Plekken in London

Chet Sharma's one-Michelin-star Mayfair Indian — the JKS room that reframed regional Indian cooking in 2021.

James Lowe's one-Michelin-star Shoreditch room — the founding text of the East London modern-British school.

Pierre Gagnaire's three-Michelin-star Mayfair drawing room — the most theatrical fine-dining address in W1.

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

The 1893 hotel bar that wrote the cocktail manual the rest of London still reads

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

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

Tomos Parry's Basque-grill flagship — whole turbot over wood, the room that reset East London cooking

Clare Smyth's three-Michelin-star Notting Hill flagship — modern British cooking at the peninsula's ceiling

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

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

British ingredients, Mexican grammar — Santiago Lastra's Marylebone manifesto

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

Tomos Parry's Michelin-starred Beak Street wood-fired room — the Basque grill that Brat became Soho-confident in

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

London's longest-standing Michelin-starred room — Charlotte Street since 1991, in its 35th anniversary year

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

Rainer Becker's original 2004 robatayaki — the Charlotte Street counter Roka grew from, with Shochu Lounge in the basement

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

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

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

Brett Graham's Notting Hill three-star, regained and ranked London's best for 2026

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

Rafael Cagali's two-Michelin-star tasting room inside the Town Hall Hotel — Bethnal Green's destination kitchen.

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

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

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

Erchen Chang and the Chung siblings' original Lexington Street bun counter — Bib Gourmand Taiwanese, queue-only on the corner

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

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

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

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

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

Coal Drops Yard sit-down taqueria — al pastor on a vertical spit, the rebranded Casa Pastor

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

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

The British steakhouse that taught London to take beef seriously

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

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 original Ali Dirik ocakbaşı on Arcola Street since 1990 — BYOB, walk-in only, untouched

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.

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.

Michael and Charlotte Sager-Wildeve's Hackney Road wine bar — the East London natural-wine reference since 2013

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

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

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