39 best restaurants in London worth changing your plans for
When it opened, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house for weeks as the city’s most fashionable flocked to get a table. One Club Row is the kind of restaurant that gets Londoners talking. This diminutive Soho spot is still our favourite in the Bao family – and well worth the queue. The Wiri Wiri lamp rump comes with a delicious mint crust and a gorgeous artichoke puree, and I’ve heard great things about the pan-seared pimento duck, although we didn’t manage to stretch our stomachs that far this time.
These are still authentic family recipes, cooked with passion and without much finesse, served on pink Formica plates. This has long been one of Soho’s best restaurants, and now it’s making waves all over again. The last few years have been kind to Rogan and his team; in 2022, another of his restaurants, L’Enclume, was awarded a third Michelin star – the highest accolade in the Michelin guide.
A pint and packet of crisps downstairs, three courses, and good wine upstairs. There’s also an extensive vegan menu and a super-affordable daily special. The Tem Toh set menu includes unlimited sticky and jasmine rice for soaking up saucy prawn curries or cooling down spice-heavy pad pak. Lastly, it won’t take more than a glass of house red to convince you to order the banoffee pie, which feels like a delightfully nostalgic treat – and is worth the trip back for.
Less than a year later, it seems his dreams are on their way to becoming a reality; the young chef opened his own restaurant in trendy Herne Hill (just opposite Brockwell Park) in late 2025, and the reception has been overwhelming. The owners of The Barbary, Layo and Zoe Paskin, have created something rare – a set of London restaurants under the umbrella of Studio Paskin (The Palomar, The Barbary, The Barbary Notting Hill) where a table is as coveted now as it was on opening night. It’s a dish that proves a useful avatar for the whole menu – an example of a time-honoured classic with something just a touch askew.
The set menu (£55 at lunch, £105 at dinner) changes frequently – snacks every week, larger plates depending on what ingredients look good. Joké’s Nigerian heritage is at the forefront of her home-style cooking, and it’s hugely exciting – if not long overdue – to see a business run by a Black woman flourishing in London’s competitive restaurant scene. Although the anjou pigeon a la presse is quite the spectacle (prepared tableside by a team of three), it’s the Crêpes Suzette that steals the show, doused and flambéed in Grand Marnier before being gently placed onto our plates in a neatly folded triangle. Many restaurants have tried to emulate the industrial-chic St John design blueprint, but this is the original – an unbuttoned, always excellent place to come for a long, boozy lunch fit for 1994. When choosing restaurants, our editors consider both high end and affordable eateries that offer an authentic and insider experience of a destination. Every restaurant on this list has been selected independently by our editors and written by a London-based Condé Nast Traveller journalist who has eaten at that restaurant.
For the food, we started with a crab bisque amuse-bouche to whet the whistle. However, these negative thoughts are washed away as I cross the threshold of the barely opened AngloThai in Marylebone and am embraced by the literal and figurative warmth of the space. Waiters buzz about in natty lilac or chocolate-brown jackets as I sip Gina’s martini, a tiny but lethal version made with olive-oil vodka and named after the restaurant’s muse and namesake, Taiano’s late mother Gina. Gina represents their first swing at nurturing a project all of their own in the locale they call home, sitting snug among the estate agents and corner shops of a nondescript high street at the end of the Overground. Wife and husband duo Ravneet Gill and Mattie Taiano have proven their chops on the capital’s food scene; Gill oversaw the sweet offering at the likes of St. John, Zuma and Black Axe Mangal, while Taiano has cooked for The Camberwell Arms, Franks and Som Saa.
You can still order everything with mountains of hummus, albeit an extremely rich kind that speaks to a sense of tradition that remains at the heart of Mangal II. Sleek Turkish fare that remains steeped in tradition. They say ‘Malaysian heat plus juicy wines’, we say ‘the finest sambal in town’. Make a beeline for anything fish-based, such as charcoal-grilled sardines served with pomelo and fried shallot salad. The menu is not online, and changes regularly, but you can always rely on there being a couple of great pizzas and a couple of perfect pastas. What we do have though is thick and freshly hand-pulled noodles at Lanzhou Lamian, a joyfully cramped eatery that closes at 4.30am on weekends, staffed by chefs effortlessly stretching famously chewy, thick noodles.
