Guests at tashas Battersea are invited to ask the questions they have always wanted to, and hear the answers from the woman who started it all.
Founded by Natasha Sideris, the restaurateur widely credited with redefining premium casual dining, tashas is a lifestyle café concept known for its beautiful interiors, fresh made-to-order food and warm, engaging service. What began as a single café in Johannesburg in 2005 has grown into Tashas Group, an international hospitality company with 47 locations across South Africa, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UK. In London, tashas can be found at London’s iconic Battersea Power Station.
Almost twenty years after the first tashas opened in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2005, the much-loved premium casual café is opening up its world in a different way. This month, tashas launches Just Ask Tash, a new monthly series in which Natasha Sideris, Tashas Group Founder & CEO, answers the questions guests have always wanted to ask, sharing the stories behind the food, the spaces and the people that have made the brand what it is. It is an invitation to understand where it all comes from.
The premise is a simple one. Each month, Natasha answers a few of the questions guests have sent in. At tashas in London and across tashas worldwide, a question card arrives with the condiments early in the meal. Guests write down what they have always wanted to know and hand it back to their waiter. Online, questions come in through any tashas Instagram account by direct message, comment or one of the weekly Just Ask Tash stories. Each month, a selection is answered by Natasha in short films released across the tashas Instagram and YouTube channels.
The questions tend to gather around the three things that have always defined tashas: the food, the spaces and the people. Guests have asked about the secret to the much-loved chicken pot pie, made from scratch the way Natasha’s mother used to make it; about the artistry behind the ceiling installations that give each location a unique atmosphere and where the interiors find their inspiration – a question that takes Natasha back to a lifelong passion for art, architecture and design, gathered from travel, books and brought home to the spaces.
A menu of its own
The series also lifts the lid on something many guests notice but few have thought to ask about: the menus. Every tashas shares the same classic all-day menu, and alongside it each café builds a menu of its own, drawn from the place it lives in and reflected in both the food and the design. At tashas Battersea, this takes the shape of the dinner menus, with a focus on smaller plates made for the bustling business district around the Power Station: something to share over drinks after work, or to snack on before the commute home.
“Every tashas shares the same classic all-day menu, and then each café builds a menu of its own, inspired by the place it lives in,” says Jill Okkers, Culinary Director for Tashas Group. “We always start with the place, not the plate.”
“The drinks are part of the same story, never an afterthought,” adds Krystian Hordejuk, Beverage Director for Tashas Group. “Whenever a café has a menu of its own, the drinks shift with it, echoing the same place.”
“At tashas, everything begins with the people and the place,” says Natasha Sideris, Founder & CEO of Tashas Group. “For over twenty years our guests have asked me the most wonderful questions, and I have always wanted a proper way to answer them. This is my chance to sit down, tell the stories behind what we do, and share the ones we have never told before. The best ones, I think, are still to come.”
Just Ask Tash launches on 27 July in all 27 tashas cafes across South Africa, the UAE, the UK and Saudi Arabia, with weekly reels and stories for the first two months before moving to one reel a month. It arrives as Tashas Group continues to grow internationally, with an expansion into Greece on the horizon, a personal homecoming for Natasha Sideris, whose heritage is Greek. Just Ask Tash is a natural next step following on from the brand’s twentieth anniversary celebrations that happened in 2025. For now, the invitation is a simple one: if there is something you have always wanted to know about tashas, just ask.
