The Quality Chop House

Sam and Sam Clark's Exmouth Market Moorish room — the 1997 landmark that taught London Spanish-and-North-African cooking.

Fergus Henderson's nose-to-tail manifesto since 1994 — the white-walled Smithfield room that wrote modern British cooking.

Bloomsbury French — the silver duck press, the classical menu and one of the very last rooms in Europe still pressing canard à la presse.

Britain's oldest Indian restaurant — open on Regent Street since 1926 and now in its hundredth year.

Adam Byatt's two-Michelin-star Clapham Old Town room — the most considered cooking south-west of the river.

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