The Best Indian Food in the United Kingdom

Wood-panelled walls and colonial-club bones set the scene at this Mayfair Indian restaurant, which holds two Michelin stars and quietly redrew what a posh Indian night out in London could look like. The ground floor suits a long lunch; the basement, with its low lighting and DJ-softened hum, has a way of turning early suppers into late ones, table-turning policies notwithstanding. The food is the argument for staying.

A self-described Brummie of Bangladeshi heritage, Aktar Islam runs this two Michelin star contemporary Indian tasting menu restaurant in Birmingham city centre more like a modern European kitchen than anything you'd expect. The space is strikingly spare, the cooking is deeply researched, and a single potato dish can involve three separate cooking methods before it reaches the table. The set lunch keeps it from feeling like a special-occasion-only proposition.

Chet Sharma studied physics at Oxford, did a PhD, and then decided kitchens were more interesting, which tells you something about what progressive Indian fine dining in Mayfair looks like at BiBi. The menu shifts with the seasons and the sourcing, leaning on small UK suppliers alongside carefully traced ingredients from India. The room feels more like Sharma's grandmothers' living room than a colonial-era throwback, which around here is a deliberate statement.

Terracotta walls, gold detailing, and a DJ booth downstairs set the tone at this Punjabi restaurant on Heddon Street, from the team behind Gymkhana. The menu moves between dhaba-style roadside cooking and the ceremony of royal North Indian dining, with clay pot curries and oversized biryanis built for groups feeling celebratory. The cocktail list leans tequila-heavy and the room leans loud. It holds a Michelin star, which the dance floor makes pleasingly difficult to take too seriously.

Three live-fire grills, tawa, tandoor, and sigri, anchor the kitchen at this Belgravia Indian restaurant, and the menu is built around sharing plates that arrive as each one comes off the heat. The format means you cover real ground across a menu that earns its variety. Smoked chilli lamb chops tend to linger in the memory. The room runs warm and lively, the kind that fills with regulars who know not to rush. It holds a Michelin star.

A cedar tree has stood outside this Cumbrian country house long enough that naming the restaurant after it felt only right. Inside, the setting mixes antique stonework with something cleaner and more contemporary, and the tasting menu does something similar, pairing British produce, much of it from the kitchen garden, with quietly confident Indian spicing. It holds a Michelin star, and the service moves with the kind of calm purpose that suggests nobody here is winging it.

Jamavar holds a Michelin star and carries the kind of polish you'd expect from a serious Indian restaurant on Mount Street, which is to say a lot. The menu ranges across the subcontinent with a lean toward the north and a nod to dishes that once graced royal tables. Small plates do the work of starters, and the tandoor handles much of the main event. Book a table on the ground floor if you can; the room upstairs earns its reputation.

Sandstone walls and rattan screens set the tone at this Michelin-starred Indian restaurant inside the Taj 51 Hotel, where the kitchen focuses on the southwest coast rather than the usual suspects. The menu travels the Malabar Coast with fish curries, kori gassi, and pepper shrimps, and a separate vegetarian menu means no one draws the short straw. The team is sharp and the room is calm enough to make Westminster feel very far away.

Coastal Indian cooking holds the menu together at this Michelin-starred Marylebone restaurant, where the kitchen leans into seafood the way most places lean into tikka. The service is warm but polished enough that nobody hovers. Festival and seasonal menus rotate through, so the room shifts with the Indian calendar. Regulars tend to know which visits to plan around.

A Michelin-starred Indian restaurant that has been on Regent Street forever, Veeraswamy spans the whole subcontinent on one menu, from royal-recipe showpieces to street snacks that have been quietly refined. Welsh lamb turns up in the Kashmiri rogan josh, which tells you something about how the kitchen thinks. The room is vivid and warm, and a window table overlooking Regent Street is worth requesting if you can get one.

