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

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I popped out to go to a little cafe today which does some fancy flavoured latte I havent tried yet at a fiver a pop, all industrial and fashionable inside, selling overpriced soaps and 'statement pieces' but they were full up

So I went next door instead which was a little old fashioned Greek restaurant/cafe, with brick wall paper and ordered a latte

It was your bog standard 'milky coffee' and served with a Mcvities digestive

I dont even like digestives but I just loved the simplicity of it, the old fashioned coziness of it. The unashamed not keeping up with so called fashion and expectations

Dont know why

I ate the digestive and very much enjoyed it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So many places are style over substance.

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.

Oh absolutely this, and where do you ever see a simple soup these days and god forbid they have more than one (boring) flavour, soup is so underrated, cheap, easy to produce, easy to keep hot, cheap for customers, cheap for the cafe/restaurant but no, they have to faff about doing things with big mixtures of stuff, a dollop of this, a smear of that, takes bloody ages to come.

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.

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.

A greasy spoon we used to call these, you hardly ever see them. Such a shame.

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 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."

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.

Yes this. I found myself in a cafe last weekend and as a rare treat we decided on an impromptu coffee and ended up having breakfast. It was simply wonderful. We were charged £18 for 2 coffees and 2 fried breakfasts which were totally delicious. Staff were friendly. It was so nice.

I miss the old delis that would be behind the main roads in town. You could get amazing sandwiches just how you like.

Oh this yes. Things on toast, where have they gone?

I had. hospital appointment yesterday in a different town. My sister came with me and afterwards we called at a cafe for a ' snacket '
We both had a delicious cheese and mushroom omelette with salad and coleslaw and home made chips.
On a rainy cold day it was so welcome

I frequently go to a cafe of the 'things on toast' and jacket potato variety. They do proper soup made themselves in the winter.
We also have a deli where you can get your sandwich made exactly as you like (4 types of bread I think, or a jacket potato, or a salad box), a greasy spoon and a few other cafes, only one of which is a chain (and even then a small chain) and none of which are trendy in the least

We used to have a lovely Austrian cafe in our area. They would do crepes and little continental things and pastries and baroque music playing softly in the background. It was immaculatly clean and sort of a bit rustic and the owner was lovely. You felt as though you were on holiday as the village was quite pretty as well.

They closed down over covid 😭

The people who took over opened it as a sausage sandwich type place. Crumbs on the table, wiped off with a damp, greasy cloth, grating pop music, cheap food and cheap coffee. Disinterested staff. Never went back.

Theres a cafe we visit on holiday twice a year in the UK.
Fried breakfasts.
Egg/Beans on toast
Toasted teacake
Cheese/ham/egg mayo sandwiches plus tea,normal coffee and hot puddings.

Big shout out for the Victorian Pantry Tearoom in Okehampton. Went in today for a full English breakfast which included toast and tea or coffee for £11.50. We had the option of hot or cold milk for the coffees so a big jug of hot milk accompanied the coffees and we could have strong or milky according to our own taste. Big plus for me. The toast was a wonky doorstep of homemade bread with about half a pound of butter on each plate. No annoying little packets. Would have loved to know what the ‘pensioners lunch’ was, maybe next time.

It's so hard to find an independent cafe around here that is midway between "Wanky-Hipster Deconstructed Sourdough Locally Sourced Bollocks" and "Two Soups? a la the Julie Walters sketch".

Have to agree with this. People go on about greasy spoons, but I've never had a good breakfast in one, I associate it with tinned tomatoes and rubbery eggs. Neither have I had a good coffee in an old-school cafe.

There are loads of traditional tea rooms and cafés where I live (just outside the Lake District) and modern independent ones too. I like both - it's nice to have a variety! I would never go to a chain like Starbucks /Costa etc unless they were the only option.

Neither have I had a good coffee in an old-school cafe.

My local independent traditional café is in a beautiful old listed building, in several slightly rickety-looking floors. They sell their own wide range of loose-leaf teas and freshly ground coffees in the shop part, and serve them all in the café. There's another similar one round the corner from where I work (different town).

Oh me too. Teapots, cups & saucers, Victoria sponge cake. Heaven.