Moka Bar Soho: The First Espresso Bar in Britain

Britain in 1953 was still living with rationing, and coffee usually meant something instant or stewed. Then a narrow bar opened at 29 Frith Street in Soho with a gleaming Italian machine that pushed water through coffee under pressure and topped each cup with foam. The Moka Bar is widely remembered as the first espresso bar in Britain, the spark for a coffee bar craze that swept London and the country in the 1950s.

Here is what we know about who was behind it, why it caught on so fast and how it ended, with a twist involving William S. Burroughs.

Key takeaways

• The Moka Bar opened at 29 Frith Street, Soho, in 1953 and is often called Britain’s first espresso bar.
• It used a Gaggia machine, imported by Pino Riservato, the first person to bring Gaggia machines into the UK.
• It was an instant hit, reportedly selling more than a thousand cups a day, and espresso bars multiplied across Soho.
• By one estimate there were around 2,000 coffee bars in Britain by 1960.
• The Moka closed on October 30, 1972, shortly after Burroughs ran a sound-and-photo campaign against it.

In this article

1. Coffee in Britain before 1953
2. The first espresso bar in Britain opens
3. The coffee bar boom
4. Burroughs and the end of the Moka
5. Legacy
6. FAQ

Coffee in Britain before 1953

Britain had been a coffee-drinking nation once: the London coffeehouses of the 17th and 18th centuries were famous meeting places for traders, writers and politicians. But over the following centuries tea took over as the everyday drink, a story we tell in why Britain drinks tea. By the early 1950s, coffee in most British cafés was weak, often made from bottled essence or instant powder.

Meanwhile, Italy had a new kind of coffee. In the late 1940s, Achille Gaggia’s spring-lever machines began producing espresso at high pressure, with a thick layer of crema on top. The look and texture were unlike anything most Britons had seen in a cup. Our article on who invented the espresso machine traces how that technology developed.

The first espresso bar in Britain opens at 29 Frith Street

The Museum of London records that the Moka espresso bar opened in Frith Street in 1953 as the first café specializing in coffee, and that it was immediately popular. The man most closely linked to it is Pino Riservato, an Italian dental technician connected by marriage to the Gaggia family. According to coffee historian Jonathan Morris, Riservato was the first to import Gaggia machines into Britain. Restaurateurs were skeptical at first, so he demonstrated the machines himself, including in his London flat.

Morris’s research also links the venture to a Scottish businessman, Maurice Ross, and describes a Moka-Ris bar that served customers while showing the machines to trade buyers. Accounts differ on some details and dates, so the cleanest summary is this: by 1953, a Gaggia-equipped espresso bar was operating at 29 Frith Street, and it became the model others copied. You may also read that the film star Gina Lollobrigida opened the bar; it is a popular story, but we could not confirm it in the historical sources we checked.

What was it like?

The novelty was the point. Teenagers who were too young for pubs found somewhere to sit, talk and be seen. The writer and academic John Sutherland, recalling the Moka, has said the machine was temperamental and the espresso not especially good, served in glass cups with plenty of brown sugar, yet the place felt very smart. The bar reportedly sold more than a thousand cups of coffee a day.

The coffee bar boom

Success spread quickly. The Museum of London notes that the number of espresso bars in Soho rose fast after the Moka opened, in a neighborhood already known for its restaurants and cafés. A 1955 photograph in its collection shows a packed Soho espresso bar decorated in an exotic style with bamboo walls and caged peacocks: coffee bars sold atmosphere as much as coffee.

The craze did not stay in Soho. Jonathan Morris cites an estimate of around 2,000 coffee bars by 1960. They became hangouts for a new teenage culture with money to spend and jukeboxes to fill, and some became small music venues too; see our history of coffeehouse music.

Timeline

William S. Burroughs and the end of the Moka

The Moka’s ending is one of the odder footnotes in literary history. In 1972 the American writer William S. Burroughs was living in London. According to his biographer Ted Morgan, he felt he had been treated rudely at the Moka and served cheesecake that made him ill. He decided to retaliate with the techniques he had used in his experimental writing.

Starting on August 3, 1972, Burroughs stood outside the bar, taking photographs and recording the street on tape. The next day he came back and played the previous day’s recordings outside, aiming, as Morgan put it, to place the bar out of time. Burroughs was convinced it worked.

On October 30, 1972, the Moka closed; the site later reopened as the Queens Snack Bar. Did a tape recorder shut down Britain’s pioneering espresso bar? Probably not on its own. Rising rents and changing tastes are more mundane explanations, and by 1972 coffee bars were everywhere, so the Moka was no longer special. But the story is too good to leave out.

Legacy

The Moka did not invent coffee drinking in Britain, but it introduced a new format: Italian espresso machines, quick service and a social space that was neither pub nor tea room. The 1950s coffee bars faded in the 1960s and 1970s, yet the template returned in force from the 1990s with the modern café chains and later the independent specialty scene. Frith Street is still home to a famous Soho espresso institution, Bar Italia.

To taste what all the fuss was about, brew a dark, Italian-style espresso at home. Our Italian Roast is our darkest, a slow-roasted Arabica and Robusta blend with a thick crema, and the 6 Bean Blend is a bold, chocolatey dark roast built for espresso. Both are roasted 1 to 5 days before delivery, so your crema will look a lot better than the Moka’s did.

Moka Bar FAQ

What was the first espresso bar in Britain?

The Moka Bar at 29 Frith Street, Soho, which opened in 1953 with a Gaggia machine, is widely recognized as the first.

Who brought Gaggia machines to Britain?

Pino Riservato, an Italian connected to the Gaggia family by marriage, was the first to import them, according to historian Jonathan Morris.

Did Gina Lollobrigida open the Moka Bar?

It is often said, but we could not verify it in the sources we checked, so treat it as unconfirmed.

When did the Moka Bar close?

On October 30, 1972, a few months after William S. Burroughs began recording and photographing it in protest.

Is the Moka Bar still open?

No. The site became the Queens Snack Bar after 1972. Bar Italia, also on Frith Street, carries on the Soho espresso tradition.

Sources

1. Espresso bar, Soho (photograph by Henry Grant, 1955), London Museum.
2. Jonathan Morris, Imprenditoria italiana in Gran Bretagna: il consumo del caffè stile italiano, Italia Contemporanea, 2005 (University of Hertfordshire repository).
3. William Burroughs and the strange demise of London’s first espresso bar, The Great Wen, 2011.
4. How William S. Burroughs used the cut-up technique to shut down London’s first espresso bar, Open Culture, 2026.

Facts checked in October 2026.

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