I thought I knew what a full English breakfast should involve – until I discovered Smallsticks Café.
The bijou café, just metres from glorious Cart Gap beach, serves its breakfasts with bubble and squeak. What a revelation. I’d never considered bubble and squeak as a breakfast necessity – but it was integral to my vegetarian breakfast and the perfect added extra for the traditional sausage and bacon feasts.
It also suited the pretty quirkiness of a café which seems to specialise in taking all the traditional expected elements and adding something wonderful. So there is outside seating in a pretty, sheltered garden, but there is also a row of beach huts/summer houses where customers with dogs can keep cosily out of the rain or wind (or presumably blazing sun in the summer).
Smallsticks is too small to accommodate dogs inside, although just the right size for a few tables of happy humans to feast, so each party with a four-legged family member is offered a cosy hut. It is an excellent solution – although I have to admit to being delighted that we arrived, dog-free and early, and secured inside seats.
However, even the winter chill of an outside table would have been thawed by the unfailingly friendly and cheerful staff.
We were quickly brought coffees, in large curvy sky-blue mugs which added to the coastal cheer of the décor. Then our fabulous breakfasts arrived.
The veggie breakfast had hash browns, fried egg, baked beans, a vegetable sausage packed with proper vegetables, some particularly good chopped mushrooms and that brilliant bubble and squeak.
The rest of our party went for the medium breakfast of sausage, bacon, fried egg, hash browns, baked beans and toast, with optional extras bubble and squeak and/or black pudding.
The quality of the sausage and bacon is a family favourite way to gauge a breakfast and both sausage and bacon were pronounced particularly good.
Breakfasts are served until noon – but the lunch and beyond menu looked good and the array of huge cakes beneath clear domes on the counter, looked utterly magnificent.
The café is run as part of a farm and named for the field on which it stands. Flint and brick walls, clay tiles, wooden beams, bunting, and touches of blue and buttery cream paint add to the coastal/country vibe – which is continued in glorious real life with the coastal path and beach outside.
Rowan Mantell
