Elliman and Andy Hall discussed launching a pop-up burger restaurant at Andy’s coffee shop, St Martin’s Tea & Coffee. Various names were considered for the pop-up including Cow & Pickle and Elliman’s Burgers. Eventually Chris landed on Crafty Burger, which became a reality in November 2014.
The laid-back, buzzing pop-up burger restaurant was an instant success. Customers flocked to try Chris’s creative burgers, which are made with beef from March House Farm in Great Dalby, Leicestershire. The buns come from Toby Milner Bakery in Blaby.
Options include such delights as The Crafty Poet (beef patty, smoked Applewood cheddar, American cheese, smoked streaky bacon, salted onion crisps, BBQ sauce, aioli) and El Rojo (beef patty, chorizo and onion jam, red bacon, Red Leicester, chimichurri, aioli).
Part of the success is down to the quality of ingredients, the rest is down to people loving the fun street-food vibe.
