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London is a gastronome’s city. The relentless wave of launches can leave one breathless, so we’ve gathered the best of them – as well as a few bedded-in gems – into this frequently updated checklist of the “wheres?” and “whys?” of London’s hot-ticket tables. The only question is: where to book first?
Speedboat
Itinerant chef/herb farmer Lukie Farrell’s southeast Asian takeover of the capital (he’s already done sinus-stripping southern Thai at Plaza Khao Gaeng, plus top-tier bánh mì at Viet Populaire and nocturnal Indonesian hawker grub at Bebek! Bebek!) continues apace with this: his high energy, Singha-sloshing, late-night take on a Bangkok café. It’s as effervescent as you’d expect. The flavours are massive – a salad of pickled mustard greens and Chinese sausage; stir-fried minced beef with holy basil; ash melon and eggplant curry – and the vibes immense. How much of the latter is down to the three-litre “beer towers” and mango and makrut lime leaf margaritas is up to you.
Cycene
Housed within Shoreditch’s Blue Mountain School, Cycene is a mish-mash of private home and stylised design-mag aesthetics, featuring hand-painted tiles by 6a Architects and oak panels fashioned at the founders’ own woodshop. Chef Theo Clench (previously of Fitzrovia’s Akoko and Portland) plates up seafood-heavy tasting menus of Pan-Asian/Australasian dishes like cavatelli, sea urchin and kinome or turbot, lettuce and sake. Bang on-trend? The broths, “elixirs” and drinking vinegars served with them.
Mount St Restaurant
Straight off the bat, Mount St Restaurant – a luxe British restaurant above Mayfair’s Audley Public House – could well be London’s comeliest dining room. Conceived by Artfarm (from the founders of the contemporary art behemoth Hauser & Wirth) and Parisian architecture studio Laplace, it’s as much a gallery as a restaurant, with original works by Freud, Auerbach, Matisse and Warhol on the walls, and a bespoke palladiana mosaic by Rashid Johnson on the floor. The menu’s hardly an oversight, either – loaded with nostalgic riffs on British classics like mock turtle croquettes, Pigeons in Pimlico, and an almost comically decadent lobster pie.
Cadet
Cadet is a beautiful, light-filled cave-à-manger (a Parisian-style hybrid wine shop/restaurant), launched by low-intervention importers Beattie & Roberts and charcutier George Jephson, with chef Jamie Smart heading up the kitchen. Late of St John, P Franco and the Haute-Loire’s fêted Auberge de Chassignolles, his menus channel bistronomic simplicity. Pair wines from vignerons like Alsace’s Anne Laure Laengel or Abruzzo’s Cantina Indigeno with plates of crab with fregola and marigold, fromage de tête tartine with chanterelles, or slabs of Jephson’s painterly pâté en croûte.
The Baring
Behold, the platonic ideal of a backstreet pub-restaurant. The Baring is a painterly gem: a compact strip of a bar and dining room, with an autumnal colour palette, cosy banquettes, bits of dried foliage and tea lights for when the gloaming descends. Manager Adam Symonds and chef Rob Tecwyn met jobbing at Highgate’s Bull & Last. Those in the know will be aware of the gravitas of that sentence; others should be assured that the Euro-inflected gastropub fare is flavourful, sustainably minded and frequently sensational (not least the chips, the finest in London). A streamlined list of natural wines, great cocktails (to wit: a cherry tequila sour) and esoteric beers completes the picture.
St John Marylebone
There’s no playing down the influence of St John – Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver’s nose-to-tail Farringdon icon – so the announcement of this new Marylebone site predictably sent London’s food obsessives into paroxysms. It’s the Smithfield original in microcosm (kinda): clattery and white-walled, with a drop-in bar upstairs (for those wicked doughnuts and choice small-plates) and a subterranean dining room downstairs. The menu is both warmly familiar and subtly zhuzhed: think devilled crab with little gem; classic Eccles cakes with hunks of Lancashire cheese; and, thrillingly, the stalwart Welsh rarebit rejigged as deep-fried nuggets – all washed down with the superlative house plonk.
