Cafe OTO — Restaurant in London

For some reason everyone on here keeps saying 'chin-stroking hipsters', which — well, I have this thing about people who complain about hipsters, which is that most of them are hipsters, right — but anyway which didn't really hold that true when I went here, to watch Nadja on May 28th. (Maybe I was the chin stroking hipster, or whatever, but I didn't stroke my chin, at least.)

The venue was very nice: a great selection of drinks, though slightly confused as to why they don't sell the Japanese tea, which is very prominently displayed, at gigs. You truly feel like you're sitting in a cafe watching a band, rather than at a venue, which is good. But the sound is still fully professional. Well worth a go; one of those venues so nice that I'd feel compelled to go there for things I wouldn't...

Cafe Oto almost always makes me feel both at awe and disappointed. They put on intriguing and interesting shows with improvisers and sound explores but leave you waiting outside the door for half hour or more beyond the door times, then there is just 10 chairs on display to sit on for an audience of 100 + and usually shows start 1 hour later than described on their website. That's exactly what happened last night for a 3 act program that included the amazing Iranian percussionist Mohamed Reza Mortazavi. And on top of that, the lights were so dim for his act, which I was waiting for exclusively that night, I could nit see what he was doing! I could hear him clearly, yes, beautifully, but we could not see him well because of the lights ..who had that idea? Many of us were...

I dropped by here after someone commented on one of my videos about record shops in London, specifically shops that focus on jazz, funk, and related fusion music. This cafe/music scpace/store was highly recommended. As you can see from other reviews there is a live music scene here and a nice open concept cafe with some food. But I went specifically for the LPs, so my rating should reflect this focus. There were certainly quite a few new jazz LPs that I would have normally taken home -- LPs that were relatively hard to find, or local to the London jazz scene, but prices were above what I'm used to spending, or what Discogs guides. I'll try back this fall to see if anything has changed. For now though I would not recommend unless you...