Aktar Islam, the chef behind Birmingham's two-Michelin-starred Opheem, chose a quietly off-pitch spot near Borough Market for his London debut, which says something about his confidence. Oudh 1722 is an upscale Indian restaurant spread across three floors of a Victorian building, dedicated entirely to Awadhi cuisine, the slow-cooked, court-refined tradition of Lucknow. Dum cooking, sealed and unhurried, anchors the menu. The National Restaurant Awards named it One to Watch for 2026.

You reach this bright, sleek Indian restaurant by climbing the stairs behind a glass door tucked between Cardiff shopfronts, which sets the tone nicely. Purple accents, exposed brick, and abstract murals line the walls. The menu covers familiar ground, lamb rogan josh and the like, but the kitchen's touch is a light hand with spicing that lets the produce speak. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the service is as warm as the food.

A converted Victorian pub in Islington running South Indian food alongside proper pints, which turns out to be a combination nobody should have waited this long for. Two floors, low lighting, a playlist that earns its reputation, and a menu that moves between small plates, curries, and cocktails without any fuss. Sunday brings an Indian-spiced roast that makes the usual pub lunch feel like it was missing something all along.

An angeethi is the clay grill that's been central to rural Indian kitchens forever, which tells you something about what this suburban Glasgow restaurant is going for. It's an unfussy room where the cooking is regional and traditional, the spicing is confident, and the portions are generous enough that skipping dessert would be a mistake. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a place where the food does all the talking.

Cyrus Todiwala, who has been edging toward national treasure status for years, runs this colorful Indian restaurant with his wife Pervin on the ground floor of a Docklands apartment block overlooking Royal Albert Wharf. Getting here requires some conviction, but the cooking draws on the couple's Goan and Bombay roots in ways that feel personal rather than generic. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

From the outside, Dastaan reads as a suburban curry house you might drive past without a second look, which is precisely what makes the packed dining room feel like a secret. It's a North Indian restaurant in Ewell with a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kitchen leans on layered spicing rather than heat alone. The service runs tighter than the room has any right to expect. The kulfi and gulab jamun finish things off properly.

A jukebox and a photo booth set the mood at this Notting Hill neighbourhood Indian, which leans into a loose disco theme without making you feel like you've wandered into a theme park. The team behind Gunpowder focuses here on Punjab and Northwest India, running through biryanis, kebabs, and a butter chicken that regulars treat as non-negotiable. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

The name comes from the chef's own daily-ground spice mix, which sets the tone for this small, loud Indian small-plates restaurant in Spitalfields. Ten tightly packed tables fill fast with people who look like they've been coming for years. The menu pulls from family recipes across India's regions, and the Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks. It spawned other London locations, but this is the one that started it.

An open kitchen with coal-roasting at its heart sets the tone at this Indian restaurant in Bishop's Cleeve, which holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The menu leans into street food, with sharing plates arriving as they come rather than all at once, and the lamb chops and a rotating house biryani do most of the heavy lifting. Sister spot to a pair of Cheltenham institutions, it has the same careful touch without the formality.

The long counter wrapping the open kitchen is where you want to sit at this Southern Indian restaurant in Soho, the original outpost of what's now a small London group. The menu leans toward Kerala, Goa, and Karnataka, which makes a change from the usual North Indian playbook, and the Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand to prove the point. Downstairs has a darker, late-night feel if the counter's full.

A pink neon sign pulls you off Western Road into a small, easygoing neighbourhood spot built around sharing plates that wander freely between Asia and South America. The cooking leans on spice and follows no single flag, which sounds like a recipe for chaos but mostly just means dinner stays interesting. Cocktails open things up, the prices won't make you wince, and the Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tells you roughly where it sits.

A family-run vegetarian Indian restaurant in a former pub outside Bradford, earning a Michelin Bib Gourmand for cooking rooted in Gujarati tradition. The bread alone, naan and rotli made with real care, would justify the drive. You can go à la carte, share a set menu, or commit to a full tasting, which for a place this warm and unfussy feels like exactly the right way to spend an evening.

The onion bhajis that open the menu at this bustling South London Indian restaurant earn the Michelin Bib Gourmand they've been handed. The room is warm and relaxed in the way Northcote Road tends to encourage, and the short menu leans hard into a handful of things done well, the Thanjavur chicken curry among them. Prices are gentle enough that ordering broadly with friends leaves everyone in a good mood, including whoever picks up the bill.

