Bar Italia

Bar Italia has traded from the same address on Frith Street since 1949, and the Polledri family who opened it still run it today, making it one of the few genuine survivors of Soho’s once large Italian community that shaped this part of the West End for much of the twentieth century.

Coffee is the entire point: strong, properly made espresso served fast at a counter that has barely changed in decades, alongside cannoli and tiramisu that regulars order without needing to check the board above the till, since the same handful of desserts have been there for years.

A blue plaque above the door marks the building’s other claim to history, John Logie Baird’s first public demonstration of television in 1926, a detail most people notice only after they have already ordered and are waiting at the counter.

The interior is small and largely standing room, with a handful of stools rather than proper seating for a full sit down meal, and late at night the crowd shifts from coffee drinkers and tourists to a mixed, sometimes rowdy, Soho crowd spilling out of nearby bars and clubs well past midnight.

It is not a place to linger over a laptop or a long conversation, and there is no pretence that it should be, but for a genuinely excellent, fast coffee at almost any hour of the day or night, it remains one of Soho’s few real constants.

Its survival is genuinely notable given how much the surrounding streets have changed, with most of Soho’s other independent Italian cafes and delis having closed or been replaced by chains over the same period. The lack of a formal booking system or extended seating means it will never work for a group wanting to sit and eat properly, but for a single espresso taken standing at the counter, in a room that still looks close to how it did seventy years ago, it has few genuine rivals left in central London. Cash and card are both accepted, prices remain low for the area, and the Frith Street pavement outside functions almost as an extension of the counter, with regulars happy to drink their espresso standing on the street rather than wait for space inside.