CAFES

See Also: COFFEE; ITALIAN FOOD; MUSIC VENUES; TAXIS Cabmen's Shelters; TEA

Ace Cafe

Location: North Circular Road, NW10 7NN. West of the North Circular Road's junction with Beresford Avenue.

Aerated Bread Company

Miss Turnbull, the manageress of the Aerated Bread Company shop at London Bridge, was given to sharing a pot of tea with a number of her favourite customers. She suggested to her employers that they might wish to allow their customers to buy cups of tea. In 1884 the company opened the first tea room in London. It became somewhere that respectable women could go to unchaperoned. Within five years the business had dozens of cafes. The company was regarded as paying its waitresses poorly.

In 1894 J. Lyons started opening its own branded cafes. A.B.C. responded by broadening its menu and becoming more restaurant-like.

In 1923 A.B.C. had 250 cafes. Three years the company opened a flagship teashop opposite Victoria Railway Station.

In 1955 A.B.C. was acquired Allied Bakeries. It reduced the number of Central London teashops and increased the number of suburban ones. In 1959 it sold its Victoria outlet to Speirs & Pond. In the 1960s the use of teashops started to decline. In 1976 the company's Camden Town factory stopped making cakes.

Location: 233 Fleet Street EC4Y 1AA

16-17 Railway Approach, London Bridge Station, SE1 9BZ

Abford House, 15 Wilton Road, SW1V 1AN (orange, red)

Caffs

A largely part of any caffs turnover was derived from serving high calorific food to people who carried out manual labour. Much of it being fried. For the convenience of their predominant clientele, they tended to open early in morning and close mid-afternoon. There were usually formica tables and a very large tea urn standing on the counter.

At the start of the 2020s numerous caffs were either closing or being repurposed into coffee shops. The development was attributed to a number of factors. There had been a shift in the workforce from blue collar work to white. As a result, not as many people were consuming calorie-dense breakfasts. People had also become more health conscious and were more likely to seek out vegan food and fresh fish. Pubs had become more likely to serve food and a number of coffee shop companies had become entrenched nationally. In addition, many caffs had been run by immigrants. The second- and third-generation were proving inclined to try to earn livings that were more remunerative and which had less anti-social hours.

The name a la mode derived from a style of beef.

Coffee Bars

Pino Reservato was a Milanese salesman who sold dental equipment. He made his first visit to Britain in 1951. At the time, coffee was still subjected to a price controls regime. The Italian despaired at the quality of the brew that he was exposed to. It was made in urns that were often left to simmer for hours on end. The following year, the controls were done away with. The salesman approached Gaggia, the Italian coffee machine makers, and took up the concession to sell their products in the U.K.. He established the Riservato Partners office on Soho's Dean Street. He did not have an import licence for the machines and so had to smuggle them into Britain via Ireland and the Isle of Man. In 1953 he established the Gaggia Experimental Coffee Bar in the basement of the Dean Street building. Members of the catering trade came to see the Gaggias in action. However, they were uniformly of the opinion that the high-pressure extraction was wasteful of coffee.

The Moka Bar on Frith Street was set up by Maurice Ross. It was Britain's first coffee bar. The premises were formally opened in 1953 by the Italian movie star Gina Lollabrigida. Others mushroomed across Soho, attracting students and teenagers . They soon spread across London and then the country. Coffee bars became one of the crucibles where Britain's capacity to produce innovative youth cultures was forged.

Location: 10 Dean Street, W1D 3RW (red, turquoise)

29 Frith Street, W1D 5LG (pink, brown)

See Also: COFFEEHOUSES; ITALIAN FOOD Ticinese Cafes; MUSIC VENUES The Troubador; MUSIC VENUES, DISAPPEARED 2i's; SOFT POWER SOUNDS REBOUND; SOHO

Website: www.gaggiadirect.com

Bar Italia

The Bar Italia coffee bar is open 24 hours a day. It has been run by the Polledri family since the late 1940s.

Location: 22 Frith Street, W1D 4RP (pink, white)

Website: http://baritaliasoho.co.uk

J. Lyons

Samuel Gluckstein built up a cigar making business. In 1887 Salmon & Gluckstein opened a cigar shop on the Edgware Road. This, it built up into a chain as well as creating a number of cigarette brands. Glucktein's son Monte took Lyons into catering by providing catering for the large exhibitions that were feature of the age, using Joe Lyons as a frontman. In 1891 the firm opened its own Venice-themed exhibition at Olympia. Almost five million people attended it. Two years later Lyons bought the venue. It then staged a Constantinople-themed one. In 1894 it started to open its own branded cafes. The first one was at 213 Piccadilly. These were pitched upmarket from A.B.C.'s teashops.

In 1909 the first Lyons Corner House opened in Coventry Street off Piccadilly Circus. It was an arcade that contained a variety of restaurants for different budget. There were also shops that sold various kinds of food and drink. Lyons took to selling loose tea to grocers.

Lyons sought to make its outlets identical to one another to give the public assurance that they would know what they would experience. In 1925 its waitresses started wearing identical uniforms and soon became known as Nippies . The term was probably meant to indicate speedy service. (They were to inspire the musical Nippy (1928), which starred Binnie Hale (1899-1984).)

In 1933 Monte's son Sir Isidore, a Conservative M.P., persuaded the newspaper proprietor Viscount Rothermere to stop supporting Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. The argument was aided by a threat to end Lyons's advertising in the peer's newspapers. In 1939 George Orwell lamented that the 162 teashops demonstrated the sinister strand in English catering, the relentless industrialisation that was overtaking it. Both the Strand and Regent Street Corner Houses developed gay clienteles.

Lyons diversified its activities too widely and had to sell its property portfolio. In 1977 the Strand Corner House became the last one to close. The following year Allied Breweries bought the company for 63.6m.

Location: 7-14 Coventry Street, W1D 7DH (blue, pink)

14-16 Oxford Street, W1T 1BB (purple, brown)

Orchard House, 458 Oxford Street, W1C 1AP. The six-storey building was designed for J. Lyons by the Trehearne & Norman architectural practice in the 1930s. The lower floors were occupied by Marks & Spencer, which over the years extended its occupancy upwards through the structure and then northwards into the Orchard Street extension. ()

213 Piccadilly, WIJ 9HF (purple, orange)

5 Strand, WC2N 5HR (orange, purple)

See Also: BURGERS Wimpy Bars; FOOD BRANDS J. Lyons; THE LEONINE PAYMASTER

The Partisan Coffee House

In the early 1960s The Partisan Coffee House was a birthplace of the New Left.

Location: 7 Carlisle Street, W1D 3BW (orange, brown)

Regency Cafe

Regency Caf opened in 1946. It has been used as a location for several movies and television series.

Location: 17-19 Regency Street, SW1P 4BY (red, blue)

Website: https://regencycafe.has.restaurant

Workers Caféo:p>

Workers Café opened in 1986.

Location: 172 Upper Street, N1 1RG (blue, brown)

Website: www.workers-cafe.co.uk

David Backhouse 2024