Mekane in London

Eighteenth-century Lexington Street townhouse with a handwritten daily menu — the last romantic room in old Soho

London's first authentic Antep baklavacı since 1993 — Murat Üstünsürmeli's Grand Parade pastry house

A 15-cover Michelin-starred tasting room inside Blue Mountain School — cooking is the only headline

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

The Dirik family ocakbaşı since 1994 — the canonical Turkish address the audience takes London-Turks to

The wine-magazine bar — Mark Andrew and Daniel Keeling's Bloomsbury original since 2015

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

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

London's longest-standing Michelin-starred pub — Fulham backstreets, game and wild food

Keith McNally's Russell Street brasserie — the SoHo Manhattan original transposed to Covent Garden, twelve years in.

Frith Street since 1949 — the espresso bar Soho is built around

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

Green Lanes' top-edged Southeastern Anatolian ocakbaşı — kuzu pirzola the Anatolian standard

The Yavuz family's Green Lanes flagship since 1999 — the polished mainstream of London Turkish

The British steakhouse that taught London to take beef seriously

St Martin's Court's 1890s seafood institution — Theatreland's pre-curtain Dover sole

Ben Chapman's Brewer Street counter — Thai grill cooking over wood and clay, no reservations, the Bib Gourmand argument

Moxon Street's cheese reference since 1992 — Patricia Michelson's affineur, walk-in tasting room

Pistachio-green Soho deli since 1944 — pasta as Italian commute

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

The larger Greek Street sister — 2020 in the former Gay Hussar room, with a proper kitchen

Paddington Street modern Greek — sister to Athens' two-star Funky Gourmet and the most considered Greek cooking in W1.

The fresh-pasta queue London actually accepts — Shoreditch sister of the Borough original

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

London's oldest restaurant — Maiden Lane since 1798, four families across ten reigns, and the game-and-claret Britain that has not changed.

David Carter's wood-and-oak smokehouse — the brisket Sunday lunch the chapter actually returns to

Two-floor Old Compton Street cocktail room — aperitivo bar upstairs, three-hundred-whisky lounge below

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

The glass-roofed Manchester Square courtyard inside the Wallace Collection — Marylebone's quietest daytime room