The British capital is a gastronome’s city – and the best restaurants in London are as varied as they are delicious. The relentless wave of launches can leave one breathless, so we’ve gathered the best of them (as well as a few bedded-in gems) into this frequently updated checklist of the “wheres?” and “whys?” of London’s hot-ticket tables. The only question is: where to book first?
The Best Restaurants In London
South Londoners went into mourning when Joké Bakare’s contemporary west African joint in Brixton Village shut at the end of 2022, but a few lauded pop-ups and a crowdfunding blitzkrieg later, it’s back in business, this time in a double-level space in Fitzrovia. And how it’s returned: Bakare’s phenomenal cooking hitting giddy new heights via set-menu dishes like guineafowl with taro, ehuru and uziza sauce. The rollicking cocktails also nod to west Africa; try the spiced okra martini.
W1W
The folks behind Kentish Town’s beloved (and bizarrely underrated) bakery Panadera have brought modern Filipino cuisine to the upper reaches of Kingly Court with Donia – and in frenziedly delicious fashion. There are open-topped shumai dumplings with crab and sea bream kinilaw (a Filipino ceviche), punchy plates of lamb shoulder Caldereta pie (with its Proustian school-dinner profile), and an Insta-baiting choux bun with violet-hued ube ice-cream. Bizarrely slept on it may be, but this is a bona fide instant classic.
W1B
Fine, the heaving bar section at this Westbourne Grove pub might be an acquired taste if you have a low tolerance for braying financiers, but there’s no dismissing the ascetic, St John-inspired brilliance of its candlelit, sand-plastered dining room. Top drawer snacks – especially the toasts, topped with crab, mince or rarebit – precede dishes of raw beef and Gentleman’s Relish, bone marrow with parsley, and a burnished lobster and monkfish pie. Wash it down with low-intervention pioneers Marie and Marcel Lapierre’s Chateau Cambon Beaujolais or trough-sized glasses of ice-cold martini.
W11
When Mayfair’s arch publican, Oisin Rogers, evacuated Bruton Place’s The Guinea Grill in order to open his own boozer, expectations were high – but no one could have anticipated the ecstatic fervour with which The Devonshire has been met. As well as serving the best Guinness in London, the pass is being run by ex-Fat Duck man Ashley Palmer-Watts. His unprepossessing offering is astounding: faultless versions of pub classics (sausage and mash, lamb hotpot, white crab salad) alongside the already legendary grilled langoustines and house-butchered chops.
W1D
Much of the appeal of 20 Berkeley – the latest opening from the team behind Sumi and HUMO – is its setting, a Georgian manor just off Berkeley Square where the décor is both elegant and restrained, all green banquettes, stained glass, and acres of polished wood. It feels, in every sense, decidedly grown up – as does the menu. At a point when every restaurant in London is pitched as “inspired by seasonal British produce”, chef Ben Orpwood manages to make the concept feel genuinely interesting again, with dishes ranging from black pudding agnolotti topped with wild garlic velouté to a coronation chicken pie whose richness is cut through with kohlrabi remoulade and mango piccalilli.
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A 16-seat omakase offering at “time to remortgage the flat” prices might seem consummately Mayfair, but Taku has greater cred than your average sushi joint. For one, the eponymous Takuya Watanabe was formerly chef-patron at Jin, the first omakase place in Paris to be awarded a Michelin star. Secondly, its protracted menus (the £280 “signature” is a cool 20 courses) are sensational, running the gamut from steamed lobster with sudachi jelly to traditional, edomae-style sushi. Knock it all back with glasses of specialty sake, and don’t ask for soy sauce.
