Shanklin cafe serves a super shakshuka

You might think this breakfast spot had taken its name from shanklish, a Levantine soft cheese, but co-owner Francis Chehade tells me that's not the case.

The real story is: he and his business partners (brother Johnny and friend Aboudy Yaacoub, who also own Rathdowne Street's Tre Bichierri) took the cafe's name from the Victorian-era house they gutted to build it: "SHANKLIN" was, and still is, written into the original brickwork at the top of the building.

It's now  a slender dining room with a Nordic theme – kind of like if Ikea designed an aircraft hanger – a curved roof of wooden slats does an excellent job of absorbing clatter. Someone dropped a fork a couple of tables away and I could hardly hear it ping onto the floor.

When our waiter spotted us lusting after a tray of Doughboys doughnuts (before breakfast, mind) he oh-so-kindly popped the last one into a cardboard box "just in case" we changed our minds later. Consider us charmed.

Whoever is behind the coffee machine knows a thing or two. A Moccamaster brew of El Salvador from Reverence is lively with plenty of blueberries on the palate; espresso comes from a shiny new Synesso Hydra.

The menu, courtesy of chef Jimmy Wong, reads like brunch menus did before molecular gastronomy became a thing – eggs on toast; sweet corn fritters; smoked salmon on a potato roesti and steak sandwiches from 7am. Nice.

There's a Lebanese-Mexican fusion going on with the breakfast burrito: harissa and pomegranate star alongside cheesy white beans slow cooked in lemon and chilli (a bit too Heinz-like) in a wheat-flour tortilla under an avalanche of sour cream and guacamole. It wouldn't be my first choice, but my plus one enjoyed it. 

The shakshuka is better: eggs (three of them!) baked to medium in a thick tomato and pepper stew topped with crumbled goat's cheese and crispy chorizo.

On the sweet side it seems no cafe is immune to the Nutella juggernaut. Here it's in pancake form with strawberries, grilled banana and crumbled Oreo cookies and a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.

If you lived nearby you'd be stoked to call Shanklin your local: there's not much of a wait for a table, the service is warm and unpretentious, the menu is solid and they take their coffee seriously. It's the little things that count.