Cafe Tabac

It was a sweet corner cafe, well-decorated environment and good burger! Cocktail drinks are innovatively named, I had a drink called.. "Aint nothing but a G-Ting" which is a gin tonic. I wish it is slightly stronger, but yea the names are interesting and appealing.

There are indoor areas where big groups gatherings can be made available.

Wifi is also available, but the _guest one can be kinda slow, oh and there are socket available for charging your electronic devices, located just below the seats.

'The original downtown cafe'

Established in 1974, Tabac is a Liverpool institution that oozes bohemian charm. The walls are painted bright red, there's a flickering neon sign and the staff all look like they've stepped off a Godard film set. In the daytime, Tabac is a sleepy cafe where you can read the papers, sip a cup of java and fill up on healthy breakfast or lunch. It's at night that it truly comes alive however, with local artists, musicians and students conversing over beer, wine and cocktails.

Every Monday and Tuesday evening, Tabac host film screenings of world cinema in the back room and on Wednesdays, there's live gypsy jazz. Thursdays to Saturdays, there's a mix of local deejays spinning everything from classic funk, soul and disco to old skool hip hop. The rest of the time, you can expect to hear everyone from Serge Gainsbourg to Arctic Monkeys blasting out of the speakers.

The only thing that stops Tabac being the perfect continental coffee shop-cum-bar, is the lack of faded movie stars smoking endless cigarettes!

Tabac is a bit strange to categorise, during the day it acts as a cafe, and turns into a cocktail/wine bar at night. If I'm honest, during the day, the cafe side of things is poor, the staff often look bored, the service is horrendous and extremely slow. The food isn't all that great either, the menu is average and the price is quite steep for what you get.

Due to the staff's lack of attitude, the place never seems to get cleaned up, empty glasses are often left on your table, and the toilets need a good scrub.

However, everything changes at night... the atmosphere really perks up and the place turns into a trendy and popular wine bar. If you fancy a trip to Tabac, I strongly recommend a visit in the evening and avoid the food.

Tabac is a long standing feature in the Liverpool cafe/bar scene and for a while it seemed to get a bit complacent with itself. I often found service was slow, the beer on draught was often rank and the atmosphere past 6 o'clock was a bit stale.

Now, however, Tabac has had a bit of a kick up the backside and is back in the game. It has a very continental feel to it, which is reflected in it very cool decor of 60s French film flyers and photos of Parisien streets and coffee shops, as the feel to the place is very laid back and it is time for a beer or a coffee at day or night. The food is consistently good with a good breakfast selection, a variety of sandwiches and salads, the ubiquitous taps selection and daily specials of rustic main meals like stews and tagines.

With its bread and butter being the afternoon coffee and lunch trade, little seemed to be going on at night in Tabac for a while but when I recently popped in one recent Friday night I was pleasantly surprised to find the place full with drinkers, DJs playing a good party atmopshere in full flow. Seems like Tabac has got its second wind.

Owned by the same woman who has Bumper, Baa Bar and Modo, this is different again from all the others. Fashioning itself as a retro, funky cafe-slash-bistro, this is also popular in the evening as a bar, as I found out from my little brother last week.

Serving decent food in the daytime, it is more of a drink than eat place I think. Whenever I go in and ask what the soup of the day is, they never seem to know, and waiter service can be slow if there are more than 3 tables in. But it doesn't really seem designed for a proper sit down meal anyway - that just isn't the feel of this place.

There's free wifi so you can usually find an array of people busily hacking away at their laptops here, and the music is subtle and unobtrusive, making it a favourite place for friends of mine to catch up on their work. It has potential to be a bit more than what it is at the moment, but it seems to be doing well so who am I to interfere?!

Tabac is at the top end of Bold Street on the corner of Chinatown. At this small café/restaurant, they serve a delicious range of Tapas and breakfasts daily as well as a selection of soups, hot speciality sandwiches and salads. I usually go for the 2 Tapas coming in at £6.50 but if that's not enough, you may wish to choose from their daily selection of Tabac Specials (as sign posted). Apart from the sometimes slow service, the food is adequate.

