A shaft of watery winter sunlight was enough to ignite the bare branches of the winter trees. Combined with the garish pink canvas enclosing the indoor-outdoor section of the café, the outrageous shiny gold of the sculpture, purple sun-shades (!) and scattering of terracotta pots, it is astonishing that this eclectic assembly - on the face of it, thrown together without design - generates some sort of harmony

The same sort of spirit infuses the menu. There is no over-arching theme, no genre, no consistent thread. The young women who run it close the place down sometimes and go travelling, returning with new, exotic ideas for good food from many far-flung places. But that alone would not be enough. Some indefinable element - something quite mysterious - needs to be present to turn that into a meal that illuminates a grey November day as cheerfully as that shaft of sunlight. I can only fall back on Robert Pirsig's concept of 'Quality'. As the article says "The more Quality involved in the process, the more beautiful the result." 

This is the place. Some of you will have been there. If you are within 100km, it's worth the detour. I rode a wide 35km circle to get there, so I was ready for a meal. It's an early birthday celebration

For the record, we ate

Squash, carrot and laska soup, with sourdough

and

Vietnamese curry & noodles: squash, celereac, lemongrass, coconut and coriander seed curry, with roast 5 spice carrot & Jerusalem artichokes, charred white cabbage, fermented shatta chilli paste, wheat noodles, pickles and jewelled egg


Addendum: on a food-related theme, the internet-famous-for-fifteen-minutes subject of this article suggests confectioners could sell 'broken chocolates'. He is obviously too young to remember 'Mis-Shapes'!