Bar Italia

Espresso first, as it has been for decades

The marble counter has been pulling espresso in Soho since the 1940s, and Bar Italia is still built for the quick coffee rather than the slow tasting flight. The programme is old-school Italian café-bar work: espresso and cappuccino at the centre, with tea, breakfast plates, panini, cakes and light meals arranged around them. What the house keeps is the rhythm of post-war Italian café culture, the kind brought over by Italian immigrants and made useful to taxi drivers, media workers, musicians and anyone else passing through at an awkward hour. The order starts at the bar, not at a table. Ask for an espresso when the room is moving fast, a cappuccino when the hour still feels like breakfast.

Marble, mirrors and a crowd that keeps changing

The room works like a proper counter café. Join the line, order at the marble, take what is handed over, then decide whether a wall table is free or the drink is better taken standing. The interior has the kept look people come for, with mirrored walls, classic café furniture, bright neon outside and a television giving the room another subject to argue about. Seating is limited, so this is a stop rather than somewhere to settle in for half a day. The crowd changes by the hour: coffee and breakfast early, then Soho's night traffic, partygoers, late workers, musicians and regulars who know exactly how long they need at the counter. That near-continuous rhythm is the point. The café does not ask much of you, and it gives the city a useful room in return.

What to order when the case is beside you

Start with the espresso, the clearest expression of the place: short, direct, served at the tempo of an Italian bar rather than fussed over as a performance. If there is time to sit, add a panini, which fits the café's light-meal side without turning the stop into lunch with ceremony. The cakes are part of the familiar counter furniture, but the reason to come is not a signature bake. It is the combination of coffee, something simple to eat, and a room doing what it has done for decades. For a first visit, keep the order plain: espresso at the counter, then a panini if hunger is part of the walk. The late hours change the room far more than the menu does, so the same order can feel like breakfast one day and a nightcap the next.