A new restaurant and bistro plans to boost traffic through Washington Mall.

The Cottage Café & Bistro, owned by experienced chef Brian Richens and on the mall’s second floor, aims to provide a slower-paced, more sophisticated approach to standard breakfast and lunchtime fare.

Mr Richens said: “This area definitely needed something different. We’re trying to do more proper food using real ingredients fresh from the farm.”

The 32-year-old chef, a graduate of the culinary school at George Brown College in Toronto, formerly worked at Mad Hatters in Hamilton and partner restaurant Tempest in St George.

He said: “I always wanted to open my own place since I first started cooking in kitchens at 15 years old.

“I figured if I had to do it for other people, I might as well do it for myself.”

The 30-seat bistro, formerly Dandelion restaurant, features a breakfast menu, with unique takes on staples like the English breakfast and eggs Benedict, featuring chourico hash, Portuguese goats’ cheese, bolos levedos muffins and pimento hollandaise.

The lunch menu includes soups, sandwiches and items like Old Bay crab cakes, mahi mahi fritta, with a tortilla lime crust, adobo tartare sauce and roasted sweetcorn coleslaw.

The restaurant, which employs three wait staff and another worker in the kitchen, features roughcast white walls, dark wood flooring and cottage-style decorations like a 1950s-style radio, an oil lamp and flat iron.

The entrance area, which includes a takeaway service, has exposed brickwork, limestone blocks and vinyl siding to reflect cottage styles in Bermuda, the UK and North America.

Mr Richens said: “I looked at another location for the restaurant which was a traditional cottage style and I came up with the idea of the cottage. That didn’t work out, so I carried the idea on to here.”

He added: “It also explains our food a bit — good ingredients, wholesome stuff and we use organic products when we can. We also use some local produce as well.”

Mr Richens said wife Daniela, who is originally from the Azores, was the inspiration for the use of a Portuguese touch in the menu and the decor.

He explained: “The interior decoration there is quite rustic and that helped inspire the simple design.”

And Mr Richens, a 2008 Bermuda Culinary Arts Development award winner, said: “I did all the flooring and decor with my dad and remanded and refinished existing tables.”

He added: “We’re definitely trying to bring something different to the area, not so fast-paced and something a little more rustic.”

Mr Richens said: “Everybody in the mall has been really supportive as well and they hopeful they will get the traffic back up inside the mall.”

He added that he hoped the economy would continue to recover.

Mr Richens said: “We have the America’s Cup around the corner, but our business mostly focuses on residents of Bermuda. We’re trying to be an international cottage — a bit of English, a bit of American and a bit of Canadian.”