1 week Ago By Tom Howells
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 Dashing man-about-town and chef’s chef Jackson Boxer’s W11 bolthole (formerly Orasay, but rebranded last year) serves the kind of elevated comfort food many restaurants aspire to but few truly nail.
Yes, the fevered social hype revolves around the burger –topped with gorgonzola and champagne-stewed onions, limited to 10 per day – but the rest of the menu, from iberiko toms with chilli crisp to burnished pizzette with mortadella and burrata, roast chicken with Café de Paris butter and wild garlic, and an ambrosial fior di latte soft-serve with EVOO, is irresistible. W11 The capital’s history of approximate izakayas – that is, a kind of booze-fuelled Japanese pub/bar with snacky small plates – have tended a little too far to bijous ends. But “neo-izakaya” Himi , with its bare bricks and bustling narrow counter space, feels slightly more faithful to the model (and not least for the good selection of sakes and heady shōchūs, though the beer and wine skews European).
The elevated izakaya classics are superb: from seaweed-wrapped tempura scallops, to robata-grilled red shrimp, duck udon torikara fried chicken, and Neptune’s full provision of temaki hand rolls, nigiri and glistening sashimi. Oishi . W1F 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, with Bakare’s phenomenal cooking hitting giddy new heights via set-menu dishes like guinea fowl with taro, ehuru and uziza sauce. Oh, and did we mention Bakare became Britain’s first Black female Michelin-starred chef? W1W 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. The pass is run by ex-Fat Duck man Ashley Palmer-Watts, and his unprepossessing offering is astounding, with faultless versions of pub classics (sausage and mash, lamb hotpot, white crab salad) alongside the already legendary grilled langoustines and house-butchered chops.
W1D 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 Located down a diminutive alley between Dean and Wardour Streets, this 12-seater Soho bolthole from Simon Rogan (he of Cartmel’s three-star L’Enclume, plus umpteen others) is a textbook example of his rarefied farm-to-fork credo. As an end-to-end gastro experience, it’s pretty much faultless: a 15+-dish menu of winsome titbits like “truffle pudding caramelised in birch with Corra Linn and Douglas Fir”, knocked back with sensitively compiled wine pairings. There’s real intrigue in the non-alc curation, too – think Kentish cobnut milk, effervescent pineapple-weed tea and other outré tipples.
W1F Few openings have shaken the London scene like Kol – Santiago Lastra’s stratospherically popular contemporary Mexican in Marylebone. Lastra’s second launch, Fonda , is a more homestyle and nostalgia-driven affair than Kol, with dishes cooked on a trad clay griddle called a comal”. There are rarefied takes on Mexican classics (confit pork carnitas, truffle-laced quesadillas, fresh queso de aro) and, naturally, faultless tortillas made from house-milled heirloom corn.
W1B 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. The menu’s hardly an oversight, either, loaded as it is 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 James Dye (of the Camberwell Arms, Franks and Bambi fame) and Benjy Leibowitz (once of NYC’s NoMad hotel) have overhauled Shoreditch’s old Les Trois Garçons site into this: an appealing, clattering corner boozer doing a perfectly pitched line in unprepossessing bar snacks, toasties, and rotisserie chicken and porchetta. Located above the pub , One Club Row is a more chichi offering: a transatlantic, NY-Parisian mish-mash of a restaurant, where one can scarf pickled jalapeño gougères, steak tartare, delicate tuna crudo and big-bucks whole lobster tagliatelle in zhuzhed 19th-century surrounds, triple-cut on dirty martinis and swooning to louche piano jazz. E1 Even crap pizza is good food – but London is blessed with some absolutely top-tier pies, and Dough Hands sits near the apex.
Via a long-term residency at Hackney’s Spurstowe Arms, and a rather fresher one at Nunhead’s Old Nun’s Head, mastermind Hannah Drye has helped define a conclusive “London-style” of pizza; a chewy, pliable dough with a faint crunch (made from regenerative British flour) and toppings that skew both ascetic (the tomato pie is a pared-back dream) and full-on (enter, the Verdino, with stracciatella, squash, pickled scotch bonnet, brown butter and crispy sage). E8 and SE15 Lauded restaurant, conceptual private diner with rooms, satellite French farmstay in deepest Occitanie..
. Kirk and Keeley Haworth’s Plates ticks a multitude of boxes. The most auspicious is its status as the UK’s first Michelin-starred vegan joint, and Kirk’s food is as intuitive, playful and painterly as it is sustainably minded: think caramelised lion’s mane with cauliflower cream, smoked shio koji, rhubarb and fermented peppercorn sauce, say; or mint ice cream with chewy beets, sweet pea and kombu.
