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Then head to this grand Georgian townhouse in the shadow of the Natural History Museum for super seasonal, furiously fresh Med-inspired plates from former Toklas head chef Yohei Furuhashi. Chef-owner Abby Lee’s intensely flavoured dishes are served up in a welcoming, casual style and are so beautiful it’s impossible not to swoon over them. A sensational Greek-ish spot from David Carter, the brawny chef and restaurateur behind the live-fire restaurant forerunner Smokestak and show-stopping Manteca.
Collectively, the couple have spent over 15 years working in London’s most acclaimed kitchens, but Ravneet is probably best known for her time judging on Junior Bake Off. In the depths of Queensway Market, behind a little doorway adorned with a laminated banner declaring the restaurant’s name, you’ll find a small room dotted with nondescript-looking tables and chairs. Extraordinary home-spun Malaysian restaurant in an unassuming setting which is currently under threat.
Claiming to be the the world’s first Nigerian tapas restaurant, Chuku’s is a Tottenham landmark. A London institution and Time Out’s best restaurant in Soho. The air is thick with chatter, the shelves full of wine. Walking into Levan on a Saturday night is like arriving at a house party.
Where Taiano runs the mains, Gill has put together a pleasingly retro dessert menu that reminds me of my school days, albeit far more refined; riffs on rice pudding and chocolate sponge cake are joined by peach cobbler with clotted cream, one of the highlights of our meal. We’re encouraged to try the Tasting Menu to experience the breadth of the menu, ranging from a nigiri selection of bluefin tuna, yellowtail and trout to an aged monkfish paired with smoked eel, ginger sauce and a potato rosti. There’s a bustling open kitchen plan that overlooks the dining space, allowing guests to see first-hand the detailed precision with which the team works.
A blend of spinach and beetroot, with yoghurt and mustard seeds, this superfood dish is as pink as the decor and packed with flavour. The vibrant beet cheera pachadi, usually reserved for weddings in Kerala, is worth trying. Flavours come through in dishes such as the banana boli – deep-fried plantains with black sesame – and rasa kayi, a spicy vegetable curry from Karnataka. This neighbourhood favourite is known for its all-vegetarian, south Indian menu. Come for locally sourced, seasonal food from independent producers and suppliers and one of the most seductive vibes in all of London. In 2024, Joké became the UK’s first Black female chef to win a Michelin star.
Our editors‘ top picks of the best restaurants in London
It’s all accompanied by claypot rice, carefully just-crisped at the bottom, and gorgeous glasses of wine, well-recommended by Michael Mackenzie, casino not on gamstop including a Sauvignon from Burgundy that proves as delicious as it sounds unlikely. A quartet of wontons similarly steep, more literally, in a chilli vinegar dressing, my dining partner terms “celeriac-y” – we are joyfully baffled at its depth of flavour. The pale pink walls of the restaurant’s latest incarnation are adorned with photos of the family, who first opened Poon’s of Covent Garden, around the corner, in 1973.
Now with offshoots in Soho and Mayfair, the original site – on lovely little Lamb’s Conduit Street – remains the best. At the helm is Hiếu Bùi, the godfather of London’s Vietnamese food movement (he also runs the Kêu chain and another branch of Cây Tre in Soho). A family-run ‘modern Korean’ and Time Out’s best London restaurant of 2025.
The snacks list is a joy, with surprises such as a gilda (mackerel, cucumber and shiso leaf), caviar and beef-fat crisps (the ultimate high-low?) and tongue-sized fried sage leaves crusted in honey from Parle’s bees. Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver all but pioneered modern nose-to-tail at St John when it opened in a former bacon smoke-house in Smithfield in 1994. We’re always looking for stand-out dishes, a great location and warm service – as well as serious sustainability credentials. Some are long-standing favourites that seem to just get better with age; others are hot openings that have impressed us enough to quickly earn their spot in this article. The result is as warm as the olive branch and lemon-print adorned restaurant, which features keys stuck into the walls to symbolise lost Palestinian homes. The retro décor is ever changing because it’s also a working antiques traders – if you ever wanted to step into the Donna Tartt novel The Goldfinch, this is as near as you can within the M25.
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.
- It’s the passion project of Oisin Rogers, who has been steering London and Dublin pubs for three decades – most notably and most recently at The Guinea Grill – and Charlie Carroll, founder of Flat Iron steakhouses.
- 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.
- They just celebrated their 10th anniversary, and food is fancy without ever being smug or exclusionary.
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.
Sleek, creative cuisine in a shabby-chic listed building that doubles as an antiques shop. A joint venture between the always-excellent 40 Maltby Street and chef-owner Anna Tobias, this is impeccable European cuisine with a particular emphasis on French and Italian cult classics. Homely and simple comfort food bistro in Bloomsbury. This is powerful and intense food. A great Green Lanes gastropub from the Papi chappies, aka chef Matthew Scott and sommelier Charlie Carr. Launched a decade ago in 2016 and run by brother-and-sister duo Emeka and Ifeyinwa, expect London-inspired twists on classic Nigerian dishes, from jollof quinoa to plantain waffles.
