Hawksmoor Spitalfields

Will Beckett and Huw Gott opened the original Hawksmoor on Commercial Street in 2006 with a single proposition: serve native-breed, longhorn-aged beef from a Yorkshire butcher and stop apologising. Two decades later there are seven London sites and overseas outposts, but the Spitalfields original remains the one with the best room — exposed brick, parquet, a bar that takes the sazerac as seriously as the porterhouse. The bone-in prime rib for two is the dish; the bone-marrow starter and the Sunday roast are the reasons Londoners keep coming back. A fifty-quid lunch deal that's been on the menu for a decade keeps the place honest.