The Nest Café, Princes Avenue By Fiona Carr By Fiona Carr

Dropping something off at a friend's one morning I finally decided to try the 'little sister' to the Boar's Nest and have a breakfast. Long an admirer of this building when it was a butchers, I had taken an interest in the conversion but never got around to eating there. The full breakfast was ordered and a cup of herbal tea. Despite the weather I decided to sit outside, though my view was rather spoiled by the unimaginative and singularly ugly municipal advertising hoardings.

Clearly the breakfast was cooked not microwaved, and it arrived some five minutes or so after the tea (which came with a wonderful sugar crystal on a stick). I had beans (not congealed), two rashers of bacon, two thick sausages, a slice of fried bread, mushrooms (quartered not the obscene products served up as gigantic virility substitutes), a whole tomato, and a fried egg which clearly was not battery. If I were a perfectionist I would argue the bread was a little under fried for my taste and perhaps also the bacon but that is a product of degree.

Suitably impressed, I decided after a trip to London to take my companion to this place and see if it was as good. We both went and, being northern and 'aaaaaaard she preferred to sit in. The room was only pleasantly full, there are few tables but there were enough empty not to feel intruded on.

We had the same meal (reader, we usually eat differently but this is not a Jane Austen moment) though my southern preference for 'poofy herbal tea' was countered with 'Yorkshire tea'. (both with the sugar sticks!) A range of more exotic teas was also available. Same good size and same high quality though the sausages had certainly changed and not for the worse. Chatting to the staff we discovered the sausages certainly came from Cottingham and other food was similarly carefully vetted.

A few newspapers were available for those who wanted to lounge in the leather chairs but we settled for a leisurely breakfast, and then leaving having espied the Knickerbocker Glory on offer.

Returning later a trois we ordered two Knickerbocker Glories and an ice cream cornet. One of the ice creams was not available but an imaginative range of substitutes were to hand so we made up our own. Food fascists would doubtless whinge about the calories and need Tai-chi or Pilates for a week to recover, but the ice creams were clearly full bodied and not synthetic. Offering a wide range of toppings from Thousand Island to more mature, the ice creams also came with the inevitable flake and a more innovative twisted fudge flake.

Our young companion discerned that many of the ice creams were home-made which no doubt explained the almost olde worlde taste, let alone choices such as mango, orange, and even peanut. The same companion found the lack of stuffing discomforting and so swapped chairs for an equally 'distressed' non-matching chair.

Part of the charm of the Nest Cafe, in a post 'Gary-meets-kevin-meets-naomi-straight-eye-for-a-queer-guy' era, is the resolute rejection of chrome/faux leather/designer lighting/look-at-me post-modernistic minimalist Manhattan loft style. None of the chairs matched, though clearly many had come from attractive sets, and there was an impression that even if they came from various junk shops on Spring Bank they had been bought with an eye to style. The internal makeover is good, the original butcher tiles and many fittings offset by the1930s front door as entrance to the toilets.

The whole impression is of something randomly evolving though we know it is not.

It is not unusual to see a chef wandering across the pedestrian crossing bearing food (covered over of course) from one venue to the other, and of course all the rich life tapestry of the Avenues is there to watch go buy. The man in ill-fitting jeans and half-breed Staffordshire bull terrier (how Avenues is that? A chav dog made more sensitive!), a Goth, young students, glamorous mothers, people going to church, shopping or perambulating. Young, old, English or not. The all-day breakfasts are at the higher end of the average prices, but at least they a re not microwaved or 'portion controlled' and you are left with the impression you are a person not a 'prospect'.

All in all, like so many little sisters, very promising and well worthwhile.

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