London cafe from Netflix's One Day becomes tourist destination - Travel

Feb 28, 2024

Pack your bags and the tissues, we're going to London.

If you, like the rest of the world, have been falling in love then bawling your eyes out bingeing the Netflix series, ‘One Day’, then you’ll appreciate the burning desire to run away to London to open a charming little cafe.

It only makes sense then that the real life cafe, which features for a grand total of 10 seconds on the show, has had fans flocking to live out their own London love story.

Based on the David Nicholls novel of the same name, ‘One Day’ follows the lives of star crossed lovers Dex (Leo Woodall) and Emma (Ambika Mod), and where they are in their journey every July 15 over the course of 20 years. The highs and lows of the intertwined lives are punctuated with moments of hope, love and, ultimately, loss when their romance is cut short and our hearts are left bleeding.

It’s this profound heartache that has led swathes of fans on pilgrimages to Dex’s cafe, which in the show is called Cafe Belleville. In reality the navy-fronted coffee shop is La Maison Highbury, a quaint corner spot in London’s north owned by Mehmet Gerekli, which has only been in operation for about a year. Filming took place in 2022 before the cafe had even opened for business, and that’s the kind of PR that money cannot buy.

Fans of the show are naturally planning a meet up at the cafe on the fateful July 15, however they’ll want to get up pretty early – the cafe does not take reservations and only seats a few dozen patrons at a time.

La Maison Highbury is not the only UK site that has become a tourist attraction thanks to the ‘One Day’ effect. Primrose Hill in Camden Town and Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh have also seen an influx of visitors hoping to soak up a bit of Dex and Emma’s story. The Old Suffolk Punch pub in Hammersmith – AKA the Mexican restaurant where Emma works in the show – has also been a hot spot for eagle-eyed watchers.