Will Best Wikipedia
The sprawling building feels like a luxury hotel, and is a multi-space affair, featuring all-day cafe Romano’s, and two cocktail bars (Simpson’s Bar upstairs and Nellie’s in the basement). Pizzettas and flatbreads made using fermented koji and silken tofu get their own section of the menu – and rightly so. But this new outpost in Spitalfields is not vegan, with all manner of dairy- and/or egg-based wonders across the menu. At the original outpost in Portobello, head chef Daniel Watkins’s live fire cooking and ferment laboratory established Holy Carrot as one of London’s great pioneers of vegan cuisine. Try also ‘Gina’s Pasta’, which is simply a damn good plate of spaghetti in a rich and comforting marinara sauce.
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.
And it’s ludicriously good value. Open as a wine bar on Friday evenings for the summer. There’s a Tesco with an ATM across the street if you forget. As of 2026, there’s a set four course menu for £50 and lunch lasts at least 2.5 hours. There are no bookings and walk-ins only at Agora, and as well as having a not-dissimilar menu it comes at a slightly friendlier price point.
Scotti’s Snack Bar
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.
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.
Mount St. Restaurant
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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.
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).
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.
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 whole menu also makes use of local produce, with many of the ingredients being sourced from a Public House-owned garden in Oxfordshire’s Bruen Farms. Waiters flit to and fro with enviable plates of crab cakes (I can testify, a must), leek tart and fried mushrooms, as we take a seat at a corner table next to a pair who are already gushing over their starters. But as we’re here for supper, we follow the maitre d’ up a narrow staircase, past a lively open kitchen, until we’re in a rabbit hole of a dining room.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Brunswick House
It’s all accompanied by claypot rice, carefully just-crisped at the bottom, and gorgeous glasses of wine, well-recommended by Michael Mackenzie, 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- The menu at Poon’s certainly serves as an invigorating example.
- House wine is also very decent value at £27 for a 500ml carafe.
- But there are also plenty of dishes unique to here.
- 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.
- The new space still only has 20 indoor covers, making securing a table here a little like a game of musical chairs.
- A grand dining room in a Grade II-listed former courthouse.
I started with a cocktail – the 2210 rum punch – which tasted like a holiday and instantly made me crave summertime. Fortunately, you could never describe him as ‘all talk and no substance’; the food speaks for itself, and Natty knows it. The young chef has a dedicated social media following (on Instagram, he refers to himself as ‘your gyal’s favourite chef’), and it seems like he’s hit the nail on the head. The menu at Poon’s certainly serves as an invigorating example.
A Malaysian flavour powerhouse and our 2024 restaurant of the year. Head chef Jamie Thorneycroft honed his flair for fire and ferments over at Lagom and his menu here is potent stuff, with flavours more than capable of making themselves heard over nightly vinyl-only DJs. Less a ‘listening bar’ and more of a ‘dancing restaurant’. 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. A casual but indulgent spot in East Dulwich with the ex-head chef of Gymkhana in the kitchen. Like most things on the menu here, it’s spicier than a Gaspar Noé movie, but that’s why you’re here, right?
I expected these dishes to be given the Michelin treatment – portion sizes reduced, plates prettied up, a foam here or a jús there. The menu celebrates aspects of his terroir – the seafood-heavy accents of the coasts and Gaza; the maftool and freekeh of the traditional, olive-grove-filled centre; and the dried yoghurts and salting and drying traditions of the desert nomads. In spite of its Michelin star, acquired within a year of opening, Oma somehow manages to bridge the gap between elevated, sophisticated dining and non gamstop casino a more relaxed, taverna-style restaurant. Located above Agora (the more laid-back ground-floor eatery), it’s the ultimate romantic spot, with flickering candlelight, a soft colour palette and cosy corners.
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.
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.
