Poplar 2000 services, Junction 20, M6

... or, Lymm truck stop, of blessed memory, a place where mere motorists were formerly seldom seen. It was redeveloped a good few years ago and has a McDonald's and a Travelodge though we shall confine ourselves to the homely cafe where a full English breakfast - two bacon, two sausage, one fried egg on a slice of buttered toast, beans or tomatoes (sometimes both, depending on who is serving) is on sale for £4.20. Very appealing to my inborn Lancashire meanness.

I had hoped to publish a photograph of the fare but lost my nerve at the table. The place is full of dolts who would wail at anyone doing such a thing, accuse them of trying to steal their souls and send for the manager, leading to a nightmarish conversation along the lines of: "I'm afraid we don't allow customers to four-tow-graph the food, sir, I shall have to ask you to put down your knife and fork immediately and leave, or turn over your mobile telephone to me." "It's for my blog." "Be that as it may, sir, rules is rules - and you're frightening our other guests. Now, if you don't hand it over, I shall have to get our Eugene to come up from the boiler room with his coal shovel"...

Apart from the breakfast plate, I had a mug of something purporting to be coffee and an Eccles cake, the latter having been manufactured in Coventry. Total: £5.35.

Cappuccino count: 4/10. The food is crap, unless you like greasy breakfasts, in which case it is excellent. Transport canteen decor; good for watching people and being sneakily pass-remarkable about them. Don't forget to keep your till receipt, which entitles you to free parking at the local angioplasty clinic.

Carluccio's, Reuters Plaza, Canary Wharf

These places have been around for a while and are spreading out of London at quite a pace, but I've never been less than perfectly satisfied with the food and service. This particular branch suffers, maybe, because of the braying City types and power moms who feature prominently among its customers. However, to business: bicerin to drink, a first, and scrambled egg on ciabatta with sauteed mushroom. The bicerin was an interesting one-off. It consisted of an empty coffee cup and three jugs, one of espresso, one of melted chocolate and one of single cream. You mix them up in the cup and savour, though I found all the flavours and textures worked against each other. Maybe for the real experience, the thing to do would be to take yourself off to some dive backstreet cafe in Turin. The coffee, however, is really top-drawer and soon kicked in. For comparison, I ordered a double espresso to follow. It was very hot, dark, thick, bitter and with a trace of light-brown froth on top, the essence. I am still slightly intoxicated by these shots. On a previous visit I had the ristretto, which pops your brain straight away.

The main dish came with a sprig of parsley on the egg, which was itself parsley-flecked. I think I prefer egg done this way, folded rather than stirred. The delicacy and meltiness is so much better than I can manage at home where it is bashed around in a pan. Mushrooms had a touch of caramel about them and had been done in butter and kept drained nicely. Very good. Breakfast for two eating the same dish and with three double espressos and one bicerin, £17.55.

Cappuccino count: 9/10. These places are tightly managed to maintain the standard set by Antonio Carluccio's Neal St restaurant. There is a little shop out front where it would be very easy to run up a big bill. Coffee out of this world, food and service excellent. Pick your moment to avoid sharks in suits and hooraying media types.

Intro Juice and Cafe Paradiso, Shad Thames

Not long opened in premises that were formerly an old-style cafe with a gentlemanly though very elderly Cypriot owner, this is an eponymous juice bar whose owners plainly have a love of wordplay. Such gimmickry won't save them since it is hopeless, hopeless, hopeless and awful, awful awful.

The staff of enthusiastic baseball-capped teens all scuttle around behind the counter bumping in to each other. There is one juicer and two of those things that swill the ingredients into smoothies. So, however long the queue, only two orders can be zizzed up at a time.

Asked for two orange jucies and two pan au chocolat and waited 10 minutes at least. So much for fast food. The juice came with crushed ice - not asked for - and the pastries in separate paper bags. The pastries were OK but the juice had a trace of unpeeled carrot about it, some sort of taste contamination problem in the zizzers, I suppose. £6.50.

Across the courtyard from Intro Juice is Cafe Paradiso where, a week or two ago, I asked for two black Americanos and was given scaldingly hot brown water in paper cups. Had to tip it away. £2.50.

Cappuccino count: 2/10 and half an hour with a time and motion man for the junior juicers; 0/10 and a visit from the trading standards people for the others. These places exist to scalp tourists and office workers. Don't go.

Blue Mountain Cafe, North Cross Rd, East Dulwich

Organic ingredients and some Jamaican items on the menu, such as jerk chicken and fried plantain.

Opted for The Full Monty - two bacon, scrambled egg, two sausage, tomato, mushroom, slice of brown toast with butter. The sausages were packed with meat and not much else and the bacon had a good colour and was, I suspect, air cured, there being no salty afterburn. Could have been eating gammon. Eggs beautifully done. Rather than stirring the mixture in a saucepan so that it came out lumpy, a flat pan of some sort was used, producing something more in the line of an omelette, velvety and delicate. Tomatoes softened on a griddle and served with a twist of black pepper. Mushrooms sauteed - nothing special. The meal comes with a coffee of your choosing, in my case a black Americano. This was on the high side of average, perfectly acceptable.

It is a very informal place where you can sit around all day jawing and where no one will bother you. Good street scene with much mooching to do and terribly fashionable Lordship Lane is at the other end of the road. Cafe gets busy at the weekends but there is an upstairs. Boho decoration with lots of leaflets for art classes and pilates. A cheering cliche but enjoyable over all. Maybe they should warm the plates. Two Full Montys with coffee and one glass of orange juice, the sort with bits in, £16.

Cappuccino count: 8/10