If the coffee were better, we wouldn't need our change to buy a coffee across the road...

We've decided to leave Notting Hill for a secret part of almost-Islington where we have fallen in love with the tree lined streets and cute houses. And it's reassuring that, now we have decided to leave, nothing here seems as good as before.

Carluccios 0n Westbourne Grove: our favourite breakfast spot for its cheap breakfasts of intensely flavoured small portions. Yesterday the portions were smaller, and the flavours insipid - fewer porcinis in the mushrooms, a smaller portion of scrambled egg, and somehow less scrambled than before - with streaks of white through it - and less creamy flavoured.

The Electric: our favourite spot to take visiting friends for an international standard menu and soem celebrity spotting. This morning the blueberry pancakes that used to be as big as a plate and so full of blueberries that they barely held together are now smaller and less berried. The full-Electric (The Electric's upmarket full-English) is still OK, but when I order "no black pudding", the waiter shouldn't be plonking the dish down with the words, "full-Electric, no black pudding... oh, well just a little bit there in the middle". And finally, when you serve coffee that bad, and you are already charging 12% for service, I shouldn't have to ask for my change back. You see we need the change to buy a good coffee from The Coffee Plant, acrosst the road.

Carluccios
Westbourne Corner
108 Westbourne Grove
Bayswater, London W2 5RU
Phone: 020 7243 8164

The Electric Brasserie
191 Portobello Road, Notting Hill
Phone: 020 7908 9696

The Coffee Plant
180 Portobello Road
Notting Hill, London
Phone: 020 7221 8137