Family caravan holidays provided the inspiration for Sydney’s latest café sensation.

‘The Left Bower’ is the closest thing to a Viscount holiday experience on solid ground -and it has the city’s fickle restaurant critics buzzing about its yummy food and funky décor.

The name for the Sutherland café was taken from caravan holiday card games played by its owners, the Hart family.

The logo is a stylised version of the Viscount logo from the early 1980s. Outside there’s aluminium caravan cladding and tail lights.

Inside, the caravan décor includes curved ceilings and retro cabinets filled with period nic nacs including board games to entertain diners on a rainy winter afternoon.

The Hart siblings reckon regular caravan holidays brought them closer together and also laid a good solid foundation for their business success today.

“We’re a very close family and I think it goes back to the fact that when we were kids we always went on four holidays a year in the Viscount,” Jess says

They raided their grandmother’s keepsakes to deck out their first café in the southern suburb of Engadine, then in November last year opened the Left Bower, their second café, right opposite the railway station in busy Sutherland.

The food is specially sourced from a mix of local and ethical suppliers. The coffee comes from northern NSW, the eggs from 11 year old rare hen breeder in Gerringong.

Food reviewer Jill Dupliex gave Left Bower a four star rating. The scrambled eggs, cooked to father John’s secret recipe, are certainly not to be missed.

Plans for a third café are already well advanced, with work soon to begin on transforming the former Thirroul Post Office building in the trendy northern Wollongong beachside suburb.

Picture: Service with a smile: Owen, Rhys and Jessica Hart at the Left Bower