W1S
Itinerant chef/herb farmer Lukie Farrell’s southeast Asian takeover of the capital (he’s already done sinus-stripping southern Thai at Plaza Khao Gaeng, plus top-tier bánh mì at Viet Populaire and nocturnal Indonesian hawker grub at Bebek! Bebek!) continues apace with this: his high energy, Singha-sloshing, late-night take on a Bangkok café. It’s as effervescent as you’d expect. The flavours are massive – a salad of pickled mustard greens and Chinese sausage; stir-fried minced beef with holy basil; ash melon and eggplant curry – and the vibes immense. How much of the latter is down to the three-litre “beer towers” and mango and makrut lime leaf margaritas is up to you.
W1D
Mount St Restaurant – a luxe British restaurant above Mayfair’s Audley Public House – could well be London’s comeliest dining room. Conceived by Artfarm (from the founders of the contemporary art behemoth Hauser & Wirth) and Parisian architecture studio Laplace, it’s as much a gallery as a restaurant, with original works by Freud, Auerbach, Matisse and Warhol on the walls, and a bespoke palladiana mosaic by Rashid Johnson on the floor. The menu’s hardly an oversight, either – loaded with nostalgic riffs on British classics like mock turtle croquettes, Pigeons in Pimlico, and an almost comically decadent lobster pie.
W1K
The Best Restaurants In London
The brainchild of Frank’s Cafe/Camberwell Arms co-founder James Dye and former Peckham Cellars chef Henry Freestone, Bambi offers a slick amalgam of crowd-pleasing plates, natural wines, and a “listening bar”, with a gargantuan record collection curated by one-time Plastic People selector Charlie Dark and a sound system from Friendly Pressure. The look – a sea of oiled wood and backlit vinyl racks – is beautiful, while Freestone’s cooking is intuitive and comforting, from cauliflower cheese croquettes to the blinding chicken parm ciabatta with vodka marinara sauce.
E8
Both Crispin in Spitalfields and its dinky sibling Bar Crispin off Carnaby helped define London’s natty-wine-and-small-plates scene. Their rapturously received offshoot Bistro Freddie – in the old Oklava site in Shoreditch – is doing the same for the nascent nu-bistro boom. The old-school interiors (white cloths, lacquered bar, umpteen empty plonk bottles) give way to a more robustly British menu (but an entirely French and truly enormous wine list). Expect superlative pies; steamed marmalade puddings; apple-glazed pork chops; and more subtly outré things like snail flatbread with garlic butter and chicken skin.
EC2A
Given that she served as the Palomar group’s wine doyenne and he’s a former GM of Brawn, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Honey Spencer and Charlie Sims’s killer new Hackney spot is both deeply stylish and wholly delicious. Perfect bites, to pick but three, come in the form of pillowy charred flatbreads slicked with tarama, reconstituted gildas on potato cakes, and a textbook croque monsieur topped with raw beef (à la Montreal’s L’Express), while the pan-European wine list (plus a few sakes) is relentlessly interesting. It’s a blissful labour of love; even the pastel-splattered menu papers are a painterly dream.
E2
It’s hard to quantify just how much adoration the capital’s epicurean class had for chef Henry Harris’s old joint Racine. The Knightsbridge classic shuttered in 2013 after 11 years of pounding out robust, provincial French fare, and Harris’s return to the pass – in a clattery room above Farringdon boozer The Three Compasses – was met with a similar fervour, and for good reason. The extensive chalkboard carte is uncompromisingly decadent: Bayonne ham with remoulade; tête de veau with sauce ravigote; escargots à la bourguignonne; confit de canard and braised mogettes; a Mont Blanc for two. Good luck getting a table.
EC1M
This vaguely industrial wine store and French-ish restaurant in Hoxton is a familial affair. Chef Alex Reynolds and wine expert Maria Viviani met while working at Popham’s bakery; the bottle shop is named after their pooch Kimchi; and Eline herself was Alex’s food-loving French grandmother. So far, so winsome – but what’s zipping across the pass is serious stuff. Cured slivers of lamb and duck; pretty filled pastas; picture-perfect mains like a zhuzhed take on the bistro classic of duck à l’orange, with potato terrine and charred endive (the revival starts here).