Mr Ji
It was a dark day on Old Compton Street when Mr Ji – a heady Taiwanese collab between restaurateur Samuel Haim and TĀ TĀ Eatery’s Ana Gonçalves and Zijun Meng – shut up shop this summer. Luckily, they’ve reappeared in expanded form in Camden, complete with the original’s brutalist interiors and maximalist menu. Classics like the bechamel-oozing prawn “in” toast, golden kimchi and plate-sized O’JI chicken escalope with piccalilli mayo remain – now joined by natty bites like prawn-and-pork-stuffed chicken wings (with crab, yoghurt and nori), and “tacos” of braised pig’s head, dumpling skin and cucumber salad.
Bacchanalia
Like the rest of Richard Caring’s ritzy restaurant portfolio – Scott’s, Sexy Fish – there’s nothing subtle about Bacchanalia, which opened on Mount Street at the close of 2022. The menu, overseen by chef Athinagoras Kostakos of Scorpios fame, is “Greco-Roman” to match the 79 ancient sculptures dotted around the dining room, but it’s the Liberace-esque décor that’s luring in the blue tick crowd. More than 300 books of 24-carat gold leaf paint and 400 square metres of marble were used to decorate the space, watched over by Damien Hirst statues of Medusa and Bacchus. Order yourself a Lost in Athens cocktail – a head-spinning blend of mezcal, palo alto and citrus – and lean into the atmosphere of hedonistic decadence.
Caravel
Dinner on a reconfigured barge might sound like a novelty, but Caravel – located on a sleepy stretch of Regent’s Canal in Islington – is no gimmick. It’s the brainchild of Fin and Lorcan Spiteri, offspring of legendary London restaurateur and St John co-founder Jon Spiteri. While Fin mans the bar, Lorcan is on the hobs – having previously put in time at Quo Vadis and Rochelle Canteen. Those influences are transposed to a robust, ingredient-led menu with occasional curveballs: dinky rounds of potato rosti topped with sour cream and caviar; ribbons of pickled honeydew melon; slabs of ruby-rare bavette steak; a conventionally perfect prawn toast. A total dream(boat).
Restaurant St Barts
Dalston’s Nest and Fulham’s Fenn are two of the city’s niftiest (and largely under-the-radar) neighbourhood restaurants. This new sibling, peering over the medieval cloisters of Smithfield’s Great St Bart’s church, is more of a statement. Sure it’s concept-y – 15 courses, two key ingredients per plate, all embracing seasonal British produce from small-scale producers and conservationists – but pretensions are moot when it comes to dishes like red mullet kohlrabi terrine, English sweetcorn porridge with pickled Scottish girolles, or Hackney honey and lavender tart. Hallowed stuff – and the greige palette of the space itself should have The Modern House calling in no time.
Supa Ya Ramen
It’s ramen alright – but not as you know it. When Luke Findlay opened the first, post-pop-up Supa Ya in Dalston late last year, he delectably skewed the basics of Japan’s soupy staple. Now, he’s dragged it south of the river to Peckham’s Rye Lane – and into the glorified corridor of a space last occupied by the late, lamented Taco Queen – wilfully inauthentic bowls and all. Take the soupless cheeseburger ramen: a heady melding of aged beef-fat noodles, smashed patty, burger sauce, American cheese, pickles and white sesame. Even the booze is outré: our order is the pickled fennel martini.
Arcade Food Hall
What with being the group behind city-best spots like Bao, Hoppers, Gymkhana, Sabor et al, you’d expect an entire food hall by JKS to be decent. But Arcade is veritably sparkling: a buzzing idyll of rarefied junk food and polished global concessions that one could drift corpulently between for a full day. Highlights include textbook smash burgers from Manna (by Feroz Gajia of gastro-nerd fave Bake Street), Tipan Tipan’s Nepalese chicken momos in jhol curry sauce, and the confit brisket suadero tacos at Comida Mexa (the new iteration of Netil Market’s beloved Sonora Taquería) – but it’s all wildly accomplished.
Quo Vadis
The star of this, Dean Street’s perennially wonderful bastion of New Soho, is always high – but now more than ever, given the recent publication of chef-patron and jocular bon vivant Jeremy Lee’s first cookbook. His seasonal British-ish cooking is utterly timeless and wilfully comforting. Some dishes are steadfast – a daily pie; the profiteroles au chocolat; the totemic smoked eel sandwich – but the entire carte is an exercise in elevated-rustic excellence (think salt mallard with pickled prunes, or skate with black butter and capers). What’s more, the room itself – all technicolour stained glass, white tablecloths, and winsome flower arrangements – is bliss.
