A listening bar is a bar built around recorded music played loud and well. The records are chosen with care, usually on vinyl, through a good sound system, and the music is the point, not background. Shoreditch now has its own versions, and two Made in Shoreditch has interviewed show different routes into the idea: Mad Cats on Redchurch Street and Bun House Disco at the Brick Lane end of Bethnal Green Road.
What a listening bar is
The format grew out of Japan’s jazz kissa, small cafés where people went to hear records on equipment few could afford at home. The modern bars keep three things: vinyl, a hi-fi system tuned for the room, and someone choosing each record. Most also serve food and cocktails, and many turn into something closer to a club late at night.
Mad Cats: a dinner party that became a bar
Mad Cats, at 107 Redchurch Street, calls itself a neighbourhood kitchen and hi-fi bar. Its founders, Daniella Andriesz and her partner Ed, told Made in Shoreditch in 2025 that it began in their flat. “I’d cook, Ed would play records – and our friends would just… stay,” Daniella said.
The music is vinyl only. Ed said the bar plays “everything from Japanese jazz to Arabic soul to Brazilian bossa nova”, and that “the system is tuned for intimacy.” The food mixes the founders’ backgrounds: Daniella is British-Chinese and Ed is Lebanese-Danish, and they call the result “Mediterrasian”. One dish, shishbarak dumplings, puts a Lebanese filling inside Chinese-style wrappers.
The evening changes as it goes on. “It starts as a dinner spot,” Daniella said, and “slowly morphs into something more sound-led, vinyl-fuelled, immersive.” Asked what set Mad Cats apart as listening bars spread in London, she said it was built “by hand, by us, without big investors.”
Mad Cats opens from 5pm Tuesday to Saturday, until 2.30am on Fridays and Saturdays, and from 3pm to 8pm on Sundays. Read the full Mad Cats interview.
Bun House Disco: dinner into disco
Bun House Disco, at 118 Bethnal Green Road, is less a listening bar than a restaurant that becomes a dance floor. It serves Hong Kong-style buns, wontons and cocktails, with Cantonese synth-pop on the stereo, and runs a disco from 10pm Thursday to Saturday.
Its founder, Z He, told Made in Shoreditch that the atmosphere came before the menu: “We knew we wanted to create a world.” The aim, Z said, was to bring “back the dinner-into-disco vibe, with a Cantonese twist” to Brick Lane. Read the Bun House Disco feature.
What the two have in common
Both started from a feeling their founders wanted to recreate: a living room for Mad Cats, late-night Hong Kong for Bun House Disco. Both put food first early in the evening and music first later. And both are small, independent operations, not chains.
Shoreditch’s longer music story
Made in Shoreditch has covered the area’s DJs since 2011, from Johnny Bloomfield to the techno DJ Grace Dahl and Shay Shaz of Tok Tok. For other late venues, see the Shoreditch nightlife guide.