This is a pleasant place to eat and is popular with students, plus they offer a 10% discount on presentation of a valid NUS card. If you're just looking for a drink, they also have a bar with a Happy Hour along with entertainment everyday between 6pm-9pm.

I went to Cafe Tabac recently for the first time in years. I used to go there loads in my theatre days back in the early 2000s - situated as it is at the top of Bold Street it was a handy hangout when working at the Unity or Everyman theatres - and was, well, just kinda cool. I seem to remember imbibing an awful lot of some sort of blonde beer here back in the day (before I got all grown up and crossed over to the dark side of wine) and enjoying the dark recesses (I probably fell asleep in a lot of them).

Having not been there for yonks it wasn't the obvious choice when I had to think of somewhere around that part of town to meet a friend for pre-Christmas drinks but it was handy for both of us and I thought it might be less manic than other bars on 22nd December. I was right; the atmosphere was lovely and chilled and it was busy but not packed. My friend was already there and had found us one of the cosy booths at the back. The lighting was pretty dark and sultry but my eyes got used to it eventually and it enhanced the nice, cosy, Christmassy vibe.

We picked a bottle of red to share - I think the wine list at Tabac is pretty good, decent choice and good price range - a rather nice Cabernet Sauvignon and I then I asked a member of staff who was walking past if I could see a menu. "I'm afraid we've stopped serving food" he said. Argghhh...I was starving, hadn't eaten for hours. I think the desperation showed in my face. "I can bring you some bread and olives if you like?" said the charming young man. They were the best bread and olives I'd tasted in ages. And I didn't get charged for them which made them taste even better.

My stomach now lined with bread and olives, I thought it was safe for my friend and I to risk another bottle of the delicious Cab Sauv...so we did. The lovely, warm, orangey-red glow of the lights and decor matched the glow from us after that second bottle!

As cosy evening venues go, I would say Cafe Tabac is one of the best in Liverpool but I do feel like I need to go back in the daylight, possibly with less wine...

Watch this space...

Are you having an affair (with coffee or bacon butties), then cafe Tabac has got to be on your list to have that kind of assignation with your favourite indulgences. An experience which can only be improved by meeting a partner in business or love! For me Cafe Tabac oozes that kind of 1970's style and mystique and this is by daytime and even early evening visits. Just think about a place if it was host to the screening of 1960's cult movies such as "The Birds", "Room with a View", " Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" how cool that would be ... well not nearly as cool as Cafe Tabac really is , as not only does this category of movie appear regularly at evening screenings but so does the alternative of sweet soul music from the same epoch.

Cafe Tabac defines retro and makes a powerful statement about how even within the acres of modern franchises, a small independent business can still carve out its own niche selling us coffee, custard slices and dreams of groovy past.

Tabac painted their little part of the town red. Seriously, everything is red. This gives the cafe bar a kind of lusty vibrant warm feel but on the flip side if you didn't manage to snag window seats it's a tad dark.

I like Tabac especially for their hot chocolates (Add Baileys- I'm not joking- Heavenly) and it's a good shout for take-out if you're going to see a film in the bombed out church.

And they do a scrummy beer and a burger for £5 at the mo. Although the food is usually up to scratch I had a chilli jacket here that the entire pepper pot must have been upended into because I was actually crying. But I'm going to write that off as an off-day and give them the benefit of the doubt because it's a cool atmosphere and usually I have zero problemos.

So when you see the swirly red neon sign wink 'Tabac' at you as you stroll down Bold Street (who could resist?) pop in for a beverage or a snack, just hold the pepper!

A cramped yet chic cafe/bar at the top of Bold Street, Tabac is your one-stop shop for cocktails of questionable manliness and pitchers where most of the liquid is in the form of frozen cubes. Whether you'd want to spend an entire night here is dubious. The artsy images stuck up on the walls are all very well but the place is so busy that you don't exactly get the room to stand and peruse them, stroking your goatee.

The pitchers are the sole reason I come here. Throwing off the shackles of ale to buy a jug of blue stuff may be liberating but once you realise it's too early (and also just how much of a great big Jessie you look) you can continue on your merry way, subtly fuelled by the luminous ice.