Drink, Shop & Do

This is a lovely, retro teashop, which also sells crafty bits, gift wrap etc. You wouldn't expect to find such a place in the Kings x area, so it was a fantastic surprise. Meet there with several other craftspeople on a Sunday afternoon and no one rushed us at all. The decor was so sweet, like sonething you'd find in tea shops of years gone by. Staff was pleasant, the coffee was wonderful. Those who ate seemed to enjoy their food. Recommended if you happen to be in the area. BeadedDelightsByStef on etsy.

Style over substance.

I love anything vintage and Tea, so much so, I run my own tea party business, so I was interested in sampling DSD as I work locally. The 'vintage' furniture is more on the side of skip rather than collectable and infact I would say some of it needs binning as a health and safety issue, I eagerly checked out the 'vintage' china when I ordered tea and I can say that my own collection is both prettier and much much cleaner and comes without hairline cracks! The jug the milk came in was dirty and looked like it hadnt been washed out from the last usage, the tea wasnt up to much either, having a film on it-lack of washing I suspect!
I love the idea, especially in Kings Cross but really its not that special, you cant compromise on cleanliness and its not that hard to make nice tea!
This isnt meant to be a total negative as I applaud them doing something different but this wouldnt survive out of Central London.

BTW it wasnt as pretty as the photos shown went I visited.

Very interesting novel place with interesting atmosphere.  However I ordered a scotch egg salad which was not cheap and when it came the "salad" consisted of a few pieces of rocket with about one olive chopped into tiny slices which didn't even fill the plate.  When I pointed this out to the waitress and asked if I could at least possibly have a tomato added, it came back just the same, the kitchen staff had refused to even add a tomato!  I thought this was exceedingly poor and mean.  The rocket was eaten in 2 mouthfuls.  it was only really a garnish and so shouldn't be on the menu as a salad in my opinion.  The friend who was with me agreed with me.  I've eaten enough salads in my time to know the difference between a salad and a garnish!  A very poor salad and poor response to a complaint.  I believe it cost the best part of £8.  I complained on paying the bill but received little response there either.  Shame because the venue is nicely unusual.  Obviously cashing in on the vintage novelty.

Visited DSD last night (Thursday) for a friends birthday drinks. The venue is really kitsch and quite cute but I personally was more a fan of the huge illuminated sex shop sign on the way down to the toilets!

I didn't try any of the cocktails, but the house red was nice. Service is a little bit slow and disorganised. My friends ordered the sweets in a teacup and had to remind the bar staff at least 3 times before they actually got them! Also, my friend ordered a cocktail that one of the staff didn't know how to make and I was served by a girl who didn't seem to know how much anything was without asking. 

The music is eclectic and later in the evening they put candles on the tables for a bit of ambience. It's definitely got a slightly 'trendy' crowd and is more suited to a girlfriends get together. Would boys congregate here? Probably not. 

I don't think I'd be rushing back to DSD. For me, it was a little expensive, and the service left a lot to be desired. 

I'd love to say that I had a great evening at my friend's birthday party at a 'cocktails and clay' night, but unfortunately the staff on the door were so disorganised that myself and many others did not have the opportunity to enter! After arriving to the venue at 10.30pm I was advised to get in the queue as they had reached capacity and the guestlist closed at 10pm. Ok, that's fine... I was told that it was a 'one in, one out' situation and I was 5th in the queue. After a while when no one exited, somehow the group of 4 girls in front of me sweet talked their way into this apparently overflowing venue. After a little while longer the woman on the door advised me to go inside, while the doorman just beside her stopped me with the news that the venue was now 30 over capacity and myself and the approximately 20 others who had since joined the queue would now need to wait for that many people to leave (not including smokers)!! The doorman and the woman with the clipboard were standing right next to each other and they had no idea what the other was doing!
What followed was 45 minutes of watching people cut the queue if they claimed to work for timeout, be friends of the dj, or friends of staff members, as well as individuals who were blatantly lying about having been outside to smoke- because c! early none of them counted when it came to venue capacity/ health and safety laws!  As you can imagine the mood of the queue was worsening by the minute, and being at the front of it gave me the opportunity to see and hear (as well as get increasingly angry about) all aspects of the chaos in front of me. I even heard the doorman say he was going inside to do a manual count because he knew his counters were 'not accurate', yet he relied on them to make everyone continue to stand outside while he told people the venue was 30 over capacity! After his manual count and a few people leaving, the number still remained at 30 over!
A doorman who didn't have a clue what he was doing and a woman with a clipboard who clearly couldn't say no to people's lies and special requests was bad enough, but the fact that they could not seem to get their story straight for the entire hour that I was outside made it unbearable!
Finally I was again told by the woman to go in, only to be stopped by the doorman who told me to turn around! Even after all that time I still had no idea who was supposed to be in charge of this mayhem! I voiced my growing discontent, which I had already done to an extent along with others in the queue, and when they finally came to the consensus that I could enter, the doorman made it on the condition that I 'take his advice for next time'. He put his disgusting hands on me to stop me passing him and when I told him that I did not want his advice the response was that I could not go in if that was the case! After all of this they should have been taking MY advice, not the other way around! He then proceeded to let in 10 people, of which I was not one, because I hadn't wanted his advice. After some choice words I left, but if you value equality, honesty and customer service AT ALL then I would certainly advise against going to this venue for any evening/night events until they are able to get some sort of organisation on the door. Thanks for a perfectly horrible time, Drink, Shop & Do. Never again.

