Lowry & Baker

Since opening in June 2010, this one-room café at the Golborne Road end of Portobello Road has attracted a loyal collection of regulars, lured by homely baking, enthusiastic attention to detail and quirky character.

Each day brings a new selection of treats baked in the domestic oven and displayed on the kitchen counter occupying one side of the café. Maybe a cheesecake stained dark with blueberries, next to lavender shortbread biscuits stacked on glass cake stands, or artful piles of savoury muffins.

Filter or espresso base Monmouth coffee, made well, is served on mismatched crockery at the tables indoors, or at the two pavement tables outside that catch the morning sun.

The day's menu is chalked up on the boards and includes simple touches such as cinnamon toast, grilled pink grapefruit and own-made granola. Cooked breakfasts are also a case of solid ingredients and good assembly: avocado, poached eggs and smoked salmon on sourdough toast or multi-colour heritage tomato salad drizzled with basil oil over a smear of goat curd. On one visit we had a rosemary and potato pancake - like a farl rather than rosti or latkes - and topped with properly crisped bacon, a poached egg (done exactly as per our request) and picked thyme leaves.

You get the sense that food offered here changes on the cook's whim and on what looks good in the market outside that day. We wish more neighbourhood market cafés took a similar approach.