JOYCE Cafe is where the beautiful people come to eat. It is light and bright and airy and attracts the well-groomed, the well-bred and the well-off. At lunchtime - and you are advised to be prompt if you plan to eat, the place is crowded out by 12.30 - the sense of privilege is heightened by equally light and bright accents using quaint words such as ''darling'' and ''naughty'' and ''mummy''.
Room is tight - at present there are 22 tables and a bar capable of serving 54 people, although there are plans to colonise part of the adjacent boutique early next year - and the squeamish would do better not to eat alone.
Dishes like ink pasta and baby octopus braised in its own ink are best unaccompanied by blow-by-blow accounts of hysterectomies, runaway nannies and stomach troubles on far-flung places from neighbouring tables.
Pretty though it is, this is not really a place to pose either - prices are still this side of reasonable, the mood is too hurried and the empty plates swept away testify to that fact that people come here first and foremost to eat.
It is a popular haunt for ready-to-drop shoppers, office workers and tourists attracted by the location and style of the place - obligatory ikebana twigs in big vases, continental glass jar of biscotti, waiters in long aprons.
The food is exquisite, as beautifully presented as the people eating it, served on big white platters with all the flair of the dedicated artist: when something is out of place - such as the Chernobyl-effect jumbo spears of asparagus on a neighbouring plate of eggs hollandaise - it really jars.