Been a couple of times and really love this place – apart from a couple of the waitresses :(

The food – mostly great, brilliant tea selection, the overall space looks wonderful and I love the ever-changing furniture. I marked DSD down a star because the last time I went (on my own) I waited for over half an hour for a waitress to take my order, and when she came I mentioned I’d been waiting a long time and she got huffy and I felt SO uncomfortable and embarrassed from then on, and just wanted to leave.

What a fun little place. The tea was delicious and the atmosphere was very laid back. I will be back soon to check out one of the events.

This is now a permanent installation.

I love this place – quirky craft items, mismatched teacups and pots, yummy cocktails and great food and cake… really what more could you ask for.

This is a very unique space (everything you see is on sale) – but it’s a great place to hang out.

They also have regular crafty make and do nights, however I have been to a couple and have found it hard to know who to approach to get involved.

The atmosphere is quite relaxed – but this depends on where you sit – and in some places the tables are crowded. This coupled with the odd acoustics of the place (I heard this used to be a bath house) means that when it is busy, this is a place that might be best avoided.

Overall a thumbs – but only when it’s quiet enough to hear yourself think.

I love this place, the concept, the decoration, the cakes… If I were to have a shop, this would be exactly the kind of shop I’d like to own. It’s a pity that my best friend in Spain is not here, because she’d love it as well, and we could go together to one of the “Do’s”, all of them seem quite a lot of fun.

The only reason I give them 4 stars is just that the waiters/waitresses didn’t seem to pay enough attention when I was there. It wasn’t very busy and there were 4 or 5 of them there, and despite that, it took ages to order. Then, the waitress that took our order finished her shift and somehow the lemonade I ordered got missed. My boyfriend got his milkshake (it was an amazing shake, by the way) but they didn’t even notice that I didn’t have anything. It bothered me more than usual because it was really hot, they didn’t have air conditioning and I was incredibly thirsty. I had to go to the bar and ask for the lemonade again, and I finally got almost 10 minutes later, saving me from dehydration.

Visited Drink, Shop, Do for a parlour game night tonight (think articulate, charades and play doh-based games).

And I bloody loved it.

I ordered a couple of drinks and a slice of carrot cake that rates as one of the best I've ever tried. Moist, generous with the cream cheese icing and packed full of favour.

It's not cheap, £10 for two drinks and a slice of cake, but I'd happily spend an afternoon here with a friend. Particularly as I spotted a big stack of board games for future visits.

A fantastic idea, and one I hope springs up closer to me!

Fantastic place, great drnks, amazing interiors. its a vintage loving girls dream place! Plus you can buy everything there!
Only problem is that most things are very expensive to buy there, but doesn't take anything away from this really special venue. If you like cake, cocktails and craft this place is ace!

The thing I love about Kings Cross is that everytime I get a chance to wander around in my lunch hour (which isn't often!) I find a little gem tucked away down a side road or posing as a gift shop to eat in. Drink Shop Do is exactly one of these.
From the outside, it looks like a trendy souvenir shop but last week I noticed that in fact that gift shop was only a ruse and in the back there is a beautiful coffee shop. Its decorated in Victorian style and absolutely everything (from the finger sandwiches to the table you eat at) is for sale. I eyed up a £90 red fold-out table for the duration of my meal and was also very tempted by the cute mugs and cutlery that I ended up using! If you are in the area, I highly recommend you go here. It's got that lovely Mad Hatter's Tea Party feel and would a great place for a girly catch up or to take someone uber-cool you wanted to impress.

