Local eats: NW6

I ate dinner with Iqbal Wahhab recently, the champagne-quaffing owner of the Cinnamon Club, the smart contemporary Indian in Westminster. My favourite dish was a tandoori squab pigeon breast with a little deep-fried ball of its tastier organs chopped up with some beetroot on the side.

I wouldn't normally eat at the Cinnamon Club because it's too expensive - unless I avoid the wine list, and where's the fun in that? Despite this, I managed to come away £20 the richer, after winning a bet with Wahhab concerning the main ingredient in one of his side dishes. It's probably vulgar to gamble over fine Indian cuisine, so I don't think I'll be asked back.

I try to minimise eating in expensive places these days because it is a crippling habit. Not something that could be said of frequenting the Millennium Cafe in West Hampstead. Dinner for two comes in at under a tenner. A hunger for the food of Eritrea (a small country in north east Africa) is a perfectly affordable vice. And, unlike many other ethnic places, if you don't fancy injera with stew, they do British caff food too, including a tasty cheese and avocado toastie. It amazes me that they manage to do fry-ups and toasties without the place reeking of fat.

I took Mark, who is a City foodie. He eats fancy all the time and needs a little pauper-dining in his life. We took a bottle of wine with us, the owner brought us a corkscrew and we drank from beakers. An entire wall is covered in an Alpine photographic mural similar to the one that used to be in Hilda Ogden's house in Coronation Street. I am told these are going to be worth a lot of money one day and, every time I visit Millennium, the wallpaper mountains and lakes grow on me. The bogus vista and a shop-front window lend the place an extra dimension that Millennium needs (it is tiny, just six tables). They do an Eritrean breakfast of foul mesdames (broad beans and onions) with a pitta-like bread called kitchi, which comes chopped with butter and hot pepper, cheese and veg. As for the traditional British breakfast, I don't recommend their scrambled egg, but their fry-ups are notably ungreasy. The menu widens a fraction for lunch and early dinner (they close at 8pm). Choose from homemade falafel, shiro (made from chickpeas), a lentil dish, and spicy stews called tsebhi and zigni, made with lamb, chicken or vegetables. Eritrea sits on the Red Sea and is 50 per cent Muslim - so the food has simple souk-like flavours mixing with African influences.

They serve the food Eritrean style, with every dish sitting on injera, a spongy pancake which looks like a giant flat crumpet. Injera is made from a watery wheat dough, which is left to ferment for a couple of days - it has an interesting sour taste which takes getting used to. Mark chose chicken tsebhi, I chose lamb. The chicken stew was tender and moist - my lamb was tough. The tsebhi has a chili kick. The falafels were green with parsley, but are heated in a microwave which does the plain flavours no favours. A red lentil porridge that came on the side was softly spiced - orange comfort food. I said to Mark, 'Do you like it?' and he said, 'Hmm, it's OK.'

The shabby loos downstairs have lots of rodent traps, which is slightly off-putting. Other than that, I really like it here. There's an old-fashioned tea-shop atmosphere, almost studious. It's a place where Eritreans and Ethiopians meet (something they don't do so often in their homeland without trying to kill each other), particularly at the Saturday buffet when the number of native dishes increases and the fry-ups are off.

But it doesn't have that social-club ambience that you get in some ethnic spots that are also the focal point of a minority community. But they are always kind and welcoming and play Eritrean and Ethiopian music - so much better than Capital.

Millennium Cafe
192 Broadhurst Gardens, NW6 3AY