Hawkhurst Cafe & Restaurant: 27 Years of Family Catering, 15 of Them on the High Street

On the corner of Highgate Hill, right in the middle of Hawkhurst, you'll find a red-tiled building with HAWKHURST CAFE painted across two shopfronts in white letters on maroon. Inside, it's table service, an open kitchen you can actually see into, and a menu that runs from a £8.95 fried breakfast to a 6oz gourmet burger - the kind of straightforwardly good local cafe that doesn't make headlines often, but quietly keeps a village fed.

The team behind Hawkhurst Cafe & Restaurant aren't newcomers to catering - between them they've got more than 27 years in the trade, in the UK and abroad. It started with Courtyard, a cafe they opened in Cranbrook in 1995 and ran for years, before they added Aroma on Heathfield High Street and Rusthall Cafe near Tunbridge Wells to the portfolio. In 2011, they took on a traditional cafe in the centre of Hawkhurst - the one still trading today, now well into its second decade on Highgate Hill.

Breakfast is served all day, from simpler £8.95 choices (egg, bacon or sausage, chips, beans and toast) up to a Mega Breakfast at £13.95 with double everything. The cafe makes a point of using local Korker sausages and a local butcher's ham and black pudding on its Farmer's Breakfast. Lunch brings sandwiches made to order, Cumberland hot dogs, burgers and jacket potatoes, while the dinner menu moves into fish and chips, gammon, pork chop, bangers and mash and a 6oz gourmet burger - plus a drinks list running from flavoured coffees and speciality teas to milkshakes and freshly made pancakes. A full English wouldn't be complete without a nod to Sunday opening, either: the cafe trades seven days a week bar one, 8am to 3pm.

The cafe's reviews lean heavily on exactly what you'd hope for from a proper village cafe. "Superb food and excellent service," wrote one reviewer. "Bright and modern surroundings with the kitchen in plain sight and immaculate cleanliness." Another called it a "cozy place, good food and great staff service," while a third summed it up simply: "Great little cafe, good cafe food. Well worth a visit."

It's a small thing, a village cafe clocking up 15 years on the same corner, but it's exactly the sort of independent business that's easy to take for granted until it isn't there. Source: Hawkhurst Cafe & Restaurant