The middle yellow is the last of the Monopoly board's lesser-known streets, a brief connection in the heart of the West End. You may not think you know it but one end is Piccadilly Circus and the other is Leicester Square so you probably do. When Victor and Marjory were allocating streets to properties in the 1930s it was a hospitality hotspot, home to restaurants, clubs and theatres worthy of the antepenultimate group on the board. Today it's more a tourist flytrap than somewhere to visit in its own right, such has its star fallen, so what follows is mostly an account of tacky bazaars with a grand backhistory.
Coventry Street owes its name to Charles II's secretary of state, Henry Coventry, who'd built a house here shortly before the road was built in the 1680s. He died shortly afterwards and Coventry House was demolished a few years after that, but its brief existence during that sweet spot means his name lingers centuries later. Coventry Street swiftly became a retail rather than a residential hotspot, then a magnet for gambling, prostitutes and theatrics, and was generally scrubbed up around the same time that neighbouring Shaftesbury Avenue was created. It was also extended slightly when Piccadilly Circus was de-circularised, so if you sit on the steps below Eros and look east yes, that's now Coventry Street on your left but no, that's still Piccadilly on your right.
The first building used to be the London Pavilion, which when it opened in 1885 was London's most lavishly appointed variety hall with marble-topped tables for dining and top impresarios appearing on stage. In 1934 it was converted to an enormous cinema, a major draw which helped maintain morale during WW2 and which was deemed worthy of hosting the premiere of the first James Bond film, Dr No, in 1962. The cinema closed in 1981 and became a wedge of retail, retaining only the facade, and within this space was hosted the Rock Circus waxworks (1986-2001) and Ripley's Believe It Or Not (2008-2017). Its latest reincarnation, upstairs at least, is as a luxury 'cocoon' hotel where travellers who prioritise mood lighting and air purifiers over room to swing a cat can spend the night. For a (very) full history, see here.
Downstairs is less salubrious, a warren of souvenir burrows facing a bustling exit from the tube station. The name of the first is entirely hidden by scaffolding at present, but guardsman-shaped fridge magnets and poorly screen-printed tote bags clearly hint at what's inside. Nextdoor sells vapes and SIM cards, the perennial tourist necessities, plus the obligatory rack of pop-up umbrellas for when London's weather returns to form. I saw no evidence that Piccadilly Food & Wine still sell wine, although they do do Pot Noodle. I would also hesitate to buy a seat for a show from Money Exchange because their three handwritten signs describe them as 'Theare Tickets', 'Theater Tickets' and 'Theatre Tickets', suggesting a certain lack of precision. And as Haymarket bears off to the right, taking the A4 with it, Coventry Street instantly becomes minor, one-way and a heck of a lot easier to cross on foot.
The next block - all of it - is occupied by what used to be the Trocadero. This started out in 1882 as another music hall, all Marie Lloyd and showy singalongs, then in 1896 was leased by J Lyons & Co who transformed it into the Trocadero Restaurant. In 1909 it became their very first Corner House, four floors of sumptuously accessible dining, although admittedly that corner was of Great Windmill Street with Shaftesbury Avenue so not technically relevant. The restaurant on the corner of Coventry Street was Scott's, a prestige seafood restaurant with an oyster speciality, where Ian Fleming's favourite spot was a right-hand corner table on the first floor and thus James Bond's favourite too. Alas all of this ended in the mid 1960s - the Corner House closing down and Scott's scarpering to Mayfair - to be replaced by a knocked-through multi-storey entertainment destination. You may remember it as home to the Guinness Book of World Records Exhibition, or as Segaworld accessed via a tubular escalator climbing into a sparkly black void, in which case don't come back and be downright disappointed.
The Coventry Street entrance to the Trocadero is now a single souvenir shop, supposedly London's largest, where patriotic tat is stacked high from front to back. Look out for Mr Beans in boxes, red phonebox keyrings, Union Jack crockery and rubber ducks that look like King Charles, plus the huge pile of QE2 In Memoriam mugs they still haven't shifted and won't while they remain reduced to only £14.99. Other properties to either side include an ominous set of black doors leading to the Platinum Lace gentlemen's club (for which read strip club), a Chinese hotpot restaurant (with 31% student discount) and one of those parasitic emporia selling Harry Potter-inspired ephemera. My favourite spot to linger was always the double-fronted HMV store, which has alas become the obligatory sugar-stuffed American candy shop... but at least Coventry Street has just the one.
Across the street, you'll despair to hear, is the largest of London's five remaining Angus Steak House restaurants. This flagship branch opened in 1968 and is still "serving shoe leather with Béarnaise sauce", as David Mitchell once put it, on the basis that tourists only need to be tempted into one of its plush banquettes once and no repeat custom is necessary. The new kid on the block is Happy, a Bulgarian chain who took over the TGI Fridays here in 2020, and offer a much more people-pleasing international menu. That means tacos, carbonara, mac & cheese, nachos and guacamole, an entire streetfood range but on a plate, which won them the accolade of Restaurant of the Year at last month's British Restaurant Awards. Cuisines change and palates shift, and these two adjacent eateries explicitly demonstrate the before and after.
Coventry Street's prestige nightspot choice, the other side of Rupert Street, used to be the Café de Paris. This theatre club saw Marlene Dietrich behind the mike, the UK's debut performance of the Charleston on the stage and the future Edward VIII in the audience, although not necessarily simultaneously. It had the misfortune to be struck by a direct hit in the Blitz, killing over 30 people, but what eventually wiped it out was the pandemic otherwise it'd be celebrating its centenary this year. Its replacement is a "glamorous, lace-clad, tassel-twirling nightlife experience", Lío London, with a casino nextdoor in case your night out needs a further rush. I imagine the taxi rank out front picks up some properly wasted souls in the early hours.
The final point of interest on Coventry Street is the Prince of Wales Theatre, the PoW in question in this case being the future Edward VII. Unless you're looking very high up all you'll see is the name of the play they're currently presenting which is The Book of Mormon, the theatre's longest running musical, its 4000+ performances easily quashing second place Mamma Mia and third place Aspects of Love. The street ends with a run of tourist-friendly niches offering spicy shawarma and bland Nutella waffles, plus money exchange, further souvenirs and anything you can smoke. Again perhaps don't frequent the shop that thinks its collection of red and gold fridge attachments are called 'magnts'. At which point we've hit the tip of Wardour Street which is where Coventry Street terminates, which is excellent news because for the second Monopoly write-up in a row I don't have to include London's most vacuous tourist destination, the inexplicable M&M's World, which is technically on Swiss Court.
Expect somewhere a little classier for the final yellow.
