This chic little café in North County dishes up light vegetarian meals and some of the best home-style desserts in town.

You probably didn’t need one, but I’m about to give you yet another good reason to visit the South Cedros shopping district in Solana Beach -- especially if you like egg salad. Inspired by Alice Waters’ Café Fanny in Berkeley, Café Zinc serves breakfast, lunch and afternoon coffee/dessert in a rustic garden setting, complete with fountain, café chairs, metal tables and a ivy covered pergola. It’s an order at the counter and seat yourself type of place -- the food is casual but refined, and perhaps most surprisingly, 100% vegetarian, though they really don’t tout this fact.

During college in Orange County, I was a fairly frequent visitor to the original branch in Laguna Beach, (the other location is in Corona Del Mar). It was there that I first encountered the restaurant’s service quirks, which have somehow carried over to the Solana Beach location. First of all, they don’t make their sandwiches to order -- they are made in the morning and wrapped, and then sold first come first served. They run out early, and they don’t make more. It can be very frustrating, especially when it’s only 12 o’clock, and they act like it’s completely reasonable for them to be out of sandwiches. They serve salads, quiches, soups and chili too, but I for one just have to have one of those sandwiches.

At first it was the “mixed vegetable” sandwich -- thinly sliced fennel, peppers, radish and celery, with aioli, hardboiled egg, tapenade, arugula and vinaigrette, all piled in thin layers onto a focaccia roll. At some point when they were sold out of those, I tried the egg salad -- just like that, it became my new favorite. It’s a very classic egg salad, with mayonnaise, mustard, Tabasco, butter lettuce and sliced tomato, served on a brown bread. Somehow, it’s incredibly delicious -- just the right amount of sweet and creamy, with a nice zing from the mustard and Tabasco. Other sandwich options include the Brie, with arugula and horseradish mayonnaise on a French baguette, the Buffalo Mozzarella with tomato, basil and mayonnaise, and the Mediterranean, which somewhat inexplicably features smoked gouda, arugula, roasted tomatoes and pesto.

Another quirk: the service is generally aloof, though I’m not sure why. I’ve had servers who’ve treated me like I’m lucky to be there. It doesn’t really bother me much, but it is a little amusing sometimes. The clientele tends to be a little “demanding” too, which can make for some interesting people-watching -- or eavesdropping, as they case may be. Anyway, I digress . . .

Breakfast is actually very similar to what is served at Café Fanny in Berkeley. They serve poached eggs on toast in the same manner, but without the prosciutto that Fanny offers. Their coffee and fresh squeezed juices are excellent, and they offer a quiche, a scrambled egg dish, huevos rancheros, and a boiled egg with toast and fruit, in addition to a fabulous house-made granola, which I’ve purchased many times to take home.

Where Café Zinc really excels though, is with their indulgent, homestyle desserts. I have yet to taste a better chocolate cookie than their Double Chocolate Walnut, and that includes the ones I make myself. This is probably a good thing -- if I actually made theirs myself and knew how much butter and chocolate were in there, I fear I might not be able to eat them. They also have killer brownies, cheesecake, carrot cake, lemon bars, and a few other types of cookies. They feature three cakes daily to choose from, and the bars and cookies are fairly constant. They may not always have my sandwiches, but they have yet to let me down when it comes to getting my cookie fix.

If you find yourself in the Laguna or Corona Del Mar area, the cafes there also feature the Zinc Market -- a small attached takeaway shop selling fresh salads by the pound, soups, the desserts, some dips and snacks, and a case of ready made meals like stuffed potatoes, lasagna, quiche, macaroni and cheese, etc. (The fresh guacamole is especially good.) They also sell cookbooks, kitchen textiles, and some really nice gift and décor items.

I do not have any connections with this business. I've been here more than ten times.