Chef Nick Hill has developed a breakfast and brunch menu for the Prospect Street venue
Casey Fawcett (left) and Nick Hill, former chef and owner of The Hispanist restaurant at The Living Room coffee shop at Jubilee Central in Hull.(Image: Jubilee Central Ltd)
A new city centre coffee shop has been opened at Jubilee Central promising customers a taste of LA and Australian style brunches. The Living Room has been launched by charity Jubilee Central Ltd, part of Jubilee Church in Hull, and has attracted an award-winning chef to its kitchens.
Nick Hill, who closed his Latin America-themed restaurant The Hispanist early in 2025, has joined the business saying he sees it as a “blank canvas with plenty of room for creativity and we want it to be something different for the city centre.” Mr Hill launched The Hispanist in Paragon Arcade in 2019 and steered through the Covid lockdowns to earn successive listings in the Good Food Guide Top 100 Local UK restaurants and to win the food and drink category in the 2023 HullBID Awards.
He called it a day after describing the burden of rising costs and the mental and physical toll of running the business amid waning customer spending power. Now reenergised, he is taking on the challenge at The Living Room – an idea said to have been conceived nearly 10 years ago when the management at Jubilee Central discussed options for opening up their building and its many facilities onto King Edward Street via the space which once housed a NatWest Bank.
Since then there has been a £650,000 transformation of the building. Revenue now generated from the 60-seat cafe will support Jubilee Central’s work helping long-term unemployed people back into employment.
Casey Fawcett, events manager at Jubilee Central, said: “The front onto King Edward Street was just green slate and nobody knew we were here. We started fundraising for the project because we wanted people to see the work we are doing in the community and the benefits of supporting what we do as an organisation. It’s taken all that time to get to this point.”
The transformation of the former bank has been called the Full View Project because of the installation of a huge glass frontage and the revealing of a previously hidden baroque revival façade of the building. Organisers hope the move will link to the nearby Albion Square regeneration project.
Jubilee Central runs a “life college” helping people develop skills in cooking on a budget, English, crafting and exercise. Businesses and other organisations can use spaces ranging from small meeting rooms to the 598-capacity main auditorium.
Casey added: “It’s been a long time coming and we are eager to get it open. What we want to do is train people up who are currently unemployed. We will use the partnerships which we are developing to get them into employment. We will train people in front of house skills, how to work in events, catering, hospitality, corporate, big events in our auditorium.”
Nick has created a menu “in the breakfast and brunch style of the coffee houses of Los Angeles or Australia.” He added: “Everything in the kitchen here is top drawer, top quality equipment and we’re aiming to source as much of the produce as we can locally from like-minded suppliers.
“The kitchen is about the same size as we had at The Hispanist but with more seating for customers. During the last year I’ve been doing private dining, pop-ups and weddings. We’ve got all sorts of ideas but we’ll start with 9am to 3pm Tuesday to Saturday, maybe some private bookings, and find out what we’re capable of.”
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