Lava Cafe Kensington

Right place wrong time. I’ve been to this place once before at night and it was a great vibe.

We stumbled into this place by chance. There was an accident at Gloucester Road tube station, the tube was closed and so my friend and I had some time to kill before we could get a lift back to Chelsea or get back on the tube. We decided to just find somewhere to sit down have a drink; something to eat and kill a bit of time.

It was almost lunchtime and the cafe was pretty quiet. A couple of tables taken on the patio that was it.

We waited and waited but there didn’t seem to be anyone serving so we just sat down inside. After about 10 minutes a man appeared with a menu. Not super friendly either when we asked about student discount.

It’s probably more of a nighttime place, which is maybe why it seemed a bit odd at lunchtime, and I have to say when we used the toilet it was a bit dirty in the day light. We saw a couple of workman breakfasts come out the kitchen so we decided to opt for fruit smoothies and coffee instead. Cheaper and less risky we thought.

They did have a marketing picture with 6 different fruit smoothies, the kind of thing you see in a holiday resort but when we asked if we could swap the fruit around they said everything was pre prepared ahead so that would not be possible.

We should have given a wide birth and probably would have done had we not been stranded for a couple of hours.

The smoothies were £6 each. They tasted like watered down apple juice, sort of frothy and icy, not a fruit smoothie. As if you’d put apple juice with a few bitter frozen berries in the blender. We didn’t change our mind about food so cannot add anything about that.

The best thing about this cafe is the location in the heart of Kensington and the terrace for shisha and people watching.