“The best thing about St John’s is the people”

The Café at the heart of St John’s as part of the new social hub is the first on the site in the 500-year history of the College. Three staff – all from different countries and with their own individual expertise – run the new eating and work space, serving everything from flat whites to home-baked focaccia sandwiches and French pastries. Here, we get to know the team.

Emese Varga - Head Barista

“Customers may even be lucky enough to receive a drink decorated with Emese’s personal signature latte art: a perfectly drawn tulip"

When St John’s barista Emese Varga rolls up her sleeves to make the perfect flat white for a customer, her passion for coffee is clear for all to see. The whole length of her left arm, from wrist to shoulder, is decorated with a dreamlike mix of colourful coffee-themed imagery, from an angular Moka coffee pot to the milk jug she used to make her first latte, to a cup of her favourite drink topped with a tulip design picked out in frothed milk.

“I love coffee and I never get bored of it,” says Emese, who first tried a properly-brewed cup of the drink only when she took a job in a coffee shop in her native Hungary. There, coffee is enjoyed differently, she explains: instead of a machine, the barista measures out grounds and water “like a science production” to create a less intense drink than the cappuccinos and espressos consumed in the UK. Having mastered the art of “theatre coffee”, Emese took her barista skills to Cambridge, rising to become manager of the Jamaica Blue coffee shop before realising she missed the hands-on process of making drinks for customers. Now, she will turn her skills to providing flat whites, lattes and more in the new St John’s Café, often for discerning customers who know their perfect brew and appreciate fine ‘latte art’ (the images drawn in froth) when they see it.

“Coffee is my passion and I feel very comfortable around it,” the barista says. “It’s not just my job: it’s my hobby, and that makes me happy to come here in the morning. The team here is lovely, like a family, and the café is a nice cosy place where people can come and chat or stay and work.” College members can enjoy a drink as good or better than one they could buy in a Cambridge coffee bar, for a lower price, she points out. “We’re not giving them just ‘a coffee’: we’re giving them the right coffee, with the right beans, right machines and right temperature of milk.” If the Café isn’t too busy, customers may even be lucky enough to receive a drink decorated with Emese’s personal signature latte art: a perfectly drawn image of a tulip.

Ania Olszanicka – Café Assistant

“Friends here become like your second family, and that’s why you can make friends for life”

“For me, the best thing about St John’s is the people,” says Ania Olszanicka, the longest-serving member of the Café team after 16 years working in hospitality at the College. “I really love that there are so many nationalities, among the students, the Fellows and the staff.”

Ania, who came to the UK from Poland with her husband and baby son in 2006, believes her own experience helps her understand the disorientation students can feel when they first arrive in Cambridge. “I understand it’s hard at the beginning – they’re away from their homes and families. Friends here become like your second family, and that’s why you can make friends for life.” Building connections with the students, most of whom know her by name, is one of the pleasures of her job, she adds, especially when those she has met as undergraduates progress to graduate study or even a Fellowship.

Working in the College’s Combination Room and then the Buttery has allowed Ania to forge her own lifelong bonds with colleagues, while the backdrop of bridges, lawns and Courts has boosted her passion for photography. She can often be found with her camera and lenses, taking photographs for friends and family. “This is such a great environment. It’s so beautiful, and everything changes all the time with the weather and the seasons.”

A second enthusiasm for Ania is home baking. Her two sons, partner and friends benefit from her talent for crafting Polish sponge cakes, made with fresh cream, fruit and liquid jam she boils up from fresh berries. Pavlova, topped with passion fruit, is another signature speciality. Will she be baking for the Café? “We’ll be selling some beautiful pastries and sweet snacks, but I won’t be cooking them myself,” she says. “Maybe I will keep a special homemade sponge cake under the counter!”

Yau Man Cheung – Café Assistant

“The students will love these spaces: they are not only perfect for eating but they’re comfortable places to study”

When Yau Man and his wife and four-year-old son made the decision last year to leave their home in Hong Kong and head for the UK, it was pure chance that brought them to Cambridge. “We more or less put a pin in the map,” Yau Man says. “I’d spent four years at boarding school near Blackpool, which was fun but the north was too cold for me. I knew I wanted to live further south.” In September 2022, the family arrived in Cambridge, and shortly afterwards Yau Man joined the new Café team at St John’s. “I’m working at one of the most famous universities, in one of the greatest Colleges,” he says. “I’m learning a lot, with a lot of training on the new coffee machines. I feel expectations are high here, and the whole team works together to meet them.”

Hospitality work means a change of direction for Yau Man, who studied interior design during five years in higher education in the United States. He returned to his native Hong Kong and worked as a furniture designer, before an interest in fitness saw him move into personal training and finally gym management. The pressures of Covid restrictions, which meant his gym was repeatedly forced to shut its doors, combined with the political tensions in Hong Kong eventually prompted his family’s inter-continental move.

With his design background, Yau Man appreciates the clean but cosy aesthetic of the new social spaces, and especially likes the architect-designed curved roof of the light-filled Buttery. “The students will love these spaces: they are not only perfect for eating but they’re comfortable places to study.”

Published 17/02/2023

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