Bright yellow courgettes, gaudy amber aubergines, purple potatoes and thumbnail-sized cucumbers: these are just some of the strange and wonderful varieties of vegetables at Bill's Produce Store, one of the most colourful greengrocers in Britain .

If you're not sure how these unusual things taste, you can sample produce before you buy. Bill's is no ordinary greengrocer. Chunky pine tables and pavement seating are much in demand at lunchtimes in this innovative café-cum-produce-store in Lewes. In winter, diners are given hot water bottles to clutch as shop doors remain open to the quiet street.

Salads of groundnut sprouts, fresh herbs, smoked chicken, those thumbnail cucumbers (which, it turns our, taste rather bitter) and wild mushrooms vie for attention with pizzas topped with apricot, spinach and cambozola; panini filled with provolone, ricotta, roasted pumpkin and peppers; and classics such as eggs Benedict.

Where possible, the produce is local and all is on sale in the shop. Much is pesticide-free and from organic farms nearby. It all tastes and looks divine – so fresh, so wholesome. A harvest festival for the stomach.

Fruit smoothies and juices pack a kitchen garden's worth of goodness into one glass: cranberry, raspberry and elderflower; strawberry celery and mint. Puddings are piled with exotic and home-grown fruit: dragon fruit, white physalis, juicy plums. Indulgent chocolate, cream and marzipan are not forsaken.

As diners delight in delicious feats, shoppers grab handfuls of wild limes and fresh horseradish. The walls of the shop are as bright as a child's nursery with boxes of overflowing reds, yellows and greens. A market barrow is laden with white beans, salsify, globe artichokes and tomatoes. Bill is planning to open more café-stores. Pray there will be one near you.