Tasty, healthy and fresh. Those are the words chalked on to blackboards above the serving hatch at the Park Café in Knowle West.

This sister operation to the Folk House Cafe on Park Street opened just before Christmas with a festive lunch for 80 local pensioners, which certainly went some way in setting out its stall as a café at the heart of the community.

This is a new-look cafe for The Park, a charity-run community centre for educational learning, sport and leisure that occupies the site of the former Merrywood Boys' School, which closed in 2000. It's a place I have close connections with as I attended the school between 1980 and 1985.

The Park Café occupies the old school canteen and it's certainly a lot brighter and cheerier now, with its yellow window blinds and fresh flowers on stripped wood tables.

The new-look café is run by Liz Haughton, sister of organic food guru Barny, whose cookery school has recently upped sticks from the Harbourside and relocated to the vast kitchen next to the Park Café.

The Haughtons are passionate about healthy and affordable food as well as organic and local produce. Quite how this will go down in Knowle West remains to be seen.

Liz admits that the first few weeks have been challenging but it's more about finding out what the locals want from their local cafe than anything else.

Her decision to stop serving chips and Coke is certainly a controversial one – some might say mad – and it may take a while for some regular customers to be converted to beetroot risotto, but the Haughtons are not known for raising the white flags of defeat without a fight.

The majority of visitors will be governed as much by price as taste.

A grilled cheese sandwich made on homemade bread costs just £2.95 and smoky bacon and bean soup with bread is only £3.

Breakfast options include a bacon sandwich for £2.50, porridge for £1.50 and two slices of toast for £1. Filter coffee is £1.40 and tea is £1.20. It would be hard to find cheaper options in town.

When I visited, slices of homemade pizza were cooling on a wire rack on the counter, alongside cakes, also baked on the premises.

The menu included vegetable pakora with dahl curry and rice (£4.50), baked potatoes stuffed with beef chilli and cheese (£4.50) and falafel, hummus, flatbread and salad (£5). Nothing on the menu cost more than £5 and you could enjoy a substantial lunch and a drink for less.

I ordered the Park Café burger with relish and coleslaw (£5), which was cooked to order by chef David Crabtree-Logan in the open kitchen behind the counter.

The meaty burger – made with locally sourced minced beef from The Community Farm in Chew Magna – was juicy, generously seasoned (actually, a tad over- salted) and sandwiched between two slices of homemade bread.

It was served with a tangy relish and a healthy coleslaw that was more like a grated carrot and seed salad than the sweet, mayonnaise-heavy version most people would be familiar with.

For £5, it represented good value and the burgers appeared to be the most popular option on the menu.

I bought two slices of cake to take away with me. The banana bread (£1.50) was firm and fruity and not too sweet. The chocolate brownie (£2) was dense, rich and as gooey as Glastonbury mud.

Liz Haughton and her team have their work cut out for them at this ambitious new venture. Personally, I would be inclined to put chips back on the menu at least once a week, but just make sure they are the best homemade versions, rather than deep-fried frozen ones.

They might just be the bridge that tempts the unconverted customers at the Park Café to the other side.

Mark Taylor