The Kardomah Café, Swansea
Kardomah was the name for a number of tea and coffee shops in England and Wales. They started in the late 19th century and were popular until after the Second World War.
Swansea’s Kardomah Exhibition Café & Tea Rooms opened at 232 High Street in 1895, claiming to sell “the finest tea and coffee in the world”.
In 1908 the café moved to Castle Street, near the offices of the South Wales Evening Post. The building had once been the Castle Street Congregational Chapel, where Dylan Thomas’ mother and father were married in 1903. The upper photo shows a tram passing the Kardomah.
In the 1930s the café was a meeting place for young artists, including writers Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins, composer Daniel Jones, and painters Alfred Janes and Mervyn Levy. In the upper part of the café, described by Dylan Thomas as “my Home Sweet Homah”, they discussed everything under the sun: “Einstein and Epstein, Stravinsky and Greta Garbo, death and religion, Picasso and girls” (Dylan Thomas, Return Journey, 1947).
The café was destroyed in the Swansea Blitz of 19-21 February 1941. “The Kardomah café was razed to the snow, the voices of the coffee-drinkers – poets, painters, and musicians in their beginnings – lost in the willynilly flying of the years and the flakes” (Return Journey).
The existing Kardomah Café in Portland Street opened in 1957. Since 1970 it has been owned by the Luporini family. In 2025 Marcus Luporini said he had grown up in the business and recalled having to do a shift in the kitchen whenever he wanted pocket money. See the footnotes for the family’s story.
The interior retains its 1950s square Formica tables, dark wooden panelling, mirrors, mosaic tiled columns, coat racks and copper relief sculptures. The lower photo shows the interior in the 1950s or 60s.
The café has been used as a set for films and television programmes, including a Dr Who Christmas special filmed in 2009, a film about Dylan Thomas, and a Netflix series.
With thanks to Andrew Green, Helen Nicholas and Martin Williams of the Royal Institution of South Wales
Postcode: SA1 3DH View Location Map
Footnotes: How the Luporinis came to Swansea
Aged 18, Pietro Luporini set off from Italy on a round-the-world trip. He stopped in Paris, where he washed dishes in a restaurant, then in London, where he became a chef and fell in love with an Englishwoman. The trip went no further! They married in 1961.
Pietro became a troubleshooter for Trusthouse Forte, owner of the Kardomah café chain. The cafés were losing money, and in 1970 Pietro was offered either the Liverpool or Swansea premises. He bought the Swansea café.