I'm bored of fashionable, expensive restaurants. Bored of £100 for two, if you're lucky, and mean-fisted time-slot tables. It's pissing down, the skies are leaden, and all I want is a characterful den with great cheap food where I can crack open my own shop-bought Beaujolais.

And, if you steal a closer look, secret B.Y.O caffs do in fact glisten, like pound coins in the gutter, across town.

In Soho? Gawp at The Lorelei's menu, a diner for which the word retro is a little mild. Admire the chipped mermaid mural, accidentally hip Formica furniture, outside toilets ­ and pizzas for around a fiver.

Out East? Why bother with Shoreditch House (£14 for a slither of swordfish!) when you can stuff yourself at Thai haunt Lenny's? It's packed like The Ivy so you'll need to book, and there's no menu except whatever's on that day - Tandoori fish, or Thai green curry with squid ­ but, hallelujah, two courses will be less than £9 quid. You may not be able to say you saw Giles, who was talking to Stuart, who was talking to Lee (thank god), but you will come out well fed.

Or maybe you're planning a piss-up at the Hawley Arms or Proud bar? First hit the fairest B.Y.O of all, Bintang, a ramshackle institution on Kentish Town Road, complete with garden terrace for those occasional rainless soirees, which serves top Malaysian food at prices that haven't gone up in, oooh, at least a decade.