Bar Italia: Inside Pulp’s favourite Soho comedown café
The central London area of Soho has always been buzzing with activity. From the 1800s onwards, the area was the city’s red light district. In the years following, it morphed into a breeding ground of artists, musicians, stranger characters, fine foods and more. Quickly becoming the cultural centre point of London, by the 1960s, Soho was the seedy – albeit creative – underbelly of the city. By the Britpop era of the 1990s, however, its nights were filled with boys in bands on comedowns, with one Jarvis Cocker being amongst them.
Amidst all of it stood one establishment, Bar Italia. Opening in 1949 by the Polledri family, the Italian household still owns it today. Built on culturally sacred ground at the spot where John Logie Baird gave the first-ever demonstration of the television back in 1926, it’s like there was something mythic in the foundations, making the spot destined to be a magnet to stars and their art.
For a long time, the late-night cafe and bar was an “if you know, you know” spot. Originally, it was a meeting place for Soho’s heavily Italian population. Staying open late to allow restaurant workers to socialise after their shifts, it was, and still is, a centre point for the community.
During the day, Italians in London would flock to its traditional café set up for tiramisu, arancini and proper espresso. But as the doors stayed open into the early hours of the morning and word of the spot spread to Soho’s party crowd, the night brigade would come in until 4am, indulging in whatever craving took their fancy. Pizza to soak up the booze? Hot chocolates to soothe a bad trip? The hole-in-the-wall spot has it all.
Standing on Firth Street, the bar is just across the road from the famous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. Round the corner on Dean Street, Soho House and the Groucho Club were originally home to the city’s artistic elite. In the 1990s, the area was bustling with some of London’s best clubs, still bringing more underground and countercultural sounds into the centre alongside the fresh Britpop wave.
But the place to be for a night out was at Smashing, a club on Regent Street. Maintaining the camp energy of Soho with a heavy influence of the drag and LGBTQ+ communities that dominated the area, the club merged queerness, artistry and the new age of indie rock. A favourite hangout of Suede, Blur and all the new Cool Britannia crowd, it was the home of Britpop’s hedonism.
Amongst it all was Pulp, another leading light in the scene. After moving to London to study at Central St Martins in the late 1980s, Cocker was right in the heart of the city’s 1990s music crowd, and the whole gaggle buzzed around Smashing, Soho and then afters at a certain all-night café.
On the band’s 1995 album A Different Class, they dissect the scene they found themselves in. Throughout the record, Pulp navigate love, drugs, sex and class with their signature humour and outsider perspective. But after the highs of ‘All Sorted For E’s & Wizz’, their take on the 1990s drug and rave culture, the album ends on a comedown as the band find themselves clinging to life at the Bar Italia, giving its name to the final song.
“If you can make an order / Could you get me one? / Two sugars would be great / Cause I’m fading fast and it’s nearly dawn,” Jarvis Cocker sings. Writing about a comedown as an apocalyptic event, ‘Bar Italia’ finds the band trying to survive the end of the night with help from espressos. The track has become an anthem for the café, turning a once cult spot into an iconic establishment.
As Cocker paints a picture of its late-night respite, the protagonist watches businessmen head to work while he hides out with the rest of the party crowd. Becoming a must-visit site for Pulp fans, a night out in Soho followed by a much-needed sugary coffee is a pilgrimage.
Since the release of the song, life has stayed pretty much the same for the Polledri family. The menu is the same, the decor is the same, and the opening hours are the same. But when it ticks well past midnight, and the stragglers come crawling from their nights out and banging down the doors for support in the form of a cannoli, they’ll have one track on their mind, mentally singing along with Pulp as they declare:
“And now it’s morning
There’s only one place we can go
It’s ’round the corner in Soho
Where other broken people go
Let’s go”.
