IGNORE your preconceptions. The latest cafe to open on Winchester High Street wants to break the mould and offer something different.

Kneaded opened last Friday, November 29 and by the time the Chronicle turned-up mid-afternoon nearly all its stock had sold out.

Read more: Kneaded: New bakery opens on Winchester High Street

It is where Winchester Bakery used to be, before its sudden closure, just by the Buttercross in what businessman and owner Dhan Tamang called "the best location in all of Hampshire."

"We sold out of sandwiches by half-twelve! It was crazy, we made over 100 sandwiches. Tomorrow we'll prepare three times more," he said.

Dhan, originally from a Nepalese village, already owns and operates Kavi Coffee, a high-end coffee shop in the city. 

He said: "I've been in Winchester around 13 years in coffee. I'm genuinely here to make Winchester proud."

His latest enterprise will not follow the same blueprint and he said: "The idea is that we don't just want to be another bakery, or cafe open. [We're] slightly different, the food has to look good and be tasty."

In Kneaded hot chocolate is the USP. He said: "Hot chocolate's the special. We have a minimum of six [types], but we might go for more."

One of the gimmicks being employed to stand out is edible hot chocolate cups, which can last for around 40 minutes - like an ice cream cone.

Dhan said: "Nobody is doing it! The edible cup has been around for years. It is edible, eco-friendly and Instagrammable. You can just eat it and it doesn't melt for up to 40 minutes."

Read more: Winchester Bakery suddenly shuts doors

The Kneaded team: supervisor Megan Birch, 23; supervisor Anna Vasarhelyi, 22; owner Dhan Tamang, 38; front-of-house Daniel Atchley, 24; manager Mark Lee, 26 (Image: Charles Elliman) The new business is linked with Kavi in more ways than one: Kneaded's food is prepared in the other cafe by its head chef and staff have come over.

Mark Lee, 26, is the manager of the new cafe and was a supervisor at Kavi before. He said Dhan was very big on internal promotion.

As well as hot chocolate, the manager said the cafe was looking to stand out with global food with twists on dishes like Vietnamese-style egg drops and Greek spanakopita.

He said: "I really like the egg drop! They're like a brioche loaf, cut into slices, which you pack egg mayo into. We've got a banhmi version of that too, with ginger and soya pork."

The manager continued: "We're trying to bring a bit of that here. Something a little bit new and fresh."