Located opposite the infamous Flying Scotsman, Drink Shop Do brings something new and most desirable to this area. The first impression is how spacious their venue is, with steps at the back of the shop section leading up to the cafe/eatery area.

It was a bit of an in and out job, so as I headed towards said stairs I only really noticed the gift cards and the old school, childhood memory-invoking glass jars of sweets and liquorice, but on the way out made a mental note to return with the missus and browse some of the nifty, vintage household items.

Upstairs almost everything, with the exception of the friendly staff, has its price: the bits and pieces doubling up as decor are all up for grabs, as is most of the furniture. And at pretty decent prices too.

If you need to nip down to the basement to use the toilet facilities, be warned that they share the steps leading down to them with next door's sex shop facilities. I think it's a sex shop, they definitely sell mucky books, but that's where I left my investigations after delivering a judgemental, stuffy Anglo-Saxon frown in the direction of a middle-aged fella that I spotted surreptitiously skulking in there.

The only mild criticism is that the homely food, consisting mainly of crumpets, pastries and the like, was a tad pricey for what it is. We paid £28 for four people and it felt much closer to a snack than a meal. Other than that, a tremendous enterprise.

I've only tried 2 of the 3 activities listed in the name of this quirky little shop/bar. I have both drunk and shopped, I've seen people "doing", but I didn't dare join them, they had needles it was Kings Cross, I could have got Hepatitis, ok they were knitting, BUT STILL.

Anyway, this place has potential, on the shopping side it sells pretty (if pricey) things. The space has tons of character, and it has a good mix of unusual pieces. I can experience vintage 'fatigue' but this place stops short of being too saccharine with some more edgy details.

It's dropped stars because the drinking and food was less successful. I've been twice, Friday lunch time the staff seemed completely overwhelmed by quite a small crowd. On a Friday evening a couple of weeks later things were much better but, still smarting from the last visit we only ordered a bottle of wine, and you can't really mess that up can you?

The impression I had was that the people who have set it up had a lovely idea, and some real passion but not much bar experience. It's a charming place, worth a visit definitely but it's a work in progress, so I'll go back when they've got into their stride.

Cosy, adorable and a diamond in the rough on Caledonian Road.
I happened to walk by this place, which has obviously been lovingly decorated in a kitschy vintage style. Absolutely love it and look forward to many cuppas there.

heard about this place through a friend so i took my girlfriend cos she loves tea and i couldn't believe my eyes when i walked through the door! I love anything vintage and this just takes you back in time, with all the vintage furniture, but there's a modern twist, loads of local designer jewelry and art splashed all over the place. It's quaint, cool and everything we had to eat or drink was proper tasty! Top class.....and friendly.....which was nice....and it was in Kings Cross!!!!!! forget my girlfriend, this is my kinda place! :-)

An absolute gem and I have no hesitation in giving it a rare five star rating. I went here for the first time last week for lunch with a bunch of girls from the office. We ate finger sandwiches from vintage cake stands and sipped tea from dainty cups and saucers. In fact, we looked so quintessentially English that two Japanese tourists asked to take our photo!

You step into the building and you're stunned into silence by the beautiful shabby-chic decor and the architecture and scale of the place. There are vintage items everywhere you look, from the seats you sit on to the cups you drink from, and the quirky thing is that pretty much everything in there is for sale.

By day it's a shop/cafe, but by night they dim the lights, pop on some unobtrusive music and serve bottled beers, beakers of wine and yummy cocktails, which the friendly staff will bring to your table. I was so smitten with the place after my lunch that I was back a few hours later to sample their booze and a tasty homemade pork pie. They're also going to be running some free craft events in the future. This is my new favourite place in London, but don't go telling everyone because it's almost too good to share.

Found this place completely by accident and what a find!! So pretty and cute inside, like stepping back in time to a beautiful, charming but oh-so-retro-cool vintage shop. Had some yummy cakes and tea, and met both the owners of the shop who are lovely (hi kristie and coralie if you're reading this!!). Inside there are loads of gorgeous things to buy that are all made by young, local artists. And one of the shop's individual quirks is that absolutely everything you can see in the shop is for sale! I'll def be going back to stock up on my christmas presents for this year, and sample one of their cocktails while I'm at it... yum!

My friends and I heard about this place at xmas but missed out on going, so when we heard it was coming back permanently we got very excited.. we went to check it out last week and weren't let down, one of the most unique places I've been to in London, quirky and cute with some amazing (and very strong) cocktails. Loved the yellow and white stripes and furniture.. a real find.