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Bingo.
You can find the best stuff here in the UK if you know where to look, but generally, in any random shop in France, Italy, Spain, etc you will find better stuff for much less.
I don't know why I mentioned France. Nothing is open there, ever :)
Melbourne is like that - I remember walking into some random suburban bakery and getting a better cappucino from there than I'd had in any chain cafe in the UK anywhere in 10 years.
hippy-
Bread is an interesting one in France, as there are standards for most breads (only certain ingredients and processes allowed) and you can only call it a bakery if it meets certain criteria - eg all bread made on site, from start to finish, offering a certain range of breads, including local types etc.
Where as in the uk you can call any load basically anything you want. Lots of sour-faux on the shelves round here!
Nef
I kinda think of it like this - it’s like wine or bread in Europe, eg France with bread or Italy with wine: the standard day to day stuff is noticeably better than what we get here at the same level. Of course you can now get a better loaf of bread from a specialist artisan baker in the UK vs a boggo bakery in France, but the main thing you notice is that a baguette that costs a euro from an entirely standard bakery in France is a world apart from the equivalent in the uk. Same goes for drinking the cheapest/average wine in a normal cafe or bar in Italy vs the UK. I’d happily order a wine in an Italian cafe without much thought, but I’d probably be a lot more trepidatious ordering one at a standard street corner cafe in the UK.
Good bread, wine or coffee tend to be the exception in the UK, compared to them being the standard over there. Or at least the baseline is a lot higher.
So of course the €1 Italian espresso isn’t going to be world class, but at least for me it never fails to surprise me how reliable and drinkable it is - which is an experience completely different to buying coffee in the UK.