Who fancies coffee and cocktails in London?
Is it a café or a bar?
Coffee by day and cocktails by night.
... or, if you're kicking over the traces: cocktails by day, then coffee to stop you from falling asleep, then more cocktails. Not a regime we champion, but certainly one that gets us through the working day.
Café-come-bars are a European staple and the blurring of the venue lines is becoming well established over here too, so we've hand-picked some venues who aren't too rigid about the drinks they serve.
And for those of you who really don't know if you want coffee or cocktails, may we suggest the Espresso Martini?
In their own words, colonial India-inspiredImperial Durbar offer “restoratives, remedies, sharpeners and stiffeners” which means in the morning there is coffee from southern India, masala chai and tea, while in the evening there are beers and cocktails with a bias towards gin.
Espresso bar by day, cocktail bar by night, plus a recording studio upstairs. So hip it hurts, and expanding rapidly with other Grinds in Soho, Holborn and London Bridge.
Bar Termini
7 Old Compton Street W1D 5JE
Restaurant & Bar
Opening Times
This Italian coffee shop has a concise menu of coffee, drinks, and charcuterie and cheese dishes to appease the munchies. The cocktails are courtesy of one Tony Conigliaro of 69 Colebrooke Row. For a cheap, quick fix try their Espresso al Bar for just £1.
This Kiwi coffee company began life as a roastery and coffee shop, they’ve since expanded operations to include plenty of options for breakfast, lunch and dinner. To complement the menu there are craft beers, negronis and kiwi and strawberry cachaças.
Part of the new breed of trendy establishments in Brixton, 1940s-inspired Cable Café Bar has coffee roasted in-house and cocktails by night, with the odd live band thrown in.
This quirky basement café near Covent Garden has been going strong for almost 30 years. It’s not surprising: there’s a huge cocktail list with drinks under £8, cheap salads, soups and sandwiches, free newspapers and good, strong coffee. It certainly stands out among the recent wave of trendy barista-led establishments, in a very good way.
