Peeking Inside London’s Cab Shelters
by Ciara Ainsley McLaren
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Peeking Inside London’s Cab Shelters
by Ciara Ainsley McLaren
If you are hungry and broke in central London, follow the black cabs. Eventually, they will lead you to a glossy green shed, roughly the size of a horse and carriage. Look for the takeaway window. Order tea for £1 and a sandwich for £3. Just don’t try to walk in. “It’s only cab drivers inside. We don’t serve anyone else in here,” said Sue Webster, the attendant of Grosvenor Gardens Shelter. “At the window, everybody. Father Christmas. Anyone. But not inside.”
The first cab shelter opened in 1875 to provide food, nonalcoholic drink, and parking to London’s hansom cab drivers. At least 60 more followed. Today, there are 13 carefully preserved shelters left. Still green. Still small. Still full of cabbies. “There’s just one table in the middle with a horseshoe seat,” cab driver Nick Wilkinson said. “Once you’ve got in there, you’re all sitting together. You can’t get out until someone else moves.”
The core menu, like the structures themselves, hasn't changed much in the past century. “The young poets of the [1890s]… retired to cabmen’s shelters for eggs-and-bacon at four o’clock in the morning,” writer Thomas Burke observed in “London in My Time.” You, too, can order eggs and bacon at a cabmen’s shelter (although not at four o’clock in the morning – hours are usually limited to breakfast and lunch, these days).
Almost any shelter will offer a bacon and egg bap. The Pont Street Cabmen’s Shelter serves up the better part of a full English breakfast in a bun. The poppy seed roll comes with back bacon, fried egg, sausage and your choice of brown sauce or ketchup. Get tea – you’ll need the energy. The whole meal costs £5.70.
At the Grosvenor Gardens Cabmen’s Shelter, you can tuck into other English mainstays. Toad in the hole. Ham, egg, and chips. Even the curry is retro Britannia: chicken and sultanas swimming in a chip shop-style sauce. Any main dish costs £7.
There is one green shed where you can taste something different – and pay for the privilege. The Chelsea Embankment Shelter sat vacant for years before Melis Kurum and Cem Kemahli reopened it as Cafe Pier. “We fully respect the tradition and, you know, we do wanna have bacon,” said Kurum, who has a day job in food PR. For now, bacon isn’t on the menu.
You’ll have to settle for a mozzarella, salami and rocket toastie. The meat is from London’s oldest deli. The bread is exquisite. It costs £7.95.
Here, cab drivers get a 15 percent discount. But otherwise, they’re like any other customer. No one is allowed inside. The whole space is reserved for the kitchen. “All the yuppie mob in Chelsea, they’ll go there and have a cup of tea and sit on the pavement,” cab driver Paul Shepherd grumbled.
For the cabbies who spend time inside a traditional shelter, it’s not just a place to grab lunch. It’s a community. Fred Bovey, who passed the Knowledge nearly 30 years ago, says it’s “definitely” harder to be a cabbie than it used to be. Lined up on the shelter’s cramped benches, he and his fellow drivers talk Uber, road closures, and union dues.
Sometimes, they do more than just talk. “If a cab driver has some health thing that means he’s not earning money … we normally have a whip-round in here … to help him out financially,” said Carl, a cab driver and shelter regular.
The shelters are a meeting place for more than just drivers. Office workers stop by for their daily flat white. Construction workers wolf down sarnies on plastic chairs outside. Why? "It’s nice, simple food,” said Riz, a regular takeaway customer. “Nothing fussy.” In London, that’s hard to find.
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This is a wonderfully informative and uplifting article. I have been traveling to London for over 40 years, and never knew about this! Thank you.
Ooh! I’m going to give these a go when we travel there in spring!