Fascinating, too, is the wine list, arranged under the terroirs of “Deciduous Forest”, “Alpine & Hillside Shrub” and “Mediterranean Scrubland”. Mmmm, scrubland. EC1V 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 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 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 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 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 If the smooth-jazz standards of Vince Guaraldi and Bill Evans were transmogrified into a restaurant, it might be something like Leo’s : warm, autumnal, understated and louche. Chef/co-founder Giuseppe “Peppe” Belvedere is late of Brawn , Bright and Terroirs , and it shows; the Sardinian-tinged menu is a lesson in fab antipasti (the iridescent cured mackerel is a no-brainer), primi (a brilliant seasonal wet polenta with girolles, say) and sharing secondi (think: a whole turbot or Bistecca alla Fiorentina). E5 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 Taz Sarhane (previously of Claude Bosi's Bibendum and Brooklands restaurants) plates up nuanced menus of dishes like tempura scallop with pickled elderflower and roe powder, or whey-fed ex-dairy cow sirloin with bone marrow and langoustine sauce with fermented apricot. Bang on-trend? The broths, “elixirs” and drinking vinegars served with them. E2 The Best Restaurants In London Southeast London’s hottest ticket – honestly, just try nabbing a Thursday table less than a month in advance – is the perfect neighbourhood joint: buzzing, convivial and wilfully low-key, knocking out simple but deeply honed modern Caribbean plates that’ll see you rebooking week on week.
The seasonally shifting food is all fab, but the jerk-marinated halloumi, deeply flavourful stewed black-eyed peas and fried chicken are next level; a sorrel, lime and high-ABV Wray and Nephew rum cocktail the perfect thing to slosh it back with. SE4 Housed at Camberwell’s Grove House Tavern, Mondo Sando has long been in contention for purveyor of the city’s finest subs. The opening of this, its late-night, formica-laced diner on Peckham Road, has upped the ante in every possible way.
Queue for the daytime sarnies – ie. the signature Mondo Frango hoagie of peri chicken thigh and pea salsa verde, or a superlative egg mayo on Toad Bakery’s white tin loaf, plus latkes – but stay for the slightly cheffier evening plates, which, fear not, still include a tiny Cubano and an astounding patty melt. Cracking cocktails and a non-negotiable deep-fried treacle tart seal the deal.
SE5 Islington’s The Baring was something of a sleeper hit when it opened in 2022, GM Adam Symonds and chef Rob Tecwyn drawing on their experience at the Bull & Last (among others) and fashioning the platonic ideal of a seasonally driven gastropub. They’ve done it again with The Kerfield Arms , an artfully muted, light-filled corner pile on Camberwell’s Grove Lane. Tecwyn’s banger menu of titbits like Cornish squid and lardo shish with pul biber chilli, or fried pig’s head with smoked eel – plus small-label wines and outré beers – means the previously unassailable Camberwell Arms is getting a run for its money.
SE5 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 . 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. SE1 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 pitch-perfect 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 thanks to baguette baskets, specials-scrawled chalkboards, soft linen drapes and cherry-red panelling, while the carte is dotted with reconstructed Gallic-leaning things like smoked eel devilled eggs and ox tongue with hen of the woods. SE1 It would be worth making a reservation at Borough Market’s Oma (raw in Greek) for the wild-farmed laffa and dips alone: tarama, labneh, baba ganoush, and, yes, hummus. (I never foresaw myself describing a pureed chickpea dip as a “religious experience”, but then I’d never eaten David Carter and Jorge Paredes’s creamy masabacha version before.
) And yet it would be a mistake not to leave room for the more elaborate takes on Greek Isles cuisine here – the masterful deconstructed spanakopita and skewers of charred squid and grilled octopus, in particular. HM SE1 Settled in the industro-Victorian theme park 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, and fettuccelle (a thinner tagliatelle) with Genovese short-rib ragu.
SE1 The Best Restaurants In London Having upended London’s burger game with Finsbury Park resto-boozer The Plimsoll , co-founder Ed McIlroy has taken a dowdy ’70s chippy and done the same for the Spanish-style seafood bar. It’s gloriously unprepossessing, entirely redolent of a locals-only backstreet Madrid diner with its tiled floor and sunshine-yellow palette. Yes, everyone harps on about the chips bravas, but the plancha-grilled sardines and octopus, minimalist plates of cheddar and almonds (honestly), and ambrosial rice pudding with raspberries are a further cut above.
N4 A larger sibling to Islington’s beloved Desi pub/restaurant The Tamil Prince , The Tamil Crown offers more of the same irresistible 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 included. N1 The Baring is a compact strip of a bar and dining room, with cosy banquettes 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 sustainably minded, flavourful and frequently sensational. A streamlined list of natural wines, great cocktails (to wit: a cherry tequila sour) and esoteric beers completes the picture.
N1 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 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 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.
N16 Technically a wine bar with interiors inspired by the Arts & Crafts Movement and Japanese Mingei, Goodbye Horses punches impressively high on both the booze and food fronts. The latter, arranged by wine director Nathalie Nelles, skews organic and biodynamic, while the former, devised by ex-Papi man Jack Coggins, turns classic dishes on their head, from the humble egg mayo to the sardine sobrasada on Japanese milk toast. N1.
