Penny Blood's Black Book - Penny Blood's eclectic collection of favourite places in London to drink coffee, eat cake, have tea, eat out, buy clothes, watch movies, kill time, read Voltaire, quote Baudelaire and write this blog.

I feel like I should include Café 1001, mainly because I used to love it before it became a massive tourist trap. It used to be relatively small and full of trendy Spanish hippy types smoking weed (it wasn’t legal exactly, they just turned a blind eye).  Now it’s four times the size with a club, a barbeque etc. It’s totally heaving most of the time with people who think they are really cool. On a weekend it feels like 80% of London’s fashion population has congregated here to see and be seen. However it has lots of good cheap food, salads, pastries, baked potatoes and so on, serves coffee and alcohol, has comfy chairs and a dark and cosy upstairs (although it’s hard to be heard over the music). It’s great for people-watching and observing the Shoreditch art and fashion student crowd dressed in their “I’ve just moved to London from Cumbria and I’m going to express myself” get-up before they grow out of it.

http://cafe1001.co.uk/home.htm

1 Dray walk, 91 Brick Lane, London, E1
020 7247 9679
Monday – Saturday 6am–12pm Sunday 6am-11.30pm

Related posts:

1. Cay Tre
2. Candid Arts Café
3. Old Shoreditch Station
4. Shoreditch Electricity Rooms
5. The Dove