By ANNE DESBRISAY

Wednesday, 12:30 p.m. and Fraser Café in New Edinburgh is packed. There’s a mum and her young, (uniformed) daughter sprung from school at one table. A pair of elderly gents in tweed jackets are at another. A group of well-coiffed ladies who lunch are in the side room, and then there’s the three guys in power suits talking unintelligibly about matters high tech. Their table is closest to mine. And the only time they make any sense to me at all is when the bill arrives, presented — as the bill has always been presented at Fraser’s — in a McKenzie seed packet. Shasta daisies. Empty other than for the invoice. They are hugely disappointed that it didn’t come complete with seeds. “What a rip off!”

Actually, lunch at Fraser strikes me as a pretty good deal.

What did I have? Fraser fettuccine (freshly made) filled in with cherry tomatoes, roasted cauliflower, roasted garlic, toasted walnuts, and fresh sage, all paddling in a creamy garlic sauce with lots of nice chive snips and a tumbled mound of parmesan shards. Micro greens were the toupé on the top. And then, to get rid of the garlic, ice cream. Fraser churns its own, so pretty tough to say no to that. Walnut was one scoop, pear the other, good on their own, great together.

Daily pasta dish, $15; ice cream/sorbet, $2.50 per scoop

Fraser Café, 7 Springfield Rd., 613-749-1444, frasercafe.ca