The Speedwells

About

Speedwells is a family run restaurant serving up your favourite dishes with some influence from our pals across the pond

Story

Speedwells stands for many different things; a flower, a telephone directory of old for Golders green, a printing company, a car tuning company and now a restaurant. Most importantly all these things are linked.
Meet Sam Adams, owner of Speedwells at Stow and also Grandson of the late great Len Adams, one of the designers of the Speedwell Sprite. When Sam decided to buy his parents restaurant he thought it needed a face lift. After 12 years of trading it had evolved from its humble origins as a basic Coffee House into a restaurant serving British classics, warming breakfasts and great coffee. With this evolution of what was on offer it was apparent that the name "The Coffee House" no longer fitted and a new name was needed. With much thought the name of Speedwells was chosen as a tribute to Sam's family history as well as it seemed a great name for what was to come.
So a little brief history for you here... It all started with a Coffee House. Not The Coffee House that we used to be but a Coffee House in North London in the late 1950s. Len Adams used to meet 2 friends who were also car enthusiasts: John Sprinzel and George Hulbert. John raced as team Speedwell ( the name of his father's printing company) and on one of their meetings John mentioned he had a race coming up but he wasn't happy with his car, after which George looked at it and reworked the cylinder head. John won his next race after which he was interviewed in which the word Speedwell was mentioned several times. The next day Speedwell printing company received several phone calls asking where they could get their cars tuned to perform like John's had. This gave the three gentleman an idea and soon Speedwell tuning company was created. The business took off very quickly and over the next couple of years they performed hundreds of tuning on 14 races out of 19. But as they say all good things come to an end and during the 1960s the men went their own ways.
Now 50 years later we are bringing back the name for our restaurant. We're taking what The Coffee House stood for- a family run place where you could get great coffee, relax, read a paper and enjoy some heart-warming home made food- and adding a little bit of an influence from our pals across the pond. All this and we're extending our opening hours. So although we may look like a brand new business we are still The Coffee House at heart...... After all it all started in a Coffee House