Regency Cafe

After 39 years behind the same counter the Perotti and Schiavetta families sold up, and in July 2025 this 1946 caff reopened under Fevzi and Zafer Gungor, who told Time Out they want the Regency name on co-branded sauces and in Amsterdam, Berlin, Istanbul and Dubai (Time Out).

Why go

The room is the reason and it has been the reason for a long time. Black-tiled art deco frontage, original wall tiling, formica tables, brown plastic chairs, and photographs of boxers and long-gone Spurs players looking down at you. Orders are bellowed across the floor, there are no substitutions, and the queue on a weekend morning is part of the transaction. Harden's annual survey scores the ambience 5 out of 5 and the food 3, which is the honest shape of the place (Harden's). Film crews have been using it for the same reason since Layer Cake, and the venue lists Pride, Rocketman, Brighton Rock and London Spy among the credits (venue).

What changed is who cooks. The caff went dark through 2024 when its owners since 1986 put the lease on the market, and Westminster Council said it would keep the site away from developers (Harden's). Fevzi Gungor, who says he has launched over 50 eateries across London, reopened it in July 2025 with a plan that runs to merchandise, supermarket tie-ins and a possible halal kitchen. Souvenir mugs are already announced on the venue's own site. Nobody has published an assessment of a plate since he took over, and the first Westminster inspection of his kitchen is the entry's least comfortable fact.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the set breakfast, one egg, two rashers and a sausage, with beans or tomatoes and toast or bread. The omelette comes with steak-cut chips the kitchen is proud enough of to name on the menu. Take the white buttered bread over the toast, which is the move Harden's surveyors pass around: "go with a friend and order one toast and one bread: the white buttered bread is a guilty secret!" ref The cinnamon bread and butter pudding is enormous.
• Avoid: Sunday, when it does not open at all. Asking for a substitution, which the counter refuses on principle. And do not build a morning around the cooking alone, because the people who love this place most say the room and the shouting are what they come for.

What locals & experts say

• Harden's survey, 2026 edition, carries both halves. The rave: "Hands-down the best fried brekkie of all time, the GOAT!" And the caveat, from the same survey: "the food is OK, but the queuing and miraculously getting a seat in a full room followed by the bellowing of orders are really what makes every visit special!" Components come out Food 3, Service 4, Ambience 5, about GBP 17 a head. ref
• Time Out, 20 August 2019, on what the old kitchen actually sent out: "Stodgetastic own-made specials include steak pie, the thick pastry hiding tender meat in a tomatoey sauce, served with serviceable chips, thick gravy, and peas that might well have seen the inside of a tin." The bread and butter pudding it calls "improbably gigantic". ref
• Leonie Cooper, Food & Drink Editor at Time Out, reported the sale rather than reviewing the cooking, and the new owner's own words are the story: "Over the years, I've launched over 50 successful eateries across the city, but taking the reins at Regency Café is truly special." On the plan: "We may look at expanding the kitchen to cater for Halal dining... In time, I'd love to see the Regency name in key global cities." ref
• What nobody has published: a single assessment of the food since July 2025. Every scored line above describes a kitchen run by people who no longer own the business.

Good to know

• Where: 17-19 Regency Street, Westminster SW1P 4BY. St James's Park or Pimlico tube, five minutes either way.
• Timing: Monday to Saturday 7am to 3.30pm, closed Sunday, per the venue's own site. Time Out's listing still prints 11am to 11pm daily, which is wrong for a breakfast counter; use the venue's hours.
• Booking: none taken. You queue, you get called, you carry it yourself.
• Hygiene: the Food Standards Agency records a rating of 1 out of 5, inspected 25 February 2026 by Westminster, FHRSID 1920921. Component scores are hygiene 5, structural 15 and confidence in management 20, where lower is better and 20 is the worst band available on that component. This is the first inspection recorded against the new ownership and no re-rating is pending. It is five months old, so it counts as current. ref
• Who runs it: Fevzi and Zafer Gungor since July 2025. Before them, the Perotti and Schiavetta families held it for 39 years. The two reports of the sale give different first names for the retiring pair, and that is unresolved.
• Prices: the set breakfast is GBP 9.99 and the plain omelette with chips GBP 7.00 on the venue's own menu; Harden's surveyors average about GBP 17 a head.
• Sites: one premises. The owner has talked publicly about opening under the name in other cities, so treat any future Regency elsewhere as a separate business.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "Classic British fry up. Iconic." That is the whole of his saved note, written before the sale, and it matches what the place was.
• Open question for him: he saved it under the old owners. Whether the fry-up he means survived the July 2025 handover is the one thing nobody has written down, and he is closer to finding out than any source we can reach.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

could-visit — Go if you are walking past, and go for the room. The black-tiled art deco front, the formica, the boxers and old Spurs players on the tiled walls and the bellowed orders are the real product, and Harden's surveyors score the ambience 5 out of 5 while scoring the food 3. Their own most-quoted line says it plainly: 'the food is OK, but the queuing and miraculously getting a seat in a full room followed by the bellowing of orders are really what makes every visit special!' Two things stop it climbing. Westminster inspected the kitchen on 25 February 2026 and gave it an FSA rating of 1, with confidence in management scored at the worst band, which is a finding in force rather than a stale one. And every scored line anyone has written about the cooking describes the Perotti and Schiavetta kitchen, which sold in July 2025 to owners whose stated plan runs to merchandise, co-branded sauces and sites in Dubai. An eighty-year-old caff can absolutely still be the send. This one is a twenty-minute stop on a Westminster walk until somebody eats there under the new owners and says the plate held.