Lido Cafe

A cute café on the edge of the Serpentine serving light bites, coffee and cake.
The service is slow but then it is always busy. They serve Union Coffee so the coffee is alwaaaaays good and better than the Benugo coffee at the Serpentine Bar & Café. The cake is massive annnnd delicious (recommend the carrot cake) but expensive at £4. A lovely stop off during a wander around the park.

There are few places to enjoy a coffee and with a better view than the Lido Café in Hyde Park. If you are seated outside you have a stunning view ofe the Serpentine lake. When the weather is nice, its is great to sit outside, relax and watch the Swans and other birds on the Serpentine.
I have to admit that I usually only have coffee here, as I from what I’ve seen of others eating, the food does not look that great, and I feel is overpriced, for essentially a café.
The staff have always been pleasant, although the system for paying is confusing as there is not a direct point to order and pay. This mean that if it is busy and there are several people at the counter, the server does not know who is next in line, if they have been at the other end of the counter fixing coffee. When I say fixing, I say this very loosely. You cannot customise your coffee, as I tried. They use the sort of coffee machine where you just press a button. The sort that most office buildings have in a self service canteen.
At £2.50 for a Latte. I was happy to sit and enjoy the scene rather than dwell on the less than crafted coffee.

I’ve eaten cardboard that has had more flavor than their flatbread pizza. It made me hate my life.

We had breakfast here after the husband’s swim on a cold saturday morning, and it was actually far better than expected. I think I had expected something a little more touristy and meh considering the location, but that definitely wasn’t true. The eggs were great and toast warm, the bacon sandwich generous and the croissant flaky. It didn’t take long for the foot to arrive but that might have been due to the time, it was just about 9.30am on a saturday.
The location is obvisously really great too, even in the winter, as you can sit at the windows and look out over the Serpentine. I can only imagine that it’s even nicer in the summer, when you can sit outside right by the lake.
We actually didn’t find the price too bad considering the location etc — it’s a fancy enough place in a very fancy part of town, so you definitely can’t expect to pay a fiver for a meal.
The only one negative thing, if I’m being picky, was that the tables in corner, furthest away from the door blowing in cold air, don’t have windows. It would have been great to sit on the corner bench and look out, but then we did well enough on one of the little bistro tables.

Breakfast in Hyde Park on a Saturday: — nice place to sit outside (the café benefits from the location!!) — if you are a larger group it is not easy to find a place (tables are very small) — self-​service café with very unfriendly/​unprofessional staff — food was good (English/​Vegetarian breakfast (7.95 GBP), Greek joghurt with granola (2.95 GBP), cakes); the joghurt was very sweet! — prices okay — bathroom seems to be a public one and was disgusting! Conclusion: The location is great, food is okay, but service was bad! There are other breakfast places where they honor the client much more!

My friend visited the café, and her friend’s bag got stolen. The staff responded in a very disappointing way, first said there’s no surveillance video for the outdoor area, then didn’t even want to help them call police. That completely destroyed their mood to any future sightseeing at London.
I think if it’s a common problem for the café, they should warn the customers, and put a video camera there — it doesn’t cost that much. Their attitude revealed that they didn’t care. With such high price tag on the menu, they should. So, we should not care to go there either.
The link to the web blog on this event:

This place is surrounded by a nice park, where you can take a stroll and just enjoy the beauty it has to offer. It was a cool afternoon and luckily we had a few minutes of sunshine to make it tolerable while sipping on lukewarm cappuccino £2.30.
My complaint with this place is, they have bad attitude and literally served us cold salmon fillet £10.75. We waited over 30 minutes for refrigerated salmon and was so pissed, I didn’t know what to say at this point. Thank goodness the beef stew £7 was partially warm. When you’re in this neck of the woods, the choices are limited.
Service is slow, and if they would prepare their food at the right temperature, I think there is hope for them.
Come for the view (4 stars), stay for a drink (3 stars), but skip the food (2 stars).

I had a very lovely late brekkie here this sunny summery morning. Eggs Benedict: nicely poached eggs, decent English muffins, delicious ham. Sadly the hollandaise sauce was a bit too lemony and sweet but I left a clean plate anyway. An Americano was good too — just wished they’d had iced coffee options (but no biggie). The bill came to just under £10 … which given the location and the quality of the meal, I reckon was good value. I’d go back again for a quick repast during another morning of playing in the park … and that’s the appeal: good enough food in a pretty place.
My only real complaint was that there just wasn’t enough shade. I was happy to sit outside with the ducks and swans swimming back in the Serpentine — an ideal setting just not ideal for dining. Of course, I could have gone inside but that would have been very beside the al fresco point.

A nice place to sit with a drink and a sandwich, as long as you can get a seat inside or it’s sunny out! The main meals are good, large portions and well cooked. It’s not the most exciting of places to sit or eat, but perfect if you’re hungry and in that corner of the park already. The prices aren’t that bad, for £10 you can get a proper plate of food and a drink.
In short, not worth making a trip for, but good enough for what it is.

