Corner Shop

Corner Shop occupies a ground floor corner of the 180 Strand development, part of the wider 180 Studios complex from the Soho House founder, and it resists easy categorisation: part bakery, part cafe, part gourmet grocer, part wine bar, all operating out of the same tiled, chrome fridged space with a terrace attached. Green and white tiling and stocked chrome fridges give it more of a retail feel than a typical restaurant fit out.

By day it works as a proper lunch stop, rotisserie chicken and a Caesar salad turning up regularly in reviews as the reliable order, alongside coffee and pastries early on. By evening the same room shifts into spritzes and negronis on tap, with wine available to drink in or take away from the retail shelves lining the space, so the same table can serve a coffee at nine in the morning and a negroni by nine at night.

The hybrid format is genuinely well executed rather than gimmicky, and it fills a gap in an area of London, just off the Strand, that has historically been short on decent all day options outside of hotel dining rooms. Reviewers have called it swankier than the corner shop name suggests, which given the setting inside a major creative and events complex, isn’t a surprise.

It can be tricky to find on a first visit; the entrance sits off Arundel Street rather than directly on the Strand frontage, and 180 Studios’ event programming means the wider building can feel like a building site of activity on busier days. It also isn’t cheap for what amounts to grocery shopping with a bar attached, so it’s worth treating as a considered stop rather than a quick, cheap bite.

A genuinely useful address for the area, best understood as several concepts in one room rather than judged against a single category.