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[title]London is a city renowned for its LGBTQ+ venues – whether you’re after a drag-fuelled Saturday night at Dalston Superstore or want to spend your Sunday mornings with a novel and cappuccino at The Common Press. And although more than half of the city’s queer venues closed between 2006 and 2022, new spaces continue to crop up, from Hackney’s new lesbian bar La Camionera to The Glory’s newest iteration, The Divine.
East London might be home to many of these new venues, but Soho – the historic heartbeat of London’s gay community – still offers an array of long-standing queer bars, pubs and venues. G-A-Y, Village Soho and the Duke Of Wellington are the first that spring to mind, but located on the corner of Frith Street and Old Compton Street sits something relatively unexpected. It’s a coffee shop, but not a queer-run independent. It’s an iconic gay landmark. It’s… a Caffè Nero?
On first look, 43 Frith Street looks like any other Nero you’d find in the city: pre-packaged toasties sit in the fridge and remote-working customers are glued to their laptops, ignoring the cold dregs of their flat whites. Above the milk jugs, blue rolls and flavoured syrups cluttering the bar, there’s a faux chalkboard listing the latest summer specials. But the branch, which has called Soho its home since the ’90s, is so much more than the sum of its parts.
A place to be seen
At any time of day (or night – it’s open until midnight on weekdays and as late as 2am on weekends), the café is brimming with middle-aged gay men. Some are there to catch up with friends over a cappuccino, some to spot celebrities (like Russell Tovey, Ivan Massow, Fat Tony and Baby Spice to name a few), others to scout out potential hook-ups, play cards, journal or plan impending bar crawls. In the past, Westminster’s Police Service ran anti-hate crime events in the café. Rumours have even swirled that there’s a secret nightclub downstairs (unfortunately, we can confirm that this isn’t true: it’s just the toilets).
Speaking to us over his signature order of a latte and pain aux raisin, David has been visiting 43 Frith Street since moving to London from Italy ten years ago. The 45-year-old says that the venue’s big windows make it perfect for people-watching, and also believes that its ‘bohemian, European vibe’, with warm lighting, marble-effect tabletops and the gothic arches behind the bar help to attract gay customers (the chain’s interiors are inspired by traditional Italian cafés). ‘This place has a fun, friendly atmosphere, as opposed to the pretentious, American energy of other coffee shops around,’ he says. ‘I normally come and have a lazy morning here. It feels as though the Soho you see through the windows is its own little gay town.’
Another reason David visits? The café is a two-minute walk from the iconic 56 Dean Street, a pioneering sexual health centre (and one of Europe’s largest HIV clinics) known for its services for LGBTQ+ people. ‘Usually I go for my appointment in the morning and come here and read a book – today it’s a Jane Austen novel – while I wait for my results,’ he says. ‘I think a lot of people, especially gay men, do the same.’
After hours
When we ask Michael, who’s enjoying a catch-up with a friend by the window, why he thinks the café is so popular, the 54-year-old ushers to Old Compton Street outside. Arguably the focal point of London’s LGBTQ+ scene, Michael – a silver fox dressed in a smart floral short-sleeved shirt, shorts and boat shoes – says that a now-closed Costa used to sit further up the road and drew even bigger gay crowds until it shuttered in the early 2010s.
‘I used to go to First Out by Tottenham Court Road, but it shut down [in October 2011],’ he says. ‘It had a much more mixed LGBT crowd, whereas this Caffé Nero is favoured by gay men.’ Michael has a point: rents for businesses, offices and apartments in the West End have been rising year-on-year, so it’s no surprise it’s often only the big-name chains that can survive.
Walking past is like facing a judging panel
Michael, who is sober, mentions that a lot of the gay men who come to this Nero are in recovery. One of them is 55-year-old Afshin: an Iranian photographer and fashion designer who moved to London from Paris 10 years ago in the midst of his recovery from alcohol and drug use.
Coffee shops have long been favoured by those in and post-recovery for outings, offering a cheap, familiar space to socialise that doesn’t revolve around alcohol: soon after Afshin arrived, he started frequenting the Nero and found comfort in the community gathering there. ‘There’s still a lot of bars and pubs in Soho that draw older crowds, like Comptons and the Duke of Wellington,’ he says. ‘But a lot of the gays that come to Caffè Nero are sober, so it makes sense.’
Like David and Michael, Afshin – whose go-to order is an iced black Americano – highlights the draw of Nero’s location, plus the outside seating and later opening hours (which used to run even later, closing at 4am on the weekends pre-pandemic). The only other late-night café option is Bar Italia, the iconic Italian caff across the road which closes at 4am and is known by Michael as Nero’s ‘straight competitor’.
‘At around 10pm on the weekends a bouncer stands in the Nero café, guarding the toilets,’ Afshin says. ‘It depends on the night, but it still gets busy late in the evenings – especially on the weekends. There’s all types of people that come here, so you’re guaranteed to see someone you know – some meet before going on nights out. There’s a group of retired gays that hang out here the entire day, and there’s even a couple that bring their own tablecloth when they sit outside.’
To the nines
As a photographer, Afshin has captured thousands of images of the café’s patrons, including artist Daniel Lismore. ‘It’s funny, because a lot of people say they’re intimidated to walk past here because they think they’re being judged by the gays,’ Afshin laughs. ‘The gayest place in London is *that* Caffè Nero in Soho,’ writer Ben Vyle joked on X. ‘Walking past is like facing a judging panel.’
Afshin says that the Nero acts as a base for real-life Grindr meet-ups, whether they start off with a coffee or instantly head somewhere else: ‘It feels like the days of meeting people in person are gone, so it provides a good place to rendezvous.’ And as well as making friends, Afshin briefly dated a man he met in the café: they eventually started talking when they found themselves routinely sitting next to each other on their separate visits.
Just the usual
So what’s it like for the staff that work at this famed Nero? Ilenia, the café’s manager, worked at six other branches of the chain before becoming Frith Street’s general manager in 2021. ‘I think the difference is there’s a real sense of community [here],’ she says. ‘We’re in the middle of the gay community and you can feel it. Everybody looks out for each other here.’
She agrees that it’s a predominantly sober crowd that congregates at the café, and says that she ‘knows all of them’. ‘I’m here 50 hours a week, so I see them every day,’ she says. ‘Especially the older gay men – they all know me by name. They think this is their house. Some of them spend more time here than me, but at least I’m getting paid.’
The days of meeting people in person are gone, so it’s a good place to rendezvous
It’s intriguing (and surprising) how a branch of one of the UK’s largest coffeehouse chains has been adopted by a specific portion of the LGBTQ+ community, offering a sense of familiarity and providing sober patrons with an alcohol-free social space in an area famous for its bars, pubs and clubs. ‘I run into people I know every time I visit,’ Afshin says. ‘It’s such a reliable space for our community – it’s always here for us.’