Royal Festival Hall

Company of Cooks have installed themselves in the terrace cafe area at the Royal Festival Hall and have made it an excellent place for lunch. There is plenty of space, much of it with a riverside view, and the place has a light and airy feel to it. It is not really a formal lunching kind of place but a good lazy Sunday or
Saturday destination. Excellent sandwiches on good, dense, seedy bread or focaccia with hummus and roasted courgettes. The cake is excellent and unusual, including a lavender cake with a wonderfully subtle flavour or, for Easter, a good rich, fruity simnel cake with generous amounts of marzipan. They also do seasonal salads and soups. Well made coffee and quick service make it one of my current favourites.

Nordic Bakery

The Nordic Bakery in Golden Square, is a relatively new Scandinavian bakery and coffee shop. It serves open sandwiches on dark rye bread (salmon tartare, egg and anchovy, cheese and gherkins) and, the real draw, warm, fresh and deeply enticing cinnamon buns. The interior, as you might expect, is clean and modern looking and yet, mainly because of the comforting and drool inducing smell of cinnamon and baking when you enter, it also immensely comforting. We escaped the hailstorm there and had tea in retro looking and oversized cups. The tea was perfectly brewed and reasonably priced, the smell was deeply delicious and the service friendly and efficient. In this part of London, tucked behind the generally overpriced and tacky Piccadilly, this is a rare find and i strongly you pay it a visit.

Coffe, Cake and Kink

London's only (so they say) kinky coffee shop. They sell coffee, tea, cake and erotica and pride themselves on being risque. In fact the atmosphere is more like having tea at a strangely comforting Aunt's house and the tea comes in generous pots which are more than enough for one. The service is solicitous and the cake delicious.