It’s as if the decoration is inviting you to sit down and enjoy your lunch.

The setting is also quite idyllic, with windows looking out onto the Chesterfield Canal, it feels a bit like you’re on a boat.

Staff are quick off the mark at welcoming people, and my fellow reporter and I were escorted to a table-for-two by the window.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’m sure eating out is getting more difficult. I know it’s all in the interest of choice and variety, but there’s never just one menu any more.

There’s a blackboard, a separate pudding menu, drinks menu, and at The Bay Tree there was even an entire menu dedicated to smoothies.

I also think that all menus are slowly morphing into one. I would put good money on the fact that fishcakes and chicken liver pate will soon be on every good-food menu in the land.

The staff were attentive and knew their stuff. Even though they didn’t have the drink I asked for, the waitress helpfully nudged me in the direction of other good choices.

I ordered a salmon and cream cheese bagel, whilst my colleague Debbie opted for a brie and cranberry panini.

Debbie’s coffee arrived with a small, all-butter biscuit that sounded delicious. But unfortunately its plastic wrapper had been opened and there was a piece of biscuit missing.

Accompanying our food was a glass jug filled with a red liquid, which looked like it could be used in some kind of spell. It turned out to be a salad dressing.

The Bay Tree sounds like one of those high street ‘caffs’ which dish out grey-coloured coffee and burnt toast – which it is most definitely not.

I’d also like someone who really knows about food to admit that a panini isn’t some marvellous new revelation, but a toasted sandwich that people can get away with charging over a fiver for.

Similarly, a latte is a coffee made with hot milk.

My dad, who is very much a Yorkshireman, takes great pleasure in standing before a Starbucks blackboard full of cinnamon-flavoured ‘frappucinos’ and ‘two-shot-expressos’ and just asking for a coffee.

Saying that, I don’t want to absolve myself from blame here. I am guilty of the panini-ordering and mocha-drinking culture as much as the next person.

But I just don’t like the feeling that I’m being duped. I think what I really mean is I’m against the price hike that the coffee-bar culture seems to have catalysed.

Our food, washed down with a strawberry milkshake and a latte, came to a hefty total of £13.85.

Not that I really expect cafes to move away from Italian-sounding good food.

In fact, I’d say The Bay Tree is doing what it does very well. I noticed a sign promoting a special Italian evening, and a Greek night later in the year.

All in all, it’s a great place to while away a lunch time or morning coffee – at a price.

by Jen Foster

Star rating HHH