BEST English meaning
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.
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.
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.
The Ritz Restaurant
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.
Brunswick House
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.
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.
While Fisher’s can seem too much like a private member’s club at times, the wood-panelled Brat is more open, with all the atmosphere of an upstairs Spanish asador at 11pm. Tomos Parry is famously the chef behind Kitty Fisher’s, the celebrity hangout in Mayfair. Walking up the stairs, past rows of wine bottles, to be greeted by the soft, camp-fire wumpf of wood smoke, bright chatter across long tables… you’d be forgiven for wondering why you’d never stumbled across this place before. Brilliant value, and utterly deserving of a spot on our edit. But most Londoners in the know will make an exception for the buttery roti this spot is famous for – perfect for scooping up mouthfuls of curry (lamb, fish, chicken) or daal. The original Roti King is in a basement joint in Euston, a part of town most of us try to avoid at supper time unless we’re forced into catching a post-work train.
For main, we enjoyed pollock fish balls in a sour orange curry sauce and our first foray away from seafood for the evening, a glistening and succulent pork chop. The menu might be simple (two pizzas – one meat, one vegetarian – four pastas, and a short casinos not on gamestop list of wines and beers), but the dishes pack a punch. The menu is vast and made to share; perfectly pitched seafood dishes, a whole section just for lamb (we especially liked the lamb cutlets Milanesa) and pork (sucking pig ears, Iberian pork ribs, pig trotters). These days, thanks to the recent glut of whipsmart Thai restaurants, London diners are on first-name terms with pad peds and nahm prik paos, squeezing out nam jim jaew sauce like it’s ketchup.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
- 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.
- 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 trendy Spanish fish bar in a one-time chippy.
The Ritz Restaurant
Tender langoustine is paired with an intriguing smoked chilli and sea buckthorn which guests pile into corn tacos themselves, and seared lamb is chopped and served with a subtle guajillo mayonnaise. Things are split into a couple of tasting menus, but it doesn’t feel stiff and lots of the courses are designed to be pieced together at the table. Since then Lastra spent time foraging for the best ingredients, from the woodlands of Kent to the Scottish coastline. We first heard rumours that Santiago Lastra, the dashing chef who was handpicked by René Redzepi to lead the sell-out Noma pop-up in Tulum, was coming to London in 2018. This is a beautiful place to eat serving food that will make you smile. The short cocktail list leans into eastern spices, or, if you’re not drinking, order one of the cleverly curated selection of teas.
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.
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.
The soy braised short ribs and slices of pan-fried pork belly delivered in a glowing apple-and-mustard sauce are also must-orders. Mission accomplished – this lowkey, unassuming spot instantly became London’s most acclaimed new restaurant. Their turmeric spiced green plantain chips are hand cut and dehydrated in-house, and come served with jerk mayo.
Head chef Guirong Wei has five London restaurants, the latest is The Wei in Fulham. From freshly starred fine-dining rooms and hidden gems to neighbourhood favourites, these are the 50 restaurants we think you need to be eating out at in London right now. We’re constantly adding new restaurants to the list and taking away ones that no longer make the grade. Between 2010 and 2021, Noma was named the world’s best restaurant a record five times by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants organization. The khatti meethi cod was also perfectly flakey with a tamarind sweet-and-sour style sauce, and the goat chapli kebab is another exciting dish to add to your list. Chet Sharma’s career has taken him through some of Europe’s biggest restaurants – from Lancashire’s Moor Hall and Cumbria‘s L’Enclume to Mugaritz in Spain’s Basque Country – but at BiBi, his training and experience converge with passion and family influence.
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.
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.
In-between, you can knock back a series of perfectly formed small plates, from the devilish sage-and-anchovy fritti to juicy onglet swimming in intense, almost spicy chicken sauce. An immaculate all-day Hackney restaurant rooted in chef Max Rocha’s Dublin childhood and our London Restaurant of the Year 2023. The new project from chef Spasia Dinkovski of acclaimed British-Balkan bakehouse Mystic Burek. A glam, gallery-style space in South Kensington for posh seasonal food. Having wooed east Londoners for decades with ultra-casual kebabs, and hangover-friendly hummus and chips, the venue did an about-turn as an upmarket spot offering organic wines and fluffy sourdough pide.
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.
St John recently celebrated 30 glorious years in the game and most great modern restaurants in London (if not the world) owe St John a serious and meaty debt. Chance your arm on a drop-in perch, where the full food menu is available. 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). Every spot on this list has been independently reviewed by Leonie and our critics, and we regularly revisit favourites to make sure the list stays current. This is a snapshot of where London dining is at right now; a city of global flavours, hilariously varying budgets and some of the best food you’ve ever eaten. If an engineer capable of besting Eiffel did not step forward soon, Burnham knew, there simply would not be enough time left to build anything worthy of the fair.
There’s still no dessert, and BYOB is still possible, despite rumours to the contrary; even better, the menu is still very reasonably priced, with nothing over £19. The old yellow restaurant sign now hangs on an inside wall. Word got out as food hounds made the pilgrimage there; the simple wooden tables were booked out months in advance. In 1999, Thai food often meant predictable green curries. I’d come here again for date night, or on a weekend with a group of friends to order endless plates of pasta and indulge in cocktails and gossip. I’m a tiramisu aficionado, but I’d actually recommend the lemon meringue here – the hint of fennel added a new depth of flavour and it was easy to stomach, even after the many courses on the menu.
Will you be crammed into this small space to an almost uncomfortable level? Order the deep fried feta with quince relish, and burnt leeks with escabeche sauce and walnut dukkah. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the food must have suffered in the face of such dedication to the sesh. Both dishes are less than a tenner. But there are also plenty of dishes unique to here. Which actually makes it feel more like a backstreet San Sebastian pintxos bar than any fancy refit ever could.
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.
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.
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.
Servers move around the tables as though performing a well-rehearsed dance, skilfully placing napkins over laps at one table before pouring wine – explaining every detail without spilling a drop – at our own. In a restaurant this grand, you might expect service to be stilted and stuffy – it couldn’t be further from the case. It takes a good few moments after stepping inside the grand dining room for your eyes to adjust and take in the spectacular surroundings. With a two-course lunch available for £23 and a service charge of just 10 per cent, it’s all attractively affordable. The current star of the show, however, is the potato sourdough with house gravy, the deep, rich aroma of which seems to rise up from the dish and do an impression of the famous Bisto advert.
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.