If you’re getting on your bike to Deptford wear a Peruvian hand-knit the central heating’s not that hot tuck in

If you’re getting on your bike to Deptford, wear a Peruvian hand-knit (the central heating’s not that hot), tuck in and enjoy. The children’s estimable fruit salad included peaches and pineapple, and yes, thank goodness, no banana There will be those who are still put off by the context. No quiche, either.Until pudding, everything had been dairy free With Sussex pond pudding, they let rip with the cholesterol. There were little tarts of walnut pastry filled with caramelised red onion. Warm, herby brown rolls came with the soup.Of the hot dishes, the pumpkin and leeks easily beat friable crumble of Jerusalem artichokes, cauliflower and sweetcorn, and rather plain couscous, and the subtly curried cabbage and mung beans lost by a whisker The limitations of each were compensated for by the variety. Vibrantly coloured salads included green beans with caramelised onions and cashew nuts, carrot with green coriander and ginger, and beetroot and mango. Not a display of clodhopping beany dishes, but abundant and bright Predominant colours were orange and green.

The prevailing spice seemed to be ginger, though there were plenty of others, judiciously used. When we went, this didn’t translate into a stream of hippy carpenters and aromatherapists queuing up for their meals in exchange for their labour. And, though Heather’s offers a free soft drink (which could be home-made lemonade or a kiwi and ginger fizz) to anyone arriving by bicycle, the other customers looked as if they’d done nothing more energetic than get out an A-Z.This background information came from Heather’s cheery newsletter, which announces forthcoming events, the women-only nights, the “imaginative entrepreneurial vegetarian husband and wife team of chartered accountants” and a commitment to a thriving alternative community invisible among the surrounding council flats.The bleakness of the surroundings was dispelled as soon as we opened the door into a large room newly painted white and green, attractively furnished, covered with prints for sale and filled with the rhythms of African jazz.In the centre of the room is the buffet. Much of the work of converting this khazi of a south London pub into the new Heather’s was done under the LETs scheme, a utopian alternative currency, whereby skills are exchanged for tokens which can be redeemed by other participants. Most are joyless and cramped, open only for lunch and very early suppers, non-smoking, unlicensed and stuck in the five-tricks-with-a-chickpea and a piece-of-quiche mould. So when I first went to Heather’s, a caff serving a vegetarian buffet, I was amazed and impressed by the spread they put on: colourful, varied and a pleasure, not a penance, to eat.They’ve grown out of their tiny, out-of-the-way premises and moved into downtown Deptford, opposite St Nicholas’s Church, one of the few other local attractions. Which must mean that all of them either don’t go to restaurants, are lying, or don’t mind always having two starters of pasta when they go out, because exclusively vegetarian restaurants are few and far between.

Alastair Little has joked that he doesn’t always have a vegetarian dish on his menu in case it encourages them.This, despite the growing number of professed vegetarians. The restaurant subsequently admitted it doesn’t go out of its way to please vegetarians because they are fussy eaters and don’t drink enough. Anywhere else, you may be lucky with the Hobson’s meat-free choice on a more appetising polyglot menu Occasionally and unexpectedly the two combine wonderfully. Buckwheat pasta with Savoy cabbage sounds like something from a Hackney co-operative household but tasted fantastic when I had it at Zafferano, the Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge, London Yet this was an aberration.