Brothers Sam and Sunny Sharma are blending serious coffee, playful matcha and the flavours they grew up with at their new Sharrow Vale spot.
Sheffield isn’t exactly crying out for more coffee shops.
Sam and Sunny Sharma knew that when they opened RĀSA on Sharrow Vale Road earlier this year. The city’s independent coffee scene is already bustling and, seemingly every few months, another espresso machine starts hissing into life somewhere.
So the brothers weren’t interested in arriving with claims of reinventing Sheffield coffee culture.
“We knew Sheffield already had a brilliant independent coffee scene,” says Sam. “There are great coffee shops everywhere, and more opening all the time. We weren’t coming here thinking Sheffield desperately needed another one. We just wanted to do our own thing well, stay consistent and hopefully add something a little different.”
RĀSA’s Sheffield opening follows the success of the brothers’ original site in Buxton. They’re also behind Chakra Lounge, their Indian-inspired fusion café concept, but this venture was always intended to have a different focus. Here, coffee comes first. The brothers’ Indian heritage is present, but more often in the details – a spice here, a flavour combination there, occasionally something considerably less expected.
Even the name carries a family connection. RA comes from their father’s name and SA from their mother’s, although it’s not something the brothers have particularly shouted about. “It’s quite personal to us,” says Sam. “We never really wanted to make a big thing of it. It was just something from our family that could quietly sit behind the name.”
At the centre of RĀSA’s coffee offering are two contrasting house options, Surya and Chandra. Surya, meaning sun, is the lighter of the pair, centred around Ethiopian coffee with a brighter, softer profile. Chandra, meaning moon, comes from Central America and heads in the opposite direction – darker, fuller and considerably stronger. Sam sees Chandra as the one for mornings when consciousness requires a helping hand. Surya is better suited to those 3pm moments when another heavy coffee might be tempting fate.
“It sounds slightly ridiculous giving coffees different times of day,” he laughs. “But somehow it makes sense.”
Coffee might provide the foundation, but since arriving in Sheffield another drink has become an increasingly important part of RĀSA: matcha.
Sourced from Uji in Kyoto, an area with a long history of tea production, it has become the starting point for some of the café’s more playful drinks. An early favourite was the tropical mango matcha. More recently, the team has been experimenting with homemade banana cream and subtle Indian spices, while the Chai Biscuit Matcha brings chai, matcha and Biscoff together in one glass.
That Indian influence runs through the food too, though rarely for the sake of sticking a ‘fusion’ label on something. Chicken tikka turns up in a croissant sandwich. A roasted vegetable and pesto croissant gets an extra hit of warmth and spice. Chai and mango cinnamon buns have both found their way onto the counter and become regular favourites.
RĀSA also works with bakeries in Sheffield and Buxton rather than attempting to produce an enormous food menu itself.
We don’t want to put Indian flavours into something just because we can,” says Sam. “It has to make sense. These are flavours Sunny and I grew up around, so they naturally find their way into things.”
Alongside the flat whites, americanos and other coffee-shop standards are creations such as the Rose Époque whipped coffee and Ube Tiramisu whipped coffee, the latter proving particularly popular.
Then, somewhat less conspicuously, there’s the hot chocolate.
Made with 70% dark chocolate, it has become one of RĀSA’s best-reviewed drinks despite lacking the vivid colours and layers of some of its neighbours on the menu.
That contrast gets fairly close to what the brothers are trying to do with the place.
They clearly enjoy experimenting, but they’re wary of building a menu entirely around whatever happens to be performing well on social media that month.
“There is always another trend,” says Sam. “Another drink, another flavour, another thing everyone suddenly needs on the menu.
“We’d rather get the basics right, keep them consistent and then occasionally do something a bit different around them.”
It means RĀSA can be two slightly different coffee shops depending on what you’re after.
You can come in for a flat white and cinnamon bun without giving it much more thought. Equally, you might find yourself walking down Sharrow Vale Road carrying an Ube Tiramisu whipped coffee, Chai Biscuit Matcha and chicken tikka croissant.
And in a city where opening a coffee shop is one thing but giving people a reason to return is quite another, consistency matters to the brothers more than novelty.
They’ve already learned through Chakra Lounge that adding another venue is the relatively straightforward part of growing a hospitality business. Maintaining its personality when there are more doors, staff and customers involved is harder.
“Coffee shops are popping up everywhere, and that’s actually a good thing,” says Sam. “It keeps everyone pushing themselves.
“But for us, growth isn’t about trying to be everywhere. It’s about making sure that wherever RĀSA is, it still feels like RĀSA.”
RASA
384 Sharrow Vale Road
S11 8ZP
@rasakofee