Mount St. Restaurant
Some cult dishes haven’t made the jump. The new location sits under a railway arch and is a fresh, pared-back space with a stainless steel bar. London’s most-loved Thai restaurant, now relocated to Shoreditch.
This is the first bricks-and-mortar restaurant from Max Rocha – a canalside spot in Hackney. The open kitchen anchors the space, where head chef Jessica Filbey (formerly of the River Café) and her team move with calm precision, pulling pizza dough, slicing porchetta, and plating pasta under the watchful eyes of diners lucky enough to nab a front-row bar stool. Unlike many supremely successful chefs, Nieves Barragán Mohacho took a few years to open a second restaurant after launching her first, the knockout Sabor in Mayfair. But the menu stays joyously true to Bosi’s heritage, and the team staunchly avoids refining dishes beyond anything a Lyonnaise grandmother would recognise (Josephine is also named after Bosi’s own grand-mère).
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The latest Michelin-starred Spanish spot from Nieves Barragán Mohacho, the visionary chef behind Mayfair’s Sabor. One of London’s oldest restaurants, this hospitality monolith dates back to 1828 but recently re-opened after a fallow period. Instead, you will be awed by fat egg noodles glistening in rich, piquant curry laksa adorned with crispy onion and deep-fried seabass wallowing in rich chili sauce. Normah’s – named after its chef owner, whose nephew, Aizad, runs the front of house – fits that description perfectly. If anyone ever says that English food is bad, simply rub their face in a St John menu.
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Most importantly though, everything on the menu is delicious. A casual spot specialising in cuisine from the Xian region in North-Central China. Lamb short rib is a revelation, as it their take on nam tok, where wobbly smoked pork belly is offset by nutty roasted rice powder.
The Dubonnet Negroni comes with a succinct history lesson, and is a touch more syrupy than its aperitif original, but it was the Naturally Fresh that we’d ask for again, even if it comes off the menu. There’s no elegant way to eat the grilled prawn ‘soup’ (a peppery seafood broth) or the latke-inspired cassava fritters, but that’s what the stack of napkins is for. Despite the six previous courses, it’s gone in seconds – the perfect end to a dinner verging on a theatrical experience.
Paradise Cove opened following a crowdfunding campaign after his original restaurant Sugarcane was forced to close. This deceptively spartan restaurant just off Broadway Market serves up springy hunks of Guinness bread as well as deliciously dense Guinness cake, and even ice cream suffused with that stouty goodness. At Café Cecilia, you can squeeze in more than the requisite amount of the black stuff before lunchtime and operate heavy machinery afterwards. Expect everything from Balkan barbecue to fried doughnut-esque mekici served with jam and cheese, sausage baps, stuffed cabbage sarma, loads of burek and baklava buns. With its distressed flooring, bright white tablecloths and net half-curtains, the trattoria has gone down in legend for its mountainous beef shin ragu pappardelle – though every corner of this menu jostles with greatness. But there’s something uniquely impressive about a restaurant that goes the distance simply by doing their chosen cuisine very well indeed.
This is a spot that’s deservedly at the vanguard of bringing a whole new experience of West African food to London. The five-course menu, developed over many months (Akoko is the Yoruba word for ‘time’), is a reimagining of the traditional dishes found in Nigeria, Senegal and Ghana in particular. On the menu there might creamy ‘nduja on toast, burrata served with peach and basil or breakfast radishes with aioli. When we talk of young chefs making waves on London’s restaurant scene, Abby Lee’s name won’t be far from in-the-know foodie’s lips. It’s difficult to separate stand-out dishes among the Land, Sea and Earth sections of the menu, but the charred octopus tentacle and neck of pata negra pork are both contenders.
It’s industrial but warm – steel panelling, marble tabletops, and polished concrete floors are softened by canary-yellow booths and shelves stacked with pots and saucepans. At 9pm, a queue still snakes outside while inside, the space hums with life. Settle in with a 3-sip serve (a tiny cocktail made to cleanse the palate), like celeariac with rum or pear and vodka, and argue cheerfully with your dining companions about your must-orders.
