Sergio's Continental Bar & Diner, Croydon, Surrey

From the top: my large tea and a Sergio's laminated menu; check out that amazing apple pie with ice cream (it's a Brake Bros pie and it's the best); and then (above) my 147 with extra onions. Normally I have a sausage and onion bap but they'd run out of baps so I opted for ciabatta instead. From now I might order the ciabatta .

You want a cult caff? Then look no further than Sergio's Continental Bar & Diner. I love that name. We call it Sergio's and that's not only because it's easier to say than Sergio's Continental Bar & Diner, but also because Sergio exists. This is a family business run by Sergio and his wife Pat. Pat does the chat, Sergio produces the food on the menu. It's that simple.

Sergio's is to be found in St George's Walk, no more than three minutes' walk from the lobby of St George's House, headquarters in the UK of Nestlé. It is a caff from the seventies and it hasn't changed much since then. I remember going there for a plate of lasagne back in the days when my wife was my girlfriend in the early eighties. In many ways, this is the caff that time forgot – and thank the Lord for that! Check out the interior decor, it's fantastic.

I started going there on a daily basis back at the beginning of the new millennium. My colleague Geoff Althoff, aka 'the illustrious illustrator', were fed up with Bar Ispani in the nearby Whitgift Centre because it was too expensive and had an identity crisis: was it a caff or a restaurant? It was certainly charging restaurant prices so we shipped out and started to hang out at Sergio's.

It didn't take Pat long to get to know our needs: a sausage in a bap with extra onions was one regular order from me and then there were the baked potatoes with tuna and onion and let's not forget the apple pie with either ice cream or custard. I used to have the latter but only if the custard was made by Pat or the Portugese lady that helped out behind the counter. For some reason they made better custard than Sergio and don't forget, we're talking Ambrosia Devon Custard – nothing better. The ice cream was good too, especially if the pie was hot as the contrast between the hot pie and the cold ice cream was just amazing.

It wasn't long before Sergio's became a regular haunt every day. Two large teas, sometimes three, number 147 on bap (that's the sausage and onion sandwich with extra onions) and then the apple pie with either custard or ice cream.

When the job went down, we still met there for a while and even now, even if we don't go in for months, Pat still remembers us. She has become our friend and that is what caffs are all about.

Whenever I walk in there, Pat just brings me over a cup of tea. She knows my order. If I asked for my usual, she'd bring me a 147 on a bap with extra onions.

Sergio's has round Formica tables with wall-mounted seating on the left hand side, the service counter on the right and over at the back in the right hand corner, the 'confessional'. That's what we call the bench seating next to the end of the counter where a brown mesh wall separates the customers from the counter staff; it looks like a confessional, hence the name.

My colleagues and I, my wife, my son, my daughter, we all love Sergio's and I would suggest that if you want to experience this caff, waste no time as it looks as if it might not be there for much longer. Why? Well, not because it's losing money to restaurant chains. Oh no! Sergio's is a millon times better than Costa or Caffé Nero or Starbucks or anywhere else in Croydon for that matter.

No, the reason is all to do with St George's Walk and the fact that nobody seems to know what's going to happen to it. At one stage it was going to be knocked down but I'm not sure what's happened to that plan. Either way, the initial proposal meant that leases were not being renewed, that sort of thing, so Pat and Sergio were just waiting and wondering and as other retailers in St George's Walk move on (Millets has gone and so have many other shops and other caffs too) Sergio's is still there.

Today, there's a few weird shops in the Walk and a couple of caffs, an optician's, a relatively new fresh bread shop, and, well, it's all a bit strange as there are plenty of boarded up shops too. There are caffs at both ends of the Walk. At the High Street end it used to be Panino's, but that's now called something else. Either way it's not the same as Sergio's, not as comfortable.

