To be overly impressed with nice simple old fashioned cafes/restaurants

I completely agree.

I just wish you could go somewhere and ask for a straightforward cup of coffee without having to know all the coffee lingo.

I still mourn a café we used to have in the market Square of our town. It looked like the menu hadn't changed much since the 1960s. You could get main meals of the pie, chips and veg variety. But you could also get really simple things like cheese on toast, beans on toast, egg and chips etc. And the choice of drinks was stuff like tea, coffee, Horlicks, orange squash and milk shakes. I would take DD in there when she was little, it was so much nicer than a MacDonalds.

I usually pine for "old" stuff, simple life of old etc etc and all that

...but I'll take a modern fancy café over an old functional refreshment room any day. I think cafés have come on so much since the old scrapey chairs, chrome everything, microwaved bacon, sub-standard food and curled up sandwiches, one kind of pastry and coffee that takes no skill whatsoever to make chucked in a cold cup with cold milk.

I'm sure many people will be along to say "well that's not my experience of old fashioned cafés" to which I say "Well it's mine."

There’s a simple Moroccan cafe in Shepard’s Bush that has jarring lights and wonkey tables but has a charm that keeps me coming back.

I always struggle a bit with cafés as some of them smell really strongly of coffee - not their fault of course, particularly if everyone is ordering coffee - but I cannot stand the smell of coffee, so nine times out of ten I have to sit outside with my cup of tea. I am always so happy when I find a place that, despite selling coffee, doesn't have that astringent smell hanging around in the air inside.

I only don’t like greasy spoon places because I smell when I come out. Love an old fashioned tea room but they were bought out by Starbucks and Costa round here. It’s very expensive but you know what you will get. If people (including me) had been bothered enough we would have been going more. Also the chains are open much later so more chances for me to use them.

Staying in London a couple of weeks ago, Premier Inn, near Fleet Street - we googled caffs and ended up in a Greek Cypriot cafe that did just the best cooked breakfast, proper mugs of tea and really nice toast. It was warm and cosy and full of people just enjoying their breakfast. We went 3 times....

I love an old fashioned caff.

So many places are style over substance.

I like simple, nicely run places. Most of the cafes in my area are egg and chip type cafes. One is all done up in faux Victorian decor and plays loud pop and rock music, the cakes are commercial quality and the toilet is full of stinking air fresheners 😬

If you find a nice cafe, it's a blessing indeed.

You know what I long for? A good old spud cafe.

A potato with 5-6 filling options which you can double up for a quid, and a side salad. Beans, tuna mayo, cheese, chilli.

There's a cafe near me that faffs and struggles over a menu the staff can't handle, yet nary a jacket potato in sight.

Yuck, I can’t stand milky coffee!! We’re lucky and have a range of independent places around here catering to different tastes. Personally I prefer the more modern ones as they do nicer (in my opinion) coffee. The older ones have their place, especially the Turkish cafes as they seem a nice place for the elderly men to hang out.

I love the old chintzy tea rooms. Table cloths, curtains with pelmets, simple sandwich filling (ham, cheese, egg mayo or pushing the boat out with coronation chicken!), good selection of teas, simple coffees and squashes. They are the absolute best but hard to find these days.