We pile loha karahi chicken curry on mountains of rice and strips of leftover naan bread, adjusting our belts for more room as we mop up the richly spiced tomato sauce. The lightest spice is in the dunghar paneer tikka, which is enveloped in an uber-indulgent, nutty kaju masala sauce – the pools of vivid orange oil are best soaked up with a classic butter naan. We soon realise that everything has a kick, but it’s pleasant rather than overwhelming.
One of Belly’s ‘viral dishes’ is cured scallops in big, shallow shells, swimming in coconut cream with basil oil and little pickled chillies. An intimate Filipino restaurant in Kentish Town. Simply visit the walk-ins-only bar, where you’ll be able to get most of the snacky bits on the menu – including the legendary rarebit – and a glass of St John rouge. Our most recent visit saw us feast on cocks comb schnitzel and snout cassoulet, dishes that sound like you might have let Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre into the kitchen. Head chef Elliot Hashtroudi learned his way around a carcass at St John and comes across like Keith Floyd in a trucker cap.
This is the kind of restaurant you want to lose an afternoon in. An intensely violet-y Jordanian Saint George Petite Syrah accompanies us through plates of salty-spongy Nabulsi cheese; Sheikh El Mahshi baby aubergines with pickled herbs and walnuts; Rye Bay skate fish kofta and a slow-cooked lamb spiced with mahlab and mastic. Named after a flowering Palestinian thistle, it is a four-level earthy, imaginative space in a quiet symphony of natural greens, lemony yellows and poured creams. Now, behind the sage-green facade of a Notting Hill townhouse, he has unveiled petite Akub with his friend Rasha Khouri. Franco-Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan has done more than anyone to raise the status (and stake the rights) of Palestine’s gastronomic identity.
- London’s dining scene can be split into two categories – mouth-watering food or eye-wateringly beautiful decor.
- Elegant enough to parade the catwalk at London Fashion Week, it’s served with a bowl of tiny pink pickled onions, a deft, couture-worthy touch.
- At 9pm, a queue still snakes outside while inside, the space hums with life.
- Camille is a place where carnivores will be much happier than vegetarians – it is French, after all – but it’s a triumph of imagination, talent, and guts (which you can expect to see on the menu regularly).
- Expect everything from Balkan barbecue to fried doughnut-esque mekici served with jam and cheese, sausage baps, stuffed cabbage sarma, loads of burek and baklava buns.
Noble Rot’s Dan Keeling gave a helping hand with the wine list here, with a changing monthly focus on small producers. The dining room is nothing fancy, but the omnipresent queue outside says it all – this is some of the most delicious, authentic Malaysian food in the city. Chicken offal skewers (a Filipino street food staple), come with a sweet barbecue glaze and cucumber vinegar dip. Reassuringly frequented by Filipino diners, this Kingly Court eatery combines Filipino street food concepts with British cooking techniques. Their Maginhawa Group (behind some of London’s popular Filipino and Southeast Asian restaurants, including Mamasons Dirty Ice Cream) has grown exponentially in just six years. And while there are main courses from the grill (black Hampshire pork chops with capers and rosemary borlotti beans; whole Brixham mackerel with Castelluccio lentils and salsa rossa) it’s the beef-shin ragu with pappardelle that keeps the locals coming back, and back again.
Amy’s parents’ recipe for wind-dried pork sausage is still going strong, and diners can enjoy it in the form of a sausage roll served with an exceedingly shrimpy WO sauce. “There’s a different show every night,” Traveller contributor Rick Jordan said when he reviewed this spot (read the full review in our edit of Soho’s best restaurants). 10 years after opening, it remains one of the best Thai restaurants in London.
Merging high-end food, glamorous interiors and a hard-to-impress postcode, with authentic familial influences and traditional Indian cuisine, BiBi was well worth the wait. I’d advise you to leave some room for dessert, too; the cacao ganache will be haunting my dreams for some time to come. This was followed by the casino not on gamstop freshest Irish oysters drizzled in a slap-in-the-face kind of hot fermented chilli sauce. The bisque is made up of the remnants of crab from one of the a la carte dishes – bonus points for waste reduction.