I was in Sergio's last week and the first thing Pat did was bring over my tea. I ordered 147 with extra onions AND I had the apple pie with ice cream. I ordered a second cup of tea and the whole lot was just £5.90. You can't beat value like that, can you?

The best thing about Sergio's, of course, is the warmth. Not only the warmth generated by Pat and Sergio and the friendly atmosphere generally, but the warmth generated by the cosyness of the place and the fact that it's warm and welcoming in the cold weather. It's fine in the hot weather too, probably because the Walk is shaded from the heat (not that in England there is any real heat).

Listen, Sergio's is just the best. It's as good as it gets when it comes to caffs and if you haven't been there, then go there soon because you just never know when it's not going to be there. I know that one day I'm going to head on down to the Walk and find it gone. That will be a sad, sad day.

Central Perk? In Manchester? It's true!

Top shot shows the interior of Manchester's Central Perk. Shot above is my breakfast. Those sausages might look alright, but they were rubbish, and that tea cup could have held a little more tea.

Here is teashopandcaff doing the closest it can, under the circumstances, to a live broadcast. Okay, it could be a little bit more live if we were on-line and writing direct on to the blog, but there’s no WiFi so sitting in the caff, this one being Central Perk in Manchester, writing on a laptop, is the closest we’re going to get on this occasion.

I was attracted by the name, of course; my daughter is an avid fan of Friends so when I passed the sign on the window, I had to take a peek inside. Where, I wondered, was the juice bar operation that used to occupy this site? Apparently, it left some time ago and then somebody else came along and now it’s a young couple running the place. Out front handling the till is Sarah and the chef – her other half – is behind the scenes making the food.

Central Perk is one of those schizoid places that doesn’t quite add up: is it a trendy coffee bar, as its name suggests, or is it a ‘caff’ as the illuminated menu behind the counter indicates? Who knows and, quite frankly, who cares? All I cared about was something to eat and at 11.30am in the morning I was told that breakfast was still an option.

I had noticed the credit card sign on the door but sadly the card reader wasn’t working so I would have to walk to the nearest cashpoint, down the road at the Co-op, draw out £20 and pay with cash. Not a problem.

I ordered the Full Monty, a full English breakfast consisting of two slices of toast, two sub-standard (in my opinion) sausages, two fried eggs, two rashers of bacon, a grilled tomato, baked beans and mushrooms (£6). It came with a cup of tea too.

The sausages let the meal down and I was not alone in thinking this; Sarah said that the chef had tried them and found them wanting. She offered me two higher spec products but I had already eaten one of the original sausages and half of the other one. Four sausages would have been greedy. I did order another tea and was given it on the house because of those awful sausages. Fair play, I thought.

I got chatting with Sarah, as you do when you’re up north; people talk, and it turns out she has two young kids, one at nursery, the other just starting school this week. Her other half is the chef by trade and they both used to run a bar in the Algarve. Nice work. Anyway, it’s a harder slog than you think, running a caff like this one, but they both intend to persevere. They have an excellent location, on the road leading up to Manchester’s Piccadilly station. I like this place, but I wish I hadn’t ordered that full English breakfast – it was too much when a bagel would have been sufficient.

Central Perk Manchester is nice caff but it needs to sort out better suppliers in my opinion. If I was running this place, I’d source my sausages from a decent butcher, possibly even offer customers a choice of different varieties, speciality sausages even, but I wouldn’t go for the typical ‘caff’ sausage that you see quite often in British caffs.

Coming out of Central Perk and heading up towards the station, I noticed that next door there was a very similar sort of caff. This got me thinking. If Central Perk is going to make any serious money it can’t afford to have a similar style of operation next door, it needs to differentiate itself. I would get rid of the illuminated menu behind the counter and replace it with a blackboard and produce a smaller menu based on locally sourced ingredients. By all means offer hearty breakfasts, but go for decent ingredients, limit the menu and go for quality. That would give the place a USP (Unique Selling Point) and hopefully make some money for Sarah and her family.