I guess I find there’s not much price difference, and that service is actually significantly faster with hipsters if you’re ordering anything but black coffee/Americano, because they actually care about their reputation and stuff, rather than no fucks being given (ordering even a cappucino from some less modern places can mean someone futzing with the machine for what seems like hours). I mean, maybe it’s just where I am and work, though. When I think about it, I have been to a couple of “incompetent” hipster places in the West End, both of which were both overpriced and had slow-ass service.
All that said, most of the old greasy spoon places round Streatham/Balham have just shut down entirely (indeed they did before covid even) and been replaced by varying degrees of modernity. Interesting the Italian/Spanish/etc. places seem to have kept on truckin’ just fine.
That does seem like a potentially very important consideration. There are a handful of Swedish cafes in London, all of which do cinnamon rolls, but the deliciousness of those cinnamon rolls varies very considerably between them!
Almond croissants are the same way in other places. You get one from a new-to-you cafe and you’re really rolling the dice, it could be anything between utter heaven, and “Oi, here’s a slightly stale and very light croissant with some almonds glued on it and which tastes like it might once, some time ago, have had a small amount of very chemical almond paste in it”.
