Bar Italia

Bar Italia Review

This legendary Frith St. Italian coffee bar is Soho's unofficial beating heart and a 22-hour-a-day institution. Still family-run and established in 1949 during the post-war coffee-bar craze, it is now positively football crazy and a honey-pot for a rum assortment of roués and weird and wonderful Soho-ites. Most regulars grab a frothy cappuccino, espresso, or sobering macchiato made from the old Gaggia coffee machine and wolf down a slice of pizza, panettone, a sausage bap, or chocolate cake at one of the mirrored counters (or at pavement seats out da front). The walls are plastered with Italian flags and old pics of lusty Italian singers, world boxing champs, and black-and-white movie legends, and it's the primo numero uno spot in London to watch Italy play in the soccer World Cup.