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

UK's No.1 gastropub 2026 — the Soho Guinness pour and the dining room above it

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