E2
Housed within Shoreditch’s Blue Mountain School, Cycene is a mish-mash of private home and stylised design-mag aesthetics, featuring hand-painted tiles by 6a Architects and oak panels fashioned at the founders’ own woodshop. Chef Theo Clench (previously of Fitzrovia’s Akoko and Portland) plates up seafood-heavy tasting menus of Pan-Asian/Australasian dishes like cavatelli, sea urchin and kinome or turbot, lettuce and sake. Bang on-trend? The broths, “elixirs” and drinking vinegars served with them.
E2
Dalston’s Nest and Fulham’s Fenn are two of the city’s niftiest (and largely under-the-radar) neighbourhood restaurants. This sibling, peering over the medieval cloisters of Smithfield’s Great St Bart’s church, is more of a statement. Sure it’s concept-y – 15 courses, two key ingredients per plate, all embracing seasonal British produce from small-scale producers and conservationists – but pretensions are moot when it comes to dishes like red mullet kohlrabi terrine, English sweetcorn porridge with pickled Scottish girolles, or Hackney honey and lavender tart. Hallowed stuff – and the greige palette of the space itself should have The Modern House calling in no time.
EC1A
An exuberant love letter to the fiery flavours of Sri Lanka, this new, Shoreditch High Street-adjacent outpost of the Soho fixture delivers a buzzy atmosphere, playful cocktails (try the Banana Manhattan, with Ceylon Arrack, banana liqueur, coconut water and vermouth, or the KCC, with Doghouse Distillery moonshine, coffee liqueur, jaggery, tonka bean, cardamom and nutmeg) and some truly knock-out dishes: the hot butter soft shell crab, Jaffna spiced lamb chops and the ingenious king prawn string hopper biriyani. – Radhika Seth
E1
The Best Restaurants In London
The once hot, now comfortably evergreen Spitalfields joint Som Saa had a firm hand in London’s mid-2010s nu-Thai boom, its fiery smorgasbord blowing the heads off those more used to muted massaman bowls. Seven or so years on, they’ve directed their attention to the country’s southern stretches and opened Kolae. Everyone’s lost their minds for the grilled mussel skewers, but the menu is a trove of flame-licked gold: a kua kling curry of minced venison, lemongrass and cumin leaf; sour mango salad with roasted coconut and anchovies; Phuket-style soy-braised Middle White belly and ribs; et al. The soft-focus interiors – all beige hues and midcentury-style furnishings – are as comely as the food.
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Finally, Claude Bosi chucks his hat into the nouveau-bouchon ring. Henry Harris should be sweating; old Lyon has arrived in deepest Chelsea in the most emphatic way possible. The room is a vision (all starched-white cloths and crossback Thonet chairs), the menu pitch-perfect. The “main” à la carte is grand (a honking Saint-Félicien cheese soufflé and fist-sized veal sweetbread in particular), but the true regional highlights can be found on the Menu des Canut: brioche-embedded Morteau sausage, pike mousse, and wantonly stinky, purist-pleasing andouillette.
SW10
As London’s gastronomic focus disperses ever further from Zone 1 and its fringes, so-called “neighbourhood” restaurants are increasingly among the best in London. Herne Hill’s Llewelyn’s is a prime example of this trend. Served in a terrazzo-filled dining room, its ever-changing menu encompasses dishes such as cured bass with grapefruit and buttermilk, Parisienne gnocchi with wild garlic and spring veg, and Floating Islands surrounded by passion fruit custard and scattered with macadamia brittle.
SE24
A platonic ideal of a regional bistro in the foodie nucleus of Borough Market? From the folks behind Soho’s Ducksoup, Dalston’s Little Duck and Ashburton’s Emilia? Not a pastis-induced fever dream, but Clare Lattin and Tom Hill’s Camille. It’s wildly jolie: baguette baskets, specials-scrawled chalkboards and mirrors, soft linen window drapes and cherry-red panelling – the carte dotted with reconstructed and seasonal Gallic-leaning things like smoked eel devilled eggs, ox tongue with hen of the woods, and, naturally, a blushing onglet steak with Café de Paris butter.
