Best Places for Friends in London

Notting Hill's Michelin-starred neighbourhood brasserie, wood-fired grill, retained star 2026

Claude and Lucy Bosi's Parisian-brasserie second site, the Marylebone room that opened where Daylesford Blandford Street used to sit

The Holland Park-edge neighbourhood restaurant the W11 regulars send each other to

Ravinder Bhogal's no-borders Marylebone room, Indian, East African and South-East Asian cooking, ten years in

Tom Conran's 1995 gastropub, Guinness, oysters and the upstairs dining room that started the Notting Hill genre

A 1708 Chelsea pub on a quiet Lawrence Street corner, ranked among the UK's Top 50 Gastropubs

The Gladwin Brothers' Old Church Street pub, Sussex-vineyard wines and a tight British seasonal menu

Mr Lyan's South Bank flagship, the first 3-PIN bar in the Pinnacle Guide, Thames at the window

World's 50 Best No.5, two rooms that split the modern London bar in half

Remy Savage's Bauhaus-precise cocktail room on Kingsland Road

Dean Street's no-music, no-mobiles holdout, the Soho the audience first read about in the 80s

The Cut's no-bookings gastropub, what Waterloo eats before the National Theatre

Great Titchfield Street's all-day brasserie, the Fitzrovia office and the Sunday brunch in one room

Greek Street's 1871 patisserie, London's oldest French pastry shop, still hand-laminated upstairs

Frith Street's 1959 jazz room, the canonical London jazz club, two sets a night, low ceiling, red lamps

Wentworth Street's unmarked basement, the City fringe speakeasy that does not need a velvet rope

Hoxton Square's basement, the small, no-fuss cocktail room the trade has booked since 2010

Boundary Street's Bombay Irani café, the bacon naan roll Londoners queue for at breakfast

Seymour Place's Basque pintxos counter, the txuleta and the txakoli on the same Marylebone bar

Bermondsey Street's standing-room Spanish bar since 2011, José Pizarro's pintxos counter