Good place to sit; bad café.
Usually Lido means swimming pool. There is a swimming beach, but locked-​off today for some reason. There are boats which are fun to watch, people in their holiday clothes watching the boats, and an air of wealth.
That’s because a beer costs £6.50. The nearest place I found to get a take-​away beer is Sainsburys opposite Harrods just 15 minutes south. It’s also a place to buy a newspaper.
If you’re a tourist here and want to spend £6.50, the second problem is the design of the place. Metal chairs scrape on the floor at just the pitch to set peoples’ lap-​dogs barking. Puzzling signs over the counter say «please order at the bar». I’m from London, so I ought to know, but it doesn’t say if you’re meant to queue or what part of the counter they think is the bar, so most people scrum round the main door and block it; it’s hard to keep out of everyone’s way.
Next time I’ll be a better Londoner and sit on the grass with something in a soft drink bottle.

I liked it here — to be honest its too expensive for my budget. But because someone else was paying I didn’t look at the prices. The staff were all a bit raah and sloaney, and the service was a little slow but adequete. The people there were not loud or boisterous, so it was a pretty peacefull place to catch up and have a drink and food. Everything was clean. I also went there in the winter during the winter wonderland festival and had mulled wine. I’d say adequete but could be better.

2 stars for food quality and price.
5 stars for aesthetics, obviously.
A dry, tasteless burger with soggy chips for 4.50.
A salad that claimed to be a beetroot and goat cheese concoction that was actually some unwashed spinach with bland oil on top for SIX QUID!

So picturesque. Go there for tea time and sit with the old ladies. Hilarious. Nice bathrooms!

For those of you avidly following my Unilocal you will know I do not like being charged silly amounts just because I am offered little choice. Cinemas, parks and events generally do this! It makes me frown! The Lido café does this and it makes me frown.
Round one: A coke, a bag of crisps and an elderflower presse (yes that last drink was asking for trouble): £5.40! You’re on one star Lido, you better cheer me up somehow!
Round two: A hot chocolate, an elderflower presse (it is just so good) and two slices of carrot cake: £7.50! Mildly extortionate, but exquisite cake, and a generous slice, so you get 2 stars.
Round three: A GORGEOUS steak and onion relish baguette with one elderflower presse. A tenner ish (my friend payed). Now, this is still pricey for effectively a sandwich. Were I to walk 10 minutes out the park to a Starbucks I could get a similar sarnie for half the price…
But I didn’t want to leave the park. I wanted to sit in gorgeous surroundings, with waiter service (ish) and enjoy the sun.
This is run by the same company as the Cow and Coffee Bean in Greenwich, hence the prices are still silly, but where the Lido picks up points is in a better range, and to be honest nicer surroundings.
If you’re in the park and just want a drink, find an ice cream van around the edge, but if you want to sit down and enjoy lunch, enjoy the park, then head here!

I met a friend for lunch here last week. It was a lovely bright, sunny winter’s day, but VERY cold! After a lovely long walk around Hyde Park and visiting the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain we went to The Lido Café for lunch.
Although there was a good selection of hot and cold dishes, the selection of sandwiches and cakes was poor.
The café itself was very cold and to warm ourselves up we decided to order the fish and chips. No complaints on the portion or quality of the fish and chips, but then again there shouldn’t be for £7.95 each — VERY expensive for fish & chips and especially when you consider we had to virtually keep all our layers on to keep warm while we were eating lunch!
A nice place to sit and overlook the serpentine in the summer and for a quick drink, but the draft from the french doors was just so cold at this time of year — we had to move into the back corner to ensure we were sitting out of a wind tunnel!
The coffee and teas we ordered were fine, but again rather pricey (£1.50 — £2.75). We also ordered a slice of carrot cake to share, but unfortunately it was pretty disappointing — dry and a bit tasteless, but this is really what I suppose you’d expect from a place which is on the London tourist trail :-(
Good for a quick light lunch in the summer, but if you’re looking for somewhere cosy after a winter’s walk in the park, I would probably recommend somewhere outside of the park which would be cheaper and no doubt warmer!

Set on the water edge of the Serpentine Lake, Lido café is a short walk from the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain. This fountain had a lot of controversial discussions, as it is one of the most modern and abstract memorials in London.
The Lido café is the more civilised version of the Dell restaurant also placed at the Serpentine Lake. When I go there it is not always easy to find a table, if you manage to get one, the place is a prime spot in Hyde Park. The place offers you a great view onto the active side of the Serpentine Lake, rowboats, pedal boats and swimmers are especially in summer to be watched. Apart from that, people watching at that spot is a pleasure, as you will find lots of wealthy people of any nationality taking their Sunday walk .
I have been there for an early evening supper in summer. I was enjoying a warm goat cheese salad with a cold glass of white wine. The menus are served to the table along with a buffet display to chose sandwiches, cakes and pastries. I paid all together around £11, which is reasonable considering Lido café is a couple of minutes away from Knights Bridge.