Meal Ticket: Pepper Pot café, Dublin 2

Wrapping around the first mezzanine level of the Powerscourt Centre, the Pepper Pot is a bustling little café with some of the best scrambled eggs in Dublin. Possibly the best. There, I said it.

With its cutsie mismatched tablecloths and crockery, tables straddling a knitting shop and a wedding dress shop, it has a ramshackle and homely appeal. It’s open from 10am to 6pm - the Powerscourt opening hours. The menu includes an all-day breakfast - those creamy scrambled eggs with mushrooms and toast (€7.50) hit the spot at any time of day. There’s also organic porridge (€4) with a range of toppings such as roasted pear or banana and honey.

There’s a soup of the day (€5), on the day we visit it is an excellent wild Irish mushroom with tarragon and a splodge of whipped feta. You can get sandwiches - the Mount Callan cheddar with bacon and roast pear (€6.50) is particularly good - plus homemade bagels, tarts and salads.

There are always a couple of specials on the blackboards - a huge free range Pigs on the Green pulled pork sambo on focaccia with caramelised onion and pickle (€11.50) looked very good, but we opted for a big bowl of that soup with some fantastic homemade brown bread heavily laced with seeds and a slab of butter. You can add a cup of soup to any main course for €2.50.

A salad of pan fried goat’s cheese with Gubeen chorizo and vine tomatoes may have lost the tomatoes en route from the kitchen, but the fatty discs of chorizo and the thick slice of cheese, coated in polenta and fried golden were very, very good. Staff are busy but very friendly here, and it’s a brilliant spot to watch the world go by. A real treat.

Photograph: Anna Heikinheimo