Bar Italia

Old Soho still somehow surviving in the midst of the blandification of Soho. Is anything particularly excellent bar the atmosphere? Not really but I absolutely love it. Added bonus of playing early 90s dance tunes on the TV. A very easy way to my heart

A chaotic, lively, and absolutely amazing café/bar that feels like something Anthony Bourdain would have loved which he did. The atmosphere is full of energy and character. I highly recommend trying the pizza it is fantastic and pairing it with their excellent espresso martini for the perfect experience

Probably the most iconic coffee bar in London is well worth the visit in my opinion. It drips with nostalgia from the cluttered wall-spaces to well-worn floor which so many have stepped upon. Open for the considerable part of most days, this is rarely quiet and usually busy. The food here, I had a late night pizza and a beer, was to a reasonable standard and price given the time and place. True, Ive had better pizza. Its difficult to think of somewhere else at 11pm on a Sunday where this could happen and in such a nice space. Staff in all fairness were lovely. The bathrooms were a little shabby at this time. I returned the following morning for a coffee though and this was just first class. Absolutely buzzing inside and out with people coming and going. Ultimately this is what they do best and ehat they are known for. This is slice of london that one needs to take a bite of.

We landed there at around 2am after a long night out, the hour when most of London either collapses or pretends to. Bar Italia does neither. It just continues. Lights on, espresso machines hissing, people drifting in like it’s the most natural thing in the world. We ordered pizza bianca — simple, warm, slightly oily in the right way — the kind of food that doesn’t try to impress you but lands exactly where it should at that hour. Around us: a mix of night survivors. Some still wired, some already fading, some in mid-conversation like they’ve been there for hours. Nobody performing, nobody curating themselves. That’s the key difference. The place opened in 1949, founded by Italian immigrants from the Piacenza region, and it still feels like a direct transplant rather than a London interpretation. One of the first spots in the city to serve proper espresso using machines from Gaggia, it helped introduce a whole rhythm of living — fast coffee, standing at the bar, conversation as background noise. And crucially, it never updated itself into something more “digestible.” Soho outside has been rewritten multiple times, but inside Bar Italia you still get the compressed version of decades: musicians spilling out from Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, journalists, actors, random night wanderers. You can imagine David Bowie or someone equally dislocated sitting there at some ungodly hour — not as a myth, just as part of the flow. Service is quick, sometimes blunt. Space is tight. Comfort is secondary. But that’s exactly why it works. There’s no attempt to optimize your experience. No effort to seduce you. It exists on its own terms. And that creates something rare: a place where people genuinely don’t give a damn — in the best possible way. No pressure, no posing. Just a continuation of the night.

Stopped for a cappuccino. Nice place to visit for nostalgia, I used to hang around the area when I had a PR office nearby. Quick service. Sit outside to people watch.