Addy's Restaurant, 99 St. Clair Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, 44113 USA

A cup of tea for $1.19 in Addy's in Cleveland...nice place.

Restaurants like Addy's have largely disappeared from the high street and replaced, more often than not, with rubbishy branded operations that think they can charge a fortune and get away with it purely because they offer consistency. Yeah, right, like a consistently high price and the same old boring product wherever you are in the world. It's all a result of globalisation and it means that wherever you are in the world, there's a danger you might find a Claire's Accessories or a Starbucks or any other big brand name you might care to mention. Suddenly, the world is no longer an interesting place.

Well, as Buzz Lightyear said, 'not today!' In these troubled economic times I expect to see more restaurants like Addy's, not less of them. In the UK, in a Surrey town going by the name of Redhill, there used to be the Belfry Café. It was the sort of place where you could buy a huge brick of bread pudding and a large mug of tea for next to nothing, served by school dinner ladies. It's now an expensive Costa Coffee.

Addy's, I'm told, has been around for a long time and is part of the Cleveland furniture, so to speak. This, of course, is music to my ears and I'm starting to think that somebody would make a killing if they set up a 'cheap' restaurant like Addy's in the UK. It's all about volume in a place like this, but I'm guessing that Addy's does all right because people don't want to spend a fortune at lunch time.

Inside Addy's – note lack of tablecloths and tabletop condiments. Excellent!

I'd just had lunch in a slightly 'poncy' restaurant a few blocks away and while it was fine and I had a couple of glasses of cabernet, Addy's was where I should have been: sauce bottles on the table, no tablecloths, a laminated menu – heaven! And, most importantly, it won't break the bank.

But it's more than just price, it's the food on offer. Why is it these days that you only get to eat chopped sirloin and onions, roast beef dinner or grilled liver and onions when you visit grandma? It doesn't have to be that way. At Addy's you can get meals like these for $6.99 – wow! That's £3.50 thereabouts (the price of a cup of tea and a cookie in a UK-based Costa Coffee). Or how about shrimp in a basket for $6.99? Addy's is value personified, but sadly, I just had a cup of tea ($1.19) and had missed the earlier lunchtime bustle.

I say open more restaurants like this, even if it's goddamned chain, although chains = greed = extortionate prices, so let's just support our independent operators.

Addy's gets top marks just for being Addy's.