Astral Cafe

British, Modern restaurant in London

8 Regency Street, London, SW1P 2EB, 020 7931 9116

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Have you eaten at Astral Cafe?

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Leaflet | Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors

8 Regency Street, London, SW1P 2EB

What the Newspaper Critics are saying

The Times

Tim Hayward asked a London cabbie for directions to the best café, expecting to be sent to the famous Regency. “No mate,” came the reply. “The Regency’s full of tossers taking selfies. The Astral.”

He duly found himself in joint with steamed-up windows – “a dream-like, timeless, organically grown space” run by a Portuguese family and dotted with silent cab drivers. Here he found the bacon sandwich of his dreams: thin-sliced white packet bread, square cut, thickly spread with Anchor butter and filled with “rigorously functional, institutional bacon”, four rashers thick in the middle and two at each end.

“You know what I really mean. This is the ur-bacon sandwich. A whole that’s so much more than the sum of its parts, and any explanation somehow demeans both the sandwich and the man who consumes it.”

Eating it left Tim feeling “profoundly British, insufficiently in touch with my emotions to explain them.”

Tim Hayward - 2025-02-23