Outdoor drinks and street food are coming back to the Bombed Out Church gardens

Outdoor drinks and street food are coming back to the Bombed Out Church gardens at the end of March and it’s a sign that summer’s on the way!

The Bombed Out Church Garden Bar & Café has been closed over winter, but it’s reopening ahead of Easter weekend alongside a programme of activities for families which includes a visit from the Easter Bunny and an Easter egg display.

There’ll also be the Bombed Out Church’s first monthly Groove and Grind Record Fair of the year in the gardens on Easter Sunday, between 12noon and 6pm, with loads of vinyl, cassettes, CDs and merchandise like T-shirts and badges to dig into, and a DJ playing all day.

The Garden Bar & Café, which is pet-friendly, has become one of the city centre’s most popular open-air venues since it launched in July 2020.

It became a big attraction straight away and now on the sunniest long summer evenings it can often hold up to 400 customers on benches and sitting on the grass. 

It’s returning for spring/summer on Thursday March 29, kicking off the usual Thursday to Sunday opening, and it will relaunch with a brand-new street food vendor.

Food truck El Piloto will be serving gorgeous tacos and loaded fries, plus lots of tasty vegan and veggies options over the first weekend before a variety of other independent traders takes over on rotation through the season.

The bar is back too, with speciality spritzes, wines and spirits, bottled beers and ciders plus a few draught beers, soft drinks, tea and coffee.

Opening hours will be 5pm til late on Thursdays and Fridays, and from 12noon on Saturdays and Sundays. Because it’s outdoors, it’s obviously weather dependent, but that means on warm light evenings it can be serving until 9.30 or 10pm.

Sarah-Louise Jones, venue co-ordinator at the Bombed Out Church, says the Garden Bar is a hugely important source of funding for them.

“The Garden Bar & Cafe financially supports the delivery of our cultural and community programme, as well as the development of the site as an inner city space for everyone to enjoy,” she says. “It really helps towards keeping us thriving and we wouldn’t be able to do everything we do without it.”

Along with the bar opening on the Thursday, there’ll be Easter Bunny visits (1pm – 3pm), craft activities (1pm – 4pm) and face painting (1pm – 4pm) on Good Friday, Easter Saturday and Easter Monday.

From Good Friday there’ll be an Easter egg display within the church walls too, showing designs by local schoolchildren,

“We try and work with local schools as often as we can,” adds Sarah. “Over Lunar New Year we had schools creating their leaves of hope so this is a similar idea, having eggs that children have made around the church. We also have an egg hunt activity sheet so families can try and spot them.”

Easter weekend marks the start of a busy time for the Bombed Out Church – for anyone who fancies sampling a few drinks, there’s a Beer & Cider Festival happening from Thursday April 11 to Sunday April 14. 

For more info on the Bombed Out Church click here.

For the latest news in Liverpool click here.