The cafe next to my office occupies a unique place in my heart - mainly cherished but with a hint of worry and revulsion. The grill-meister is a demon who I have spoken of at length while in my cups: his bacon flicking wrist is supple and his sharp tongs do not break the yolk whilst easily slicing bacon; his awareness of space is such that he does not look when constructing a breakfast, the elements are just there and slide from box to grill to pan in an unending stream; his t-shirt is dirty enough to show that he is working for a living, while clean enough that health and safety won't close him down on sight. Their breakfasts cover the full scale of the greasy spoon offering, from excellent black pudding with just enough baked beans to a deep fried tube of unnamed mechanically recovered "meat" that, by a process of elimination after examining the menu, claims to be a sausage. The bacon is excellent, compressed by the heavy, especially when weighted with sausages, frier basket to give a soft texture but with some of the caramelised flavours that one would expect from good crispy bacon, but the coffee is something else.

I have taken to referring to the coffee as the "Ghetto Cappucino", or "Ghettocino" for short. I am in general not a fan of the frothy coffee, preferring filter coffee or plain espresso (maybe with a wee drop o' milk), but this is a special frothy thing. Firstly I should point out my view on instant coffee - I am tolerant of it. While it is often filthy and, in true Douglas Adams style, almost, but not entirely unlike coffee, I feel it has a place and I have a jar of both Nescafe and Decaffeinated Nescafe (oh how it pains me to make such admissions) in my cupboard. It is not coffee as such, but similarly to how I enjoy both orange juice and orange squash, I sometimes feel like the not quite pure fruit taste of instant coffee and even sometimes before I go to bed (that is as close to an apology for the decaffeinated instant beverage as I will come). But I digress.

Ghettocino: The Recipe
Take a mug that you wish to use for your drinking pleasure, and fill it to drinking level with milk. Pour this milk into a beaten plastic jug and then froth using a industrial steaming apparatus. Once the milk is suitably hot (the closer to the temperature of molten lava the better) pour back into the mug. Take, depending on depth of bags under the eyes of the drinker, 1 to 3 teaspoons of instant coffee and sprinkle lightly on top of the milk foam. Introduce a long spoon and give it a single revolution stir. Carry slowly to the drinker, or place of drinking if you are the drinker, taking a least 30 seconds. During this time the instant coffee granules will disolve giving the tastefully stippled effect expected by the cappucino drinker. Add 3 sugars, stir, take a sip and then discard.

Much to my surprise, I actually enjoy the ghettocino to the same extent as I enjoy normal heavily milky coffee drinks (the produce of Flat White is, of course, excluded from this generalisation). The three sugars and wary addition of a third spoon of coffee on seeing my bedraggled form slumped over one of the tables very much hits the spot when combined with the aforementioned supa-breakfast (set number 2, £4.20).

So to all and sundry who are wandering lost in the wilds north of Liverpool Street - I recommend to you the City Cafe, Worship Street. They also do lunches.