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This is Cardiff best kept secret…

Milgi  is an up market cocktail bar situated in the middle of the student district of the capitol. There is an extensive (if not slightly expensive) drinks menu with lots of your normal cocktails and your more exotic drinks like their famous Chocolate Orange Martini.

The garden has a huge Yurt where DJ play chilled contemporary beats during the evening. As well as a drinking hole, Milgi has a great Tapas and evenings a la carte menu.

This is a great venue with many quirks, well worth a visit.

Milgi Kitchen, Lounge and Gallery

This café is the talk of Roath. Cheap tapas,  homemade  brownies and a wet–dreamy cocktail menu will inevitably turn a quick afternoon coffee into a full day of chilled out gossip and drinks. The vintage furniture, crazy lighting and offbeat background music makes it a hit, and Sundays are particularly packed with Cardiff's hippies all turning out to witness the fabulous live music. Bust out the tie dye and purple dreads, take a seat in the garden's strange love shack and listen the night away.

If this pub were a toy it would be a transformer; with its ability to shape itself into a collection of places all in one small pub. 'Eat, Art, Drink, Music' is their motto. Two sisters run and own Milgi (meaning greyhound). With their fine art backgrounds they've created not just a pub, but a 'venue'. There's Cabaret, a monthly market, photography, DJs, and tuck-shop; alongside drink, tapas and a Yurt (don't ask just go and see) in the garden.

The Milgi Lounge
213 City Rd, Cardiff, 029 2047 3150, www.milgilounge.com

A really brilliant space that's part art gallery, part boozer, part tapas bar.

30th March 2008

   

Is eating dinner in front of the TV slovenly and slobbish? Well, tell that to Gabrielle and Rebecca Kelly, who, inspired by New York's purpose-built modern art video galleries, set up a similar venture in Cardiff that serves up delectable cocktails and fine French food among the installations. Visiting and local artists take care of the visuals while chefs get creative in the kitchen. There's a wide range of food options, from breakfasts to light bites and larger dishes, but quality isn't compromised - everything is on the money, from the bargain £5.25 hangover breakfast to well-handled dinner options such as broad bean and pancetta risotto and lambs kidneys in sherry.
Antony Jones

Readers' choice: Best newcomer (Wales)
Monday, December 11, 2006
Milgi Lounge

MILGI LOUNGE

Those of you who voted for Milgi Lounge were superlative in your praise, and Metro couldn't agree more.

Owned by artist sisters Gaby and Rebecca Kelly, its slick, contemporary decor, cutting edge video art and endlessly inventive menu has won many fans in the six months since it opened.

Decorous French food is prepared with passion and precision by chefs Laurian Veaudour and Quentin Fescourt: we ooh-ed and aah-ed our way through tender crab ravioli, lush foie gras-stuffed pâté, perfectly pink roast duck and stunning blueberry creme brulée.

The staff are expert at knocking up the delicious concoctions listed in Milgi's formidable drinks bible, and welcoming enough to make you never want to leave.



A space filled with vintage shabby chic furniture, a pallet-watering menu and a cocktail list that differs from the norm; Milgi Louge, Restaurant and Video Gallery is something quite unique in this city.

If you've never tried frogs legs then order them at Milgi, they are simply delicious! Everything on the menu tastes like the 'best version you ever had...', even the bread; its really fluffy and light.

The art gallery consists of 8 screens set in a social context showing contemporary moving image in the form of animation, film, documentary and fine art video. They even provide headphones should you wish to listen to accompanying soundtracks. And if you're a budding artist, they also welcome new talent.

We recommend grabbing a group of friends, ordering a table of tapas and a selection of cocktails for a great night in a fabulous bar with a unique atmosphere, any day of the week.

To see our detailed What's On guide to Cardiff, click here or to just see what's on at Milgi, visit their events calendar below.



Milgi, a new cafe bar on City Road in Cardiff’s Roath area is a novel prospect in the Welsh capital. A contemporary Video Art Gallery, Lounge and Bar; set aside from the hustle bustle of the city centre, anything but generic; an unexpected touch of class on the student-populated outskirts.

Surprisingly, the main motivation behind owners Gaby and Rebecca Kelly’s decision to open such a distinctive and unique place in Cardiff was not a perceived gap in the cafe bar market, rather a lack of gallery space in the city where the two art school graduates could exhibit their video art.

As Rebecca explains: “The choice was either to go to London or set up our own gallery here. The basis for Milgi was basically the gallery”.

The financial realities of running a gallery space meant that a restaurant and café/bar were added as revenue support to the venture. It’s an original idea for Cardiff but a trip to New York showed how it could all be done.

“While we were there we spent a lot of our time in cafes, galleries, bars and lounges, and places where they combined it all” Rebecca explains. “They’ve got a fantastic attitude towards contemporary art – really good at supporting artists and putting art in social spaces.”

Rebecca curates the gallery, sourcing the work on display which is rotated on a regular basis. Eight large video screens flank one wall, allowing a large amount of different work to be shown at any one time.

Recent showcases have impressively mixed local, national and international filmmaking talent, and there are exciting exhibitions ahead with mini themed festivals and filmmaking competitions running throughout the summer.

With the gallery space clearly dominant in Rebecca and Gaby’s idea of Milgi as a concept, it’s surprising how unlike a gallery Milgi is. The ideas blend so well that the artwork provides an unobtrusive backdrop to what is a very pleasant eating and drinking experience.

“A third of the place is a gallery, but people tend not to notice that. Its art in social context, and we are defiantly not presenting it like a gallery. We’re presenting it in an alternative way that we feel is more accessible”.

Aside from the distinctive bank of video screens, the interior of Milgi is unlike anything else you will find around Cardiff. It’s a confident and homely mix of vintage furniture and contemporary design, which Rebecca describes as “eclectic Granny Chic”. This eclecticism runs as far the customers, a healthy mix of students, scenesters, professionals and OAPs.

With a recently erected Mongolian Yurt in the garden providing an all-weather venue for music and late night socialising, and the upcoming Northcote Lane Market behind the premises promising a “boutique market for collectors and purveyors of fine goods”, Milgi’s stature as a forward thinking, beautifully designed art and social space can only increase as the months tick by.