Good reason to eat your greens

When I told Mum that we were going to The Honest Cabbage in Bermondsey Street for brunch, she was far from impressed. The area round the back of London Bridge was full of 'hard-drinking stevedores, prostitutes and impoverished medical students' the last time she went there, in 1964.

In 2002, we strolled down an impeccably clean street with the aesthetic of a scrubbed Dickensian London mixed with New York's lofty SoHo. The Zandra Rhodes' Building, a pink and orange modernist cube, looks like a piece of Turkish delight. Robert De Niro has bought a pad in a converted jam factory nearby. The next Jamie Oliver series will be shot in a loft up the street. They're calling Borough 'London's Tribeca'.

There has been an Honest Cabbage here for 200 years. Aside from the Victorian etching on the windows, it looks more like a deli-diner than a pub, with jars of chilli oil, dried chestnuts and pasta in the window and a hotchpotch of congenial art on the wall. There's no bar to speak of, the food is the draw.

The other punters were well dressed. A few antiques dealers in peculiar-coloured blazers upped the average age. Toddlers shrieked, but none of the mothers looked harried. Morcheeba and St Germain played in the background. This is a local for people who are winning at life.

The menu made a genuine attempt at English brunch. Alongside staples such as eggs Benedict, Florentine and Christophe, there was Cumberland sausage with bubble and squeak, and poached egg b?arnaise, kedgeree, black pudding hash with crispy bacon and fried eggs, and cr?pe Arnold Bennett - a modern take on the grand hotel standard omelette Arnold Bennett with haddock and cheese.

The rest of the menu cherry-picks from Europe and Asia: soups, pastas and steaks, plus a couple of light oriental-type dishes. A deep and stocky pea and ham soup came with a frisky swirl of mint pesto. Mum said her kedgeree had the correct consistency, with a proper runny curry b?chamel rather than a stodgy risotto texture. I prefer it the wrong way, so we had a bit of a fight about that. My Cumberland sausage was tasty, but it could have done with a bit more sauce. Mum's crab cakes were crumbly and crabby, she pronounced them 'very good'.

We weren't going to drink, but the 20-strong wine list was too interesting. Something good for everyone's taste and nothing over £25. The staff seemed to like us being there and gave us some free chunky chips. We meant to go to Borough Market, but never got round to it.

The Honest Cabbage
99 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3XB