Places in London

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

Notting Hill's Michelin-starred neighbourhood brasserie, wood-fired grill, retained star 2026

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Great Titchfield Street's all-day brasserie, the Fitzrovia office and the Sunday brunch in one room

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.

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

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