the owner's heritage.

With jaunty red stripy curtains at the window, inside it's small, bright and friendly. It's food, not décor, that forms the colour here - with large cake photos to the right, a range of cakes straight ahead and an artistic array of fruit close behind. If you want to sit down to eat you may be out of luck as there are only four seats facing out through the large windows - it caters more for the lunchtime take-away trade. On our weekday lunch visit it was clear that this place is popular with all sectors of Cambridge society, located as it is ideal for city centre office workers, students and tourists. For lunches, there's a range of baguettes, ciabattas and bagels, with a list of tasty fillings that includes prawn mayo and cheddar cheese, pickle and salad. More adventurous is the changing daily specials menu - on our visit, this was lasagne and a Brazilian dish but these change all the time.

Continuing the Brazilian theme, there's also a range of freshly-squeezed juices, filling Cambridge's juice-bar sized gap, which includes orange, pineapple and several delicious combinations. We sampled the special of the day (lasagne), which arrived with several leaves of salad, and some freshly-squeezed orange juice. All food is cooked to order, which means you might have to hang on a little longer than if you're a wilted prêt a manger sandwich lunch time eater, but also means any personal preferences can be catered for and the food will be fresh. We shared the long window table with a group of friendly elderly ladies who were singularly impressed with their lunches.

However, we would be somewhat missing the point if we left the Cristine Patisserie without sampling one of their cakes. From the minute you walk in, it is clear that cakes are the raison-d'être here - the left-hand wall is festooned with photographs of custom-made cakes; and there's a sizeable variety also on offer for sale under the main counter. Cristine has worked in catering for over 15 years and her speciality is artistic cake designs. The photos show some of Cristine's more wonderful requests: there's one for the famous fish chain Loch Fyne, some amazingly elaborate wedding cakes, and some more unusual ones too, such as a fish, a mermaid, a record player and a sports team. We opted for a fantastically moist brownie, but there were over 10 different varieties to buy on our visit, including coconut slices and tiny cupcakes.

We'll certainly be back to work our way through the other wonderful choices, and to sample the fresh coffee, too.