Went in a cafe of the wrong class today. [sad face]

[TiggyD]

There were 2 cafes near each other. I picked the wrong one. I'm lower middle class and the cafe was for middle middle class to about lower upper class. I should have guessed by the little accent they put over the 'e' in the name.

I went in and up to the counter and asked for a sausage roll and a hot chocolate and they didn't give it to me. I was told to go sit at a table. My sausage roll came served on a plate with salad which, and you might not believe this, somebody had drizzled on! I'm guessing it was basil oil or some such frippery, although the cafe with an accent was next to a boating lake the same colour.

I should have gone to the other one where I'm sure I could have just taken the sausage roll in a bag or on a paper plate without being drizzled at.

It's hard being English.

Deep fried butter reminds me of the Butter Cow at US State Fairs.

Though the Butter Last Supper is something else entirely.

Beat that Greggs

Intercourse sorbet?
You'd need a lot of spunk to order that!

See in the area of the northeast where I grew up, those things you are referring to as a fish cake is called a fish fritter. I live in London now and miss them desperately.

Saint Delia says a fishcake is mashed up fish and potato, covered in breadcrumbs, so I'm not going to argue with her. Rissoles are usually meat-based rather than fish.

I never thought that Sheffield and Leeds would have anything in common, so if they're getting along with their definition of a fishcake, at least it's a start!!

One thing I do know - a pattie/Sheffield fishcake/fish fritter is delicious on a breadcake!

As for the class of café we frequent...... I like to try non-chain coffee shops, though some do have a tendency to wanky hipsterishness (too many beard products in use). DP likes market cafés where you get instant coffee pre sugared/milked in a thick pottery mug. And it's not 'cos he's cheap (quite the opposite), but he doesn't like things to be "messed about with". I can see his point!

When I ask for "just a white coffee please" in such places, there is always a shocked look. I normally back this up with "just a standard/normal coffee please" I don't think this is necessarily helpful.

Not read all 12 pages. What's the hot tub thread please?

Great thread - currently sat in Starbucks with a sausage butty (sausage croissant) reading this thread avoiding my cleaners . Was offered sauce but declined due to likelihood of decorating myself in the stuff.

In my defence, I've been here since 7:30 (cleaners wait for us to leave for work before they attack our mess) and no other local cafe is open at that time of the morning - i'm also heavily pregnant hence the hired-in services.

Could murder a greggs jam doughnut now so i think that'll be my next target this morning but the greggs that used to be in the same vicinity as starbucks closed to make way for a gym. Says it all.

I once got presented with a dish called An Ethereal of Cheese. It came on a tiny Doric column.

A friend and I (and too many children) went to the cheapest cafe in the world yesterday. 8 of us had lunch and the children had drinks and cookies too. It came to... £20 in total. And they hadn't added it up wrong (we checked). It even came on plates and everything.

We had been considering going to the hipstery place across the road but were very glad we went for the non-hipstery cafe with pricing from our childhood instead. And super helpful staff too.

A very haute bourgeois Parisian friend of mine visiting me when I was a student in Oxford walked into a greasy spoon near my house and asked in his distinctly French accent for a cappuccino - was nearly stoned out of the place by a bunch of outraged cabbies and lorry drivers, only I think they were laughing too much.

In fairness to him, he'd seen the choristers from my college choir going in there one morning, choral surplices over their arms and all, but, despite singing like rather posh angels, they used to go in after matins for a giant fry-up, rather then looking for fancy foreign coffee...

Flying, was it the St. Giles Cafe?

I always use that as the ultimate example of creeping bourgeois/hipster influence. Even the world's best greasy spoon has succumbed to a horrible fate involving organic drizzles of jus.

barbara/rattlebag I'm from near Doncaster and we called potato-fish-potato-batter Scallops. Fishcakes were squished up fish and mashed potato.

Mind you my nanna was from Lincolnshire so maybe that's why?

Surely the most glaring indicator of class divide in cafe culture is how you pronounce the word 'scone'. Where I'm from (Edinburgh), we say 'scone' to rhyme with 'gone'. I always think 'scone' to rhyme with 'tone' is very, very posh!

I occasionally buy a pasty from the 'West Cornwall Pasty Co' vans whilst awaiting a train. I'm not sure what class this makes me, being a 'posh-ish' pasty, but eating on a train bench seems to lower the tone of the whole affair.

My favourite ever cafe was in Glasgow. My friend and I had been window shopping in Princes Square which is full of hipster posho nonsense and we were starving.

She said she knew of a 'suitable establishment' and dragged me for miles to a wee side street to a cafe with a sandwich board outside that read the bold legend 'Nae Shite Served Here'.

Dear reader, the bacon, sausage, tattie scone and fried egg roll I had that day was the most delicious thing I've ever eaten my life. Closely followed by the fluorescent pineapple cake I had for afters.

I've searched the streets of that fair city and have never been able to find it again. I often wonder if it was some kind of cafe Brigadoon.

So how can you spot a cafe that's within your class range?

I'm going to avoid cafes with an accent in future. And ones with a philosophy.

T'other way round, kreesh.

I suggest googling the cafe. If it has a website, it's probably not what you're looking for.

You're wrong about scone. While the pronunciation may be regional (which is fine) according to Sir John Betjeman scone to rhyme with stone is for the Mrs Buckets of this world. I refer you to How to get on in Society

The scone problem could be alleviated if more cafes would serve Fat Rascals instead, of course.

Have I woken up in 2008? This is the best thread I've read for ages.

Hazey your flat white post reminds me so much of my mum. She gets positively aggressive when ordering coffee anywhere but M&S cafe. She once ordered a Mulatto I almost died laughing.

In the North East potato-fish-potato was called a fish scallop! Kitkat I see you called it that too.

I had a fried breakfast recently with a bit of salad and a slice of orange on the side. This was greasy spoon doing "posh"

Haha really? Does that mean that I am actually the posh one? I always thought my relations from 'dahn sath' (e.g. Essex) were pronouncing it the posh way. Thank you for putting me right on that one. Ooh I love a good fat rascal. Consuming one in Betty's tearoom once made us very late for a lunch at dh's nan's!

Tiggy
One indicator you can use when you are in the cafe is the variety of tea available and how it is served.
PG Tips teabag in a stainless steel pot that leaks when you pour = lower middle class
8 million types of teabag including baobab twig and goji berry = middle middle to upper middle
Leaf tea in a china pot with a strainer = upper middle to upper

Still sniggering at the tingly notion of 'intercourse sorbet'. Theres's a reason for hyphens!

Where do we think the paper doily lies in the pantheon of cafe-class indicators?

I would think lower middle but with aspirations, but then I'm sure Betty's use them which I think is quite a classy place (loose leaf tea! Dry cure bacon! Macarons!) It's a minefield alright.