Despite Mambow’s size, Abby Lee and her modern Malaysian restaurant will be stamping a big footprint on the London dining scene. Next up, small plates that ranged from my favourite lor bak – a spicy crispy pork bite that I’ve been dreaming about since – to a nutty grilled banana blossom and prawn toast that was unlike any I’ve tasted before. First-timers should order the classic, with juicy pork and peanuts packed inside a fluffy pocket, or the indulgent fried chicken. It’s been years since London’s favourite Taiwanese bun house launched in Soho, and queues still snake outside the tiny space on Lexington Street.
If you’re not au fait with the delights of a tantuni, now’s your time to get involved. Arguably the most important British restaurant of the past decade. House wine is also very decent value at £27 for a 500ml carafe. There is also beef and pork tortellini in a delicate chicken brodo, tonno tonnato, meatballs zuppetta and aglio e olio spaghetti. The ackee and saltfish spring rolls; the confit pork belly; the wiri wiri lamb rump which comes with a light and smoky baba ganoush, sharp pickled onions, mint oil and tamarind jus. For meat eaters, it’s worth adding the poached chicken strips.
If you’ve no room for pudding, the hefty cocktail list does a good job of extending sittings. Don’t sleep on the Channa bhatura, a melty chickpea dish served with raita. Tender chunks of Indian cheese smothered in the rich masala sauce is best eaten scooped onto piles of sweet coconut pilau rice. The lobster pie comes with a googly-eyed crustacean peering out, the caviar is served with blinis and bubble and squeak, while the mid-18th century mock-turtle soup has been modernised in the form of a croquette. There’s so much to look at within the lowlit space you could easily sit and just take it all in. But you’d be advised to order a bottle of sherry – the fino en rama, perhaps – which goes well with everything on the menu.
A refined yet wholesome family affair, the contemporary Korean eatery arrived on Mare Street, Hackney, in June, care of chef Hyun Sang Ko, and his two sons, both named Jae Ko. Contrary to popular belief, sometimes the best things in life aren’t free; they’re hard-earned – a theory which would explain the success of Miga, more than 22 years in the making. There are two wine pairings to choose from – one around the £90 mark and one costing £125, as well as a clever non-alcoholic pairing for £49. 14 courses change daily, and are cooked in front of diners – they might include Newlyn crab on roasted chicken skin, Orkney scallops with wild chamomile or Devon Red Ruby beef with fermented artichokes and pickled tapioca, as at the time of writing. Rogan closed Aulis in early 2023, as it entered its sixth year, and reopened with a new look and a fresh menu. Simon Rogan’s little restaurant in Soho could easily be described as an immersive West End theatre experience.
Found within the Radha-Krishna Temple on Soho Street, Govinda’s restaurant serves up what their website describes as karma-free food. Greek food is only the jumping-off point for a menu that begins on the Ionian islands before skipping off to the Levant by way of the Balkans, with a South American layover. Mostly though, Chan’s menu defies geographical borders, instead pushing culinary boundaries via dishes that simultaneously make you think and make you feel held. Of course, there is jerk chicken on the menu, but it’ll be the lamb that creates the most extreme food envy. There’s a slightly rowdy playlist that will have you questioning whether you’re in a club or restaurant.
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It’s unfussy and honest cooking, served in a setting that feels more country house than East End. Rochelle Canteen has come a long way in those two decades – from a low-key spot with “a big sharing table and a box for a till”, these days the team has been serving a diminutive, hyper-seasonal menu since before it was zeitgeisty to do so. No wonder it’s been drawing in Michelin chefs and curious tourists alike since it opened in November 2023. We’ve seen a flurry of London boozers reopening recently that have kept all the atmosphere intact but woven in excellent restaurants, such as Ben Tish at The Barley Mow, Hauser & Wirth’s The Audley and, best of all, Henry Harris’s Racine 2.0 at Clerkenwell’s The Three Compasses. This always-busy, always-buzzing restaurant, just around the corner from Spitalfields Market, is the kind of spot you’ve been loyal to since opening in 2016, or that you come to late-to-the-game, disbelieving that you’ve never booked a table here before. There’s a cosy atmosphere, creaky floors, and the nation’s most classic bar snacks (think pork scratchings) served alongside beers like Allsopp’s and Portobello Pilsner.