SE1
Settled in the industro-Victorian themepark of Shad Thames (just east of Tower Bridge), Legare is the kind of riotously underrated spot that has itinerant food wags muttering reverently for weeks after visiting. It’s legitimately one of London’s best: a pristine, tranquil Italian driven by British produce, manifesting in dishes like calf’s liver with Roscoff onion, Delica pumpkin agnolotti with sage butter and chestnuts, fettuccelle (a thinner tagliatelle) with Genovese short-rib ragu, and some of the city’s finest pistachio cannoli to polish it all off.
SE1
For years a relative wasteland of decent eating options, the Waterloo stretch of South Bank is now home to a double-header of delectable denizens, both in the Brutalist enclaves of the National Theatre. First, Lasdun. Named for Denys, the architect who conceived said enclaves, it’s basically the Marksman-on-Thames, flogging the beloved Hackney gastropub’s beef and barley buns, burnished pies, and brown butter and honey tarts. A bullseye (especially the £38 pre-theatre menu). Then, Forza Wine. Peckham’s second-favourite rooftop watering hole has been transplanted to the theatre’s northwest levels, natty plonk and great Italian-ish small plates included.
SE1
Wine shop, provisioners and sandwich-slinging bolthole by day, bustling cave à manger by night, Lulu’s is the Lilliputian sibling of Llewelyn’s next door (sharing both chef and loo, plus a predilection for stripped-back, seasonal plates). The menu brims with pan-Euro gems – de rigueur gildas and devilled eggs; Cantabrian anchovies with preserved lemon; agnolotti stuffed with Jerusalem artichoke, then dusted with hazelnuts and parmesan – while the wine list offers perfect pours from interesting and unheralded European vignerons as far afield as Poland, Georgia and Slovenia. Hammer a glass or three while sitting at the window counter, overlooking the cobbled Herne Hill Station concourse.
SE24
Opened in 2020 by Woongchul Park (manning the pans) and Bomee Ki (on the pastry), Sollip’s rep was bolstered by a Michelin star in 2022. Now, it feels like the city is finally catching up to just how exceptional this blissful Euro-Korean spot is. Come for the serene ambience – artisanal Korean ceramics, soaped wood, loungy jazz bops – stay for the accomplished tasting menu of East-meets-West wonders, from an alabaster dish of squid with stracciatella and shaved chervil root to a pitch-black pain perdu with soybean ice cream.
SE1
It’s ramen alright – but not as you know it. When Luke Findlay opened the first, post-pop-up Supa Ya in Dalston in 2021, he delectably skewed the basics of Japan’s soupy staple. Now, he’s dragged it south of the river to Peckham’s Rye Lane – and into the glorified corridor of a space last occupied by the late, lamented Taco Queen – wilfully inauthentic bowls and all. Take the soupless cheeseburger ramen: a heady melding of aged beef-fat noodles, smashed patty, burger sauce, American cheese, pickles and white sesame. Even the booze is outré: our order is the pickled fennel martini.
SE15
Possibly the most casual two-Michelin-starred establishment you’ll ever dine at – all calming neutrals, a serene open kitchen, warm service – this Bermondsey gem run by The Fat Duck’s Jonny Lake and sommelier Isa Bal is seriously impressive. Instead of imposing a multi-course set menu on guests, there’s a freewheeling (and exceptional) á la carte offering: start with Cornish wild sea bass crudo, for instance, followed by the roast lamb with smoked yoghurt, sumac and aubergine, and end with the “Hokkaido Potato” dessert, a baked potato mille-feuille with saké and white chocolate mousse (trust me, it’s delicious), all paired with a glass or two from the excellent wine list, which, commendably, highlights bottles from Georgia, Armenia and Turkey alongside France and Italy. Best of all, the restaurant feels like a real find. I’ve somehow lived around the corner from it for four years without knowing it was there – and I regret every second of it. – Radhika Seth
SE1
The Best Restaurants In London
A larger sibling to Islington’s beloved Desi pub/restaurant The Tamil Prince, The Tamil Crown offers more of the same pitch-perfect south Indian/Tamil fare – plus, this time, a fresh array of bar snacks (shoestring masala fries, banana chips, samosas, et al) and a list of Indian-spiced cocktails conceived by Dalston’s finest, Three Sheets. New spins on the OGs prevail – beef masala uttapam with spicy coconut chutney, robata lamb chops and textbook roti – and there’s a wicked subcontinental riff on a trad Sunday roast at the weekend.