Interiors play with pastels and pops of candy colour pattern, Order the Prawn toast Scotch egg with banana ketchup and pickled cucumbers, the cheery fish pie with golden saffron, the hand-dived scallops with congee – really, it’s all good. “We call ourselves a no borders kitchen because we feel that food is such a powerful language – a language that everyone understands,” Bhogal told us. Owners Melanie Arnold and Margot Henderson, business partners for more than 25 years, have run this rather well-hidden spot in Shoreditch since 2004. “I wanted to celebrate English food, British food,” Rogers tells me, passing our table.
The Barbary
Spectacular food aside, the team and servers are warm, passionate and engaged, making for an evening well spent. Clean lines, natural materials and a subdued colour palette define this elegant space, and lest we forget the endless views of Big Ben and Parliament. For pudding, there’s a rogue Prego steak sandwich option (a post-seafood dessert alternative borrowed from Portugal), as well as decadent portions of chocolate mousse and choux à la creme, plopped into pretty art deco dessert bowls. Be sure to order the curiously named ‘Lilibet’s triptych,’ which translates to fish served three ways – raw, grilled and then lastly as a punchy soup. Anchovies are served on eclairs, oysters come dressed, fire roasted and fried, while an ‘unsung heroes’ section offers up sea urchin, garfish and sea cucumber. Just to witness it all with average food would be enough, but nay, the actual feast is equally as joyful.
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.
Its latest executive chef, Ayo Adeyemi, is only adding to that buzz. If world domination is their plan then we won’t stand in their way, especially when their latest venture, Donia, is serving some of the best food in London right now. It’s hard to get a table at Islington’s favourite neighbourhood restaurant. The new space still only has 20 indoor covers, making securing a table here a little like a game of musical chairs.
Bakare offers a serious set menu that includes a fiery hot pepper soup and peaks with a decadent, crispy skinned guinea fowl yassa. In our original review, we heralded the perfect collision of sweet, salty and peppery heat, and dubbed it London’s best restaurant of 2022. They just celebrated their 10th anniversary, and food is fancy without ever being smug or exclusionary.
The dining room now seats 12 – four more than the original eight spaces – and there’s a bar to hang out in for an aperitif or digestif, to properly make an evening of it. As with any good Mexican, there’s a carefully curated list of mezcal which also feature at the end of the wine flight. The house wine has been created specifically for KOL by Slovakian winemakers Slobodné Vinárstvo. Sunshiny chef Ravinder Bhogal cut her teeth at Michelin-starred Trishna before opening up her own place – a ‘no borders’ kitchen that draws on Indian, African and European cooking to curate its menu.
Mount St. Restaurant
It’s dimly lit and subsequently moody, with meticulously placed light fixtures spotlighting golden fixtures. We’re guided to our table downstairs, admiring interiors inspired by co-founders Jyotin, Karam and Sunaina Sethi’s maternal Grandfather’s summer house in Dalhousie (formerly part of Punjab). It’s an exciting new launch that is sure to rival its sister, Gymkhana, which has become the A-list go-to for Indian banqueting. However, rather than mourn balmy evenings of al-fresco dining, we’re headed to JKS Restaurants’ latest jewellery box of an establishment tucked just off Piccadilly on Heddon Street.
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.
The menu is nothing but small plates; sassy smoked eel omelettes, chunky chips done ‘bravas’ style, pickled anchovies, rosy red prawns cooked on the plancha, and cod cheeks with peppers. Of course, Hackney is now overrun with small plates wine bars, so Charlie’s done the only thing he could; bring his uproarious brand of hospitality to Soho. It comes from Charlie Mellor, who, a decade ago, opened Hackney Road’s Laughing Heart, a small plates wine bar named after a rousing Charles Bukowski poem, with a 2am licence and a deeply devious energy.
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.
It’s easy to see why Max Rocha is quickly becoming known as one of the top chefs in the city. Stick to two or three mains – the handmade pasta with rabbit ragù is perfectly al dente, while the stuffed tomato comes with a side of British graceburn, a creamier version of feta. There’s just enough space for chocolate mousse – dolloped onto the plate, slicked with olive oil, and sprinkled with sea salt.
The space used to be a Finsbury Park fish-and-chip shop and still looks exactly like a Finsbury Park fish-and-chip shop, with tiled floors, old-school pine counters, and original signage intact. A trendy Spanish fish bar in a one-time chippy. If it’s available, do order it. Pasta, wine, and a waiter who might just get up in the middle of service and bash out a little light jazz on the piano – what more could you want? Plus there are at least ten salads on the menu each day – think mango, celery and walnut or fried, marinated courgette and aubergine.
For the top restaurants elsewhere in the UK, start with the UK’s Top New Restaurant Awards 2026. The result is this edit of the very best restaurants in London. Food, after all, is personal and naming the holy grail, best-of-the-best restaurants that are worth planning a whole trip around, is a big ask. But with its classic and modern European menu boasting the likes of grilled lamb leg and anchovy, and aubergine, borlotti and wild garlic labneh, it’s the epitome of laidback excellence. And now you mention it, the restaurant does look like a particularly upmarket garden centre café, albeit one run by London foodie royalty, Melanie Arnold and Margot Henderson. Expect anything from confit duck with lentils, cabbage and mustard, to rolled pork belly with saffron roast potatoes and crispy sage, or morel and goat’s curd tart with wild garlic sauce.