I have the luxury of working from home instead of the office, so I've visited many cafes looking for that divine combination of strong wifi, cheap coffee, good food and late hours.

This afternoon I was in Luwan and decided to check out Manne Et Sante on Shaoxing Lu, the old publishing street. Shaoxing Lu is home to bunch of picturesque coffee shops and a terrible restaurant called Lao Yang Fang. Unfortunately, I've been to every single cafe on the street. Here's the lowdown. Vienna Cafe = gorgeous pastry magazines, but no wifi, lots of smokers, closes early; Old China Hand Reading Room = cool Chinese decor, but no wifi and mediocre nibbles; nearby Central Coffee = floral print explosion, what's a girl gotta do for a decent pasta?

Anyway, moving on, I had heard some good things about Manne Et Sante, the newest cafe on Shaoxing Lu. So I set up shop in the tiny 2nd floor cafe and hunkered down to finish a shitload of work on my laptop. The decor and atmosphere is nice, but rather "seen-it-before" for Shanghai - antique furniture, leather sofas, blues and soft jazz on the system and inexplicable curtains, you know the place, we've all been there. But despite the average decor, Manne Et Sante has a lot going and deserves more attention. For me, it turned out to be one of the best cafes I've been to in months for getting work done.

First of all, it's calm. Not a lot of people frequent the place on weekdays. The customers who came in seemed to be mostly Japanese, so there was a low-key, un-disruptive buzz of foreign conversation. The waitstaff treated me very graciously, helped me find an outlet for my computer, recommended dishes without hesitation (sometimes its a problem getting servers to do this in China) and kept my glass of water filled.

But where they really succeeded was with the food. That's right, it's a cafe with actual good food. They do French, so I got the mulled wine (RMB40) and duck confit (RMB78). I wasn't expecting much given the tiny size of the cafe and presumably smaller kitchen, so I was impressed when they served real mulled wine with cinnamon sticks and orange peel. The wine was piping hot and I could tell it had been cooked with these spices instead of flavored with syrups. Awesome. Then I had the duck confit, which turned out to be a big plate with a duck leg sitting over a bed of creamy mash. There were apples slices cooked with butter and sweet chestnuts, sauteed mushrooms and a nice, big mixed salad with lemon juice and bagna cauda (anchovy butter) drizzled on. Plus duck confit. I was suitably impressed.

Actually, most of my entree was delicious except for the duck confit, which was a bit salty and didn't have that slow-cooked magic. It was decent. I'd order it again and ask them to put less salt.

It's not the perfect cafe - I wonder if I'll ever discover that in Shanghai - but I was quite pleasantly surprised by the considerate service, the strong wifi, the food and the low-key setting. Could be fun for a casual, cheap-ish date. And while the food was a 4 out of 5, it had variety and showed care from the chef. I'm curious to try something else from the menu.