N1
Wandsworth Road’s Fenn was one of those odd restaurants beloved by all who visited, but otherwise under the radar. There’s no such issue with Counter 71, a modern British tasting joint in Shoreditch from former Fenn head chef Joe Laker. A swift lunch on the fly this is not: settle in for 15-ish courses spanning things like a dinky langoustine custard with crab and buttermilk, a carrot “taco” with chicken thigh and Caesar dressing, and a bowl of sweet-savoury dehydrated tomatoes with rhubarb and elderflower. A basement cocktail bar below – dubbed Lowcountry, and serving both trad mixes and admirably creative new ones – is a vibey no-brainer for both pre- and post-prandials.
N1
Behold, the platonic ideal of a backstreet pub-restaurant. The Baring is a painterly gem: a compact strip of a bar and dining room, with an autumnal colour palette, cosy banquettes, bits of dried foliage and tea lights for when the gloaming descends. Manager Adam Symonds and chef Rob Tecwyn met jobbing at Highgate’s Bull & Last. Those in the know will be aware of the gravitas of that sentence; others should be assured that the Euro-inflected gastropub fare is flavourful, sustainably minded and frequently sensational (not least the chips, the finest in London). A streamlined list of natural wines, great cocktails (to wit: a cherry tequila sour) and esoteric beers completes the picture.
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It was a dark day on Old Compton Street when Mr Ji – a heady Taiwanese collab between restaurateur Samuel Haim and TĀ TĀ Eatery’s Ana Gonçalves and Zijun Meng – shut up shop. Luckily, they’ve reappeared in expanded form in Camden, complete with the original’s brutalist interiors and maximalist menu. Classics like the bechamel-oozing prawn “in” toast, golden kimchi and plate-sized O’JI chicken escalope with piccalilli mayo remain – now joined by bites like prawn-and-pork-stuffed chicken wings (with crab, yoghurt and nori), and “tacos” of braised pig’s head, dumpling skin and cucumber salad.
NW1
Dinner on a reconfigured barge might sound like a novelty, but Caravel – located on a sleepy stretch of Regent’s Canal in Islington – is no gimmick. It’s the brainchild of Fin and Lorcan Spiteri, offspring of legendary London restaurateur and St John co-founder Jon Spiteri. While Fin mans the bar, Lorcan is on the hobs – having previously put in time at Quo Vadis and Rochelle Canteen. Those influences are transposed to a robust, ingredient-led menu with occasional curveballs: dinky rounds of potato rosti topped with sour cream and caviar; ribbons of pickled honeydew melon; slabs of ruby-rare bavette steak; a conventionally perfect prawn toast. A total dream(boat).
N1
Cadet is a beautiful, light-filled cave-à-manger, launched by low-intervention importers Beattie & Roberts and charcutier George Jephson, with chef Jamie Smart heading up the kitchen. Late of St John, P Franco and the Haute-Loire’s fêted Auberge de Chassignolles, his menus channel bistronomic simplicity. Pair wines from vignerons like Alsace’s Anne Laure Laengel or Abruzzo’s Cantina Indigeno with plates of crab with fregola and marigold, fromage de tête tartine with chanterelles, or slabs of Jephson’s painterly pâté en croûte.
