Cafe Vive Iterum

Little café, nice decorating with little exotic twists, I think they still have a garden area in the back but it wasn’t open when i went back on a Sunday.
Out of the way for me usually but Im housesitting down the street so i came for Sunday breakfast. Breakfast til 12 then you can order the rest of the menu. Breakfast is a few basic dishes, like full english, they have eggs benedict but the hollandaise sauce isn’t the best, but I had a really good ham and cheese omelette. Cooked just enough, proportions perfect.
Cappuccino, omelette with toast. £6.50. Cheap n cheerful. yum in ma tum.

This is a bit of a local place for me and is perfect for a quick coffee & a bite to eat. I’ve never experienced anything like the 1star review below. Staff have always been friendly and the food is good simple café food. Nice touches like water & biscuits brought with coffee and a nice outside back area for when it’s warm. A good local café. Recommend!

One thing I’ve noticed many foreign visitors in London complain about is the lack of good coffee. And I am inclined to agree with them. Forking out £2 to £3 for bitter, too cold, too weak, or just plain disgusting coffee is a Londoner rite of passage, and something we Brits accept far to easily.
So, when you find a place such as Austrian-​themed Café Vive Iterum in Dollis Hill, ON YOUR OWN DOORSTEP, that does a proper good cappuccino/​expresso/​latte, you hang onto it like a dear lover, cherish it, and spend far too much time with it.
My coffee of choice — cappuccino — is served in dinky little Julius Meinl teacups (a brand of Austrian coffee), as opposed the voluminous bowls of milk that you get in many places (I know this is the American way, but I much prefer the continental way, with just a little milk). The coffee is silky smooth, but rich, deep and earthy. I’ve been coming here for years and only once has the coffee not been up to scratch.
Vive Iterum also has welcoming, homely feel, thanks to the lovely owner chatting away to the regulars and frequent community events such as charity jumble sales. Somehow the slightly tacky décor — imagine a gold ceiling, plastic charms a-​dangling, miniature golden angels atop the tables — kind of works and fits in with the mock Austrian grandeur of the place. I particularly love sipping my coffee in the corner window seat, and the classic board games, such as Scrabble, tucked under this seat should you require them is a nice touch. There are also live music events here, which attract lively crowds, and a rough-​and-​ready little garden out back.
Whilst the coffee is the main five-​star attraction, the food is a bit of a mixed bag. There are homemade Austrian-​style cakes, which are as luscious as they look, and breakfasts are suitably tasty (full English. Pancakes. Eggs any way you like ‘em). But I came here for lunch once and had a mixed bean chilli that was a bit bland and reminded me of student union food.
For afternoon coffee and Sacher Torte, or coffee and breakfast, or just coffee, coffee and more coffee, Café Vive Iterum is the best in the area, and Dollis Hill residents at least need moan about rubbish coffee no more.