49 Cafe

I worked in Bloomsbury for nearly 5 years and I came back here again and again. I only discovered this little gem after trying out a (considerable) number of other lunchtime venues in the area, thank goodness I did!
There is nearly always a queue out of the door here which should give you an indication as to how good it is (or how small but more on that later!). The café does a range of sandwiches made on the premises with thick cut focaccia or ciabatta with pretty much anything you like in them and they are DELICIOUS!
They also do salads with again, pretty much anything you can think of, roasted vegetables, pasta, greek salad etc etc. They do a range of hot food too such as pasta carbonara and lasagne. They also do a selection of pastries including the famous Italian Cannoncini and Cannoli’s. (See Sopranaos for reference!)
The food tastes as good as anything and the portion sizes are huge! The staff are friendly and smiley, if a little abrupt (but they do work at top speed!).
The café itself is absolutely tiny, I mean ridiculously so, so it can feel very hectic and no one is entirely sure where the queues begin and end. If you order a sandwich they send you to the front to pay so it feels like you are skipping ahead of the others waiting for salad but it all works somehow!
Bloomsbury isnt cheap. I’ll lay it on the line, you would be hard pushed to find somewhere (other than Tesco’s) that offers a cheap lunch and this isn’t any different, but, its part and parcel of Central London working. If you want more for your money then I can totally say you will get that here. Everything is around £5−7 per thing (salad, sandwich etc) but you do get a free banana!
Definitely recommend.

Fantastic café, I love the tuna melt from here, really creamy on the inside and crunchy on the outside. Some can be small and soggy, but this is freshly made, grilled to perfection and more importantly made quickly — so no having to wait around and huge queues when you need to appease your lunchtime need.
The size of the sandwiches very filling, and I also find the price to be very reasonable.
I’d love to try some other options and be able to report back on those, but it’s a long walk from the office and I usually only make it when I have a craving for this.
People usually seem happy here, and it’s always bustling which is a good sign. I also like the atmosphere of the place.
The staff are always approachable, you can tell the people here work hard and know what they’re doing.

Excellent value at lunch time. The Italian style sandwiches are delicious, oozing with melted cheese. NHS and student discount. You even get free dessert when your meal (in the form of a banana). I try to go as often as I can and some of my colleagues are there almost every day!

This café is delicious. All of their paninis are £4 takeaway and they all looked so good! I really recommend their vanilla chai tea latte. The paninis are nice and toasted. As soon as we got there a line started forming. It’s right across from the Brunswick centre so we just got our food and ate in the center. Great breakfast place! Next time I want to try their pastas they looked tasty as well.

Super smiley and friendly service, mix of generously portioned and nicely priced pastries (variety of croissants, muffins, cookies but also cannoli, pastel de nata, and other moreish and moorish goodies)
During the time I spent reading over a zesty orange-​coconut muffin the ladies were totally accommodating to all the customers’ requests. Seems they’ll pretty much make whatever you want with whatever they have — fresh breads, sliced or cured meats, fresh and grilled veggies, avocado, cheese. Mixed salads, jacket potatoes, pasta, eggs. From what I can tell this is basically like having a stocked kitchen and someone to help you make what you’re looking for. Eat in or takeaway, how easy!

A modest but fully serviceable café.
Most of the menu is sandwiches.
I have not had their breakfasts — and cafes live and die on their breakfast.
So this review is necessarily partial.
Daily specials are particularly noteworthy.
I have had a first rate (and huge) plate of roast pork with excellent vegs and sides for practically nothing.
Coffee is excellent (as it is in 600 000 other places in london).
Overall a good joint.

This place is my favorite café for getting breakfast, they are fast efficient and the food is everything you could want in a British café — there is butter and it is delicious.
I have eaten here twice an done take away countless times when I didn’t have time to make food at home — it’s a guilty pleasure. The staff is great and very attentive and friendly.

Yum! This place is miiiiles better than the other chain-​like cafes in this area. I have been past a few times when there was a queue coming out into the street… so I had a feeling it’d be nice.
I chose a massive ciabatta roll, stuffed with mozzarella, perfectly ripe avocado and sun dried tomatoes. There was so much filling, that it was pretty difficult to get my mouth around it (that’s what she said??). The generous filling also meant I was a hugely messy eater as avocado kept sliding out! Oops.
Extra notes:
* It’s cash only
* If you eat-​in, you pay after you have finished… but they can take quite a long time to bring the bill. They took even longer to bring back my change, so I had to rush back to work without it, leaving them a 40% tip… Not cool.

When I asked for dine-​in salad, the guy asked what I wanted. I said whatever you have. He started piling my plate with all the vegetarian offering they had. If I had not stopped him, I think I would have Mt Everest of a salad.
It was all good and even though its a deli, the server came and checked up on me twice and sked how I was doing