Café Newton

This review appears in the The List's Eating & Drinking Guide 2008 – in the shops now or buy online.

Café Newton makes up one third of the triumvirate of arts venues that includes the cafés at the National Portrait Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, all of which were previously run by Helen Ruthven. She served as an inpirational benchmark for restaurateurs all over, given her belief in preparing pretty much everything, from the shortbread to the soup, from scratch. She may have sold the operations, but her ethos remains. Logistics dictate the menu here is a little smaller than the others – there isn't a full kitchen, so there are fewer hot dishes available – but that's not to say the velvety, curried parsnip soup isn't a rewarding bowl in itself. Similarly, the sandwiches (or, if you desire, have them reworked as a salad) are hefty, hand-cut, rustic doorstops in which mozzarella, sun-blush tomatoes and Parma ham are unhindered by any fiddling and fussing. The table service and monochrome décor – Rennie Mackintosh-style furniture included – might suggest a certain formality, but Café Newton is more easy-going than it might appear, and there's real care about the unrefined joy of good, fresh flavours getting together and making sparks fly. There's little need for pomp and ceremony when produce is allowed to shine like this.

• High point: Less is more…
• Low point: …though more portion-wise might actually be nice