Wednesday, June 22, 2005

A small price to pay

Like a lot of people, I tend to assess value for money around the world by the price I pay for everyday items, like a cup of coffee or a pint of beer.

I have been employing this measure since I left Australia in late February and have continued to do it here in the UK. There has to be some flexibility built into this assessment process, of course. The primary consideration has to be the "cost:taste" ratio. Sometimes there is a reason that a cuppa is only 80p. It tastes like crap. And no country would charge people more than 80p for a cup of crap.

Yesterday morning, we visited a small cafe overlooking the Paisley gardens next to the Town Hall. A very unassuming place, it has charming decor and friendly staff. But when Andrea ordered a cappuccino and instead got a white tea with sugar presented to her, alarm bells should have been ringing. So she returned the tea, accepting that because she talks "funny", the misunderstanding was perfectly alright. But to be told that the cafe doesn't actually make cappuccino was the clincher. The disbelief on AB's face was classic.

So for lunch, we tried somewhere else, determined not to be dissuaded from the search for good tasting, good value coffee. We found a coffee shop that sold massive cereal bowls of coffee for £1.70. In this case, the cost:taste ratio was pretty even, so I was well chuffed. I thought we'd hit the caffeinated motherload. On reflection, my only criticism (and it's not usually a bad thing), was that the cup was as big as my head, so these coffees should only be consumed when one has ample time to enjoy them. As it was, I had to leave some of the coffee in my cup. And THAT is a no-no where I come from.

But this morning's coffee excursion has taken the proverbial cake. Arriving at another as-yet untested cafe, I ordered two white coffees. The lady poured filter coffee from a thermos into two cups. My mouth fell open. Then she put hot milk in them. I closed my mouth. Then she charged me £2.78 for them. Does that strike anyone else as a very weird sum for two coffees? It is already hard for me to adjust to 1p and 2p pieces again, but what a strange total for coffee. They tasted alright, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time.

The search continues. I will find a good coffee in Paisley.

2 comments:

Parisienne said...

Can I highly recommend Caffe Nero if Paisley has such a thing, OK, I know it is a chain but the coffee actually is very good and very strong more importantly. And they have pastries and Orangina. Need I say more?

Unknown said...

Oooh enough said. I will go searching. The pastries here are pretty beige, so it will be nice to track down something more exciting.