Rita's co-founder is behind the new Imagination Café at Selfridges

Rita's co-founder is behind the new Imagination Café at Selfridges

It's all change down on the lower ground floor of Selfridges, where the store's Dolly's Cafe is being transformed. Next week it reopens under a new guise, Imagination Café, which will be "an artist-designed hub where art, food and ideas collide." The folk behind the menu are Malik Acid, the brother and sister team of Cameron and Missy Malik-Flynn. Cameron's a drinks man who's worked for BAO and The Standard. Missy is probably best known as the co-founder of perma-hot Soho spot Rita's.

For the Selfridges cafe, the duo have brought in artist Katie Stout, commissioning her to create a menagerie of inflatable horses, butterflies, snails and other creatures which will be suspended from the ceiling.

The cafe's Wildest Imagination afternoon tea sounds unmissable. For £75, that includes a prawn gilda, beetroot devilled egg, mini club sandwich, salted olive oil scone with clotted cream, lychee gummy, chamomile financier and cherry dream cake. There's a pot of Selfridges tea or Darjeeling sparkling tea to go with it or a peach velvet cocktail or glass of champagne, plus a gift to take away.

There's also an all-day menu featuring dishes like a rainbow bagel with London cured smoked salmon and jalapeno cream cheese and a cheese and pineapple toastie.

Drinks are equally inventive, with Cameron devising three cocktails which also contain a Three Spirits non-alcoholic elixir, designed to induce different. So there's Social (peach and matcha champagne cocktail), Livener (tequila, cherry & darjeeling tea highball) and Nightcap (fig leaf, miso and sencha tea gin sour). And if you fancy all three, they also do a flight of them.

So if you're in the Oxford Street area, or even just browsing around Selfridges, this is well worth seeking out. 

Rita's co-founder is behind the new Imagination Café at Selfridges

 

More about The Imagination Café

Where is it? Address only

When does it open? 20 July 2026

Find out more: Visit their website or follow them on Instagram @theofficialselfridges.

 

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