Cheap and Nice places to hang out in Central London

Catching up with old friends is always a fresh feeling and if its combined with good food and drinks in a good location, it’s like icing on cake. 

So last night, we decided to meet in central London at some nice restaurant and later head to a good bar. The place is called Va Piano and it is located in the street behind the big Topshop showroom in front of Oxford circus station. Its pretty popular among European food lovers because of its wide range of fresh house made pizzas ans pastas and also a pleasant decor and spacious seating.

Every customer is given a chip card at the entrance which they use to order their food or drinks from the bar. No doubt they have innovative and hip casual dining as they claim but even after trying hard to be fast, their service is pretty slow and one has to wait in long queues to get the order prepared. May be its because of the place being over crowded all the time and the time consumed in preparing each dish according to the customer’s taste buds. Yes, they will actually prepare your dish your way. You can have your pasta, cheesy, spicy, extra hot or bland; it’s all made according to your instructions. 

What I didn’t like about the place is it’s over crowded and noisy. The chitter chatter of over 50 customers at any given time gets too loud and irritating. I don’t remember hearing any music or was there any? May be there was music which got lost in the noise of the crowd. They have a pretty decent bar which serves some good choices of wines and spirits.  

The fresh decor with dim lighting and tiny green herb plants all around gives away a not expensive but soothing feeling good. The chefs and staffs were friendly and tried to give the customers a trendy dining experience.

Once we were full, we headed for a more relaxed atmosphere for drinks and some place where we could hear each other without shouting. So we thought why not All Bar One since it's close and centrally located.

All bar one! One of my favourite cheap bars in London. But again, the sound problem. Like any normal bar this also had loud music and people were shouting to be heard. But, All Bar One always has outdoor seating which is more relaxing and less noisy. They have got decent range of beer and have got most of the popular brands of wines and liquors. But some of my personal favourites were missing from the list, for example, Duvel and Desparado. 

Interestingly, they serve a funny and cheap version of Sangria which i guess, had cranberry juice and some alcohol. The number of staff was too less, just two to serve when over 20 customers wanted their glasses to be filled. Poor them! I felt sad for the staffs.