Milk Teeth, the sister café of Milk, has opened its doors in Tooting

Milk Teeth, in Mitcham Road, is a café that is said to “get back to its roots”, according to co-founders Lauren Johns and Julian Porter, with a "small" menu, “constantly changing” special dishes and a place for people to “be creative and reinvigorate themselves”.

In addition to coffee, food is also served to double up as a restaurant like the other diner at the corner of Hildreth Street and Bedford Hill.

Lauren, director and co-founder of Milk, said: “Café food is an arena that is often overlooked, particularly in the United Kingdom, but we find it is exciting to commit the same level of energy and attention to simple food that is more commonplace in high-achieving restaurant kitchens.

“Just because you’re eating something in the day for under £15 and there aren’t any table cloths doesn’t mean the food can’t be beautiful and exciting.”

Inside Milk Teeth. Photo: Laura Johns

Among the dishes served is ‘The Champion’, a “very, very old-fashioned” English breakfast and free range Sussex Tamworth pork and 45 day dry-aged Hertfordshire beef fat served with boudin noir by chef Christian Parra.

Milk Teeth is also in partnership with coffee manufacturers Barn in Berlin, Germany for their espressos and Koppi Coffee Roasters in Sweden, as well as Gardelli in Italy, for filter coffees.

Ms Johns and Mr Porter also made the decision to only brew black coffee on batch brewers so the focus would be on the coffees themselves and not the brewing method.

As for the design and décor of the place, the owners designed and physically built it themselves.

Julian, co-founder of Milk, said: “Designing spaces is always one of our favourite parts of the process and Lauren and I spent months thinking and drawing it over and over again.

“The palette is very much based on natural colours of eucalyptus, sand, paperbark, wattle, the colours of Australian winter where I grew up.

He added: “I think there are cross overs but it is a very different space to milk. We didn't have much money to fit it out so we focused on finding one or two beautiful materials like the handmade ceramic tiles in the bar and the Italian terrazzo flooring and the rest pretty much took care of itself.”

Coffee at Milk Teeth. Photo: Laura Johns

Lauren, director of Milk, said: “We love south London so we’d never move too far away from home and Tooting has a wonderful energy about it, you feel instantly swept up in it.”

Ms Johns was born and raised in Wandsworth and her family have been in south west London “for many generations”, while Julian’s roots in Byron Bay, Australia, are said to have influenced the look and feel of the cafés.

You can visit Milk here.