The team behind The Lavery in South Kensington has just opened Cafe at The Lavery, a more relaxed iteration of the elegant restaurant on the building’s ground floor. Set in a restored Georgian townhouse, once the residence of painter John Lavery, the relaxed, all-day space picks up where the restaurant leaves off, serving South Kensington locals and museum goers a range of broadly-European sandwiches, soups, salads and bakes.
Before the restaurant opened earlier this year, the team ran a temporary cafe upstairs which proved popular with nearby residents and conjured an atmosphere it wanted to continue. “It was super successful,” creative director Martin Cohen tells Broadsheet. “We had a nice, cool crowd and we felt that we still wanted to have a space for people to come in and just have a coffee or a sandwich or a bowl of soup.”
Overseen by chef Yohei Furuhashi (ex-River Cafe, Petersham Nurseries, Toklas), who also runs the kitchen upstairs, the menu will change seasonally, with current highlights including a tomato and mozzarella brioche, fig-and-custard brioche, fregola cake and what Cohen calls “an incredible vegan banana bread that never leaves the menu”. There’s also seasonal frittata and a sandwich of the day.
To drink, there’s Assembly coffee roasted in Brixton alongside seasonal teas that will roll out late autumn, and a concise list of wines by the glass: just one red, one white, one sparkling and one rosé.
Design-wise, interiors mix original oak floors with Kvadrat x Raf Simons textiles and reclaimed bentwood chairs. Meanwhile, Daytrip Studio (which handled the rest of the building) designed the zinc-topped counter and reception area.
While the cafe is open during the day, it’s also available for private hire in the evenings. “We designed the spaces – both the restaurant and the cafe – so we can quite quickly turn them into a space for dinner, or tea or a book launch,” Cohen says. “We’re slowly building up in our community. People are beginning to use us in a way that we want them to use us: coming in at 8 o’clock in the morning for a quick coffee, mid-morning for a meeting and a light bite at lunchtime.”
Cafe at The Lavery
45 Cromwell Place, London, SW7 2LD
Hours:
Mon to Sun, 8am–5.30pm
