Plekken in London

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

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

Jacob Kenedy's region-by-region Italian counter on Archer Street — every dish labelled by province, eighteen years deep

London's oldest market — 4.5 acres of producer-fronted stalls under the Southwark railway arches

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

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

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

Nose-to-tail Italian on Curtain Road — house-cured salumi and wood-fired offal in Shoreditch

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

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

Jeremy Lee's neon-signed Dean Street dining room — the Soho institution turning one hundred in 2026

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

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

Hauser & Wirth's reimagined Mayfair pub — Sunday roast under a Phyllida Barlow ceiling

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

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

Piccadilly's grand café — the Viennese-Parisian brasserie that runs from breakfast to supper

Karam Sethi's Marylebone coastal-Indian — one Michelin star held since 2012

P. Franco's successor at 107 Lower Clapton — a 25-cover wine shop with a hot plate at the back, chef residencies kept

Milroy's reborn under the No. 3 door — Greek Street's whisky merchant and bookcase-speakeasy bar since 1964, rebranded 2024

A 40-cover kitchen-and-natural-wine warehouse under the Bermondsey arches — chef Steve Williams

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

Sam and Eddie Hart's original walk-in tapas counter, relocated — the Spanish bar London learned the format from

Shoreditch's whisky reference — 250 bottles, no cocktails, a single felled-oak table

Ed Wilson's Columbia Road natural-wine bistro — the East End's most consistent neighbourhood kitchen

Adriana Cavita's Marylebone Mexican — generous, regional, unfussy

Henrietta Street's modern British room from the Kitty Fisher's team — clubby, candle-lit, opera-night reliable.

The organic Cotswold farm's Westbourne Grove farmshop and café — the audience's Saturday morning anchor

Carole Bamford's Pimlico Road farmshop and café — the smaller, calmer SW1 sister to the Notting Hill flagship.

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

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

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

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

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

Langton Street's Tuscan trattoria since 1975 — Chelsea's Italian family room, fourth decade

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Northern Thai with chilli, herbs and proper aggression — Spitalfields

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

Endo Kazutoshi's Notting Hill casual — sushi without the omakase ceremony

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

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

Mayfair mews chophouse since 1952 — beef Wellington and steak-and-kidney pie

Cubitt House's Pimlico Road gastropub-with-rooms — wood-fired pizzas, four upstairs bedrooms, the SW1 corner pub the audience trusts.

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

Farringdon Road's Grade II 1869 working-class chop house — Shaun Searley's revival of the listed-bench institution.

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

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

Lowndes Street's Italian institution since 1995 — the Belgravia trattoria that taught London regional pasta