The restaurant takes its name from Bollywood legend Asha Bhosle, who is, among her many talents, apparently also a restaurateur. This Indian dining room in central Birmingham runs through the subcontinent's regions at some breadth, with tandoori kebabs as the anchor and a generous spread of vegetarian dishes alongside. The kitchen cooks with enough confidence that the menu's ambition rarely outpaces the plate.

Recipes passed down through three generations anchor the menu at this warm, well-dressed southern Indian restaurant in Cheltenham. The cooking leans into Kerala, with dishes built on bright, layered spicing rather than heat for its own sake. If commitment is proving difficult, the banquet menus take the decision out of your hands entirely, which is either a relief or an excuse, depending on your evening.

Army mess clubs of colonial India set the theme at this big, boisterous Indian restaurant spread across the ground floor of the Bloomberg building. Live fire does most of the work, with the menu leaning on barbecue and street food dishes. Several screens show sport, keeping the noise level at a pitch that makes conversation an act of commitment. A solid lineup of beers and whiskies helps with that.

Buckingham Palace is a short walk away, and Chutney Mary dresses for the neighborhood without going stiff about it. This long-standing Indian restaurant in St James's comes from the same group as Veeraswamy and Amaya, and the room is the most stylish of the three. The menu runs mostly to northern Indian cooking, with dishes that have been quietly updated over time without losing their bearings. Smart but relaxed, the kind of place that handles a business lunch and a date equally well.

Asma Khan, a genuine celebrity in her own right after her Netflix "Chef's Table" moment, runs this bright Indian restaurant in Soho where the kitchen is entirely staffed by women. The cooking draws on Mughal heritage and Kolkata street food, and the spicing is precise rather than theatrical. Khan herself is usually on the floor, chatting tables, which gives the whole room a warmth that most Soho restaurants spend years trying to fake.

Chicken tikka pie sits near the top of the menu at this smart Mayfair Indian restaurant, which tells you everything about Atul Kochhar's approach: Anglo-Indian cooking that doesn't apologize for the hyphen. Traditional regional dishes share the card with those hybrid experiments, and the room has enough polish to feel like a special occasion without anyone having to announce it. Ground floor is the place to be.

A clock tower and bell tower mark the spot just off Surbiton High Street, which is a bold architectural move for a neighbourhood Indian restaurant and one that largely delivers on the promise. Inside, it's bright and colourful, and the pan-Indian menu travels from tandoori dishes in the north to the gentler spicing of the south. Start with a street food snack, then let the kitchen's clean, well-balanced flavours do the persuading.

Mirrored walls give the dining room a slightly disco-era shimmer that somehow works for a Punjabi restaurant in Southall. The menu runs through tandoori dishes and rich, slow-built curries, the kind of cooking that has regulars ordering without looking down. The rogan gosht is the sort of curry that makes you wonder why you'd bother anywhere else. Service is chatty and knows the menu cold.

The colorful dining room is modeled on the communal "building societies" of old Bombay, right down to the retro posters and the intimate basement bar beneath it all. This is a proper Indian restaurant, the kind where small plates give way to butter chicken and tandoor-grilled Cornish lamb rump, and where the breads arrive good enough to make you forget the rest. Fitzrovia's after-work crowd fills it out nicely, and the room earns the noise.

The lamb galouti kebab and the Mangalorean chicken are the nudge to skip the familiar and follow the chef's lead. Pravaas is a contemporary Indian restaurant where Shilpa Dandekar draws on regional cooking from across the subcontinent and adds her own angle to each dish. The room is clean and understated, deliberately so, keeping attention where the kitchen wants it. Butter chicken is on the menu, but the more interesting moves are elsewhere.

A heated terrace with a retractable roof in Mayfair is either genius or a confession about English weather, and either way it works. This is a polished Indian restaurant spread over two floors, where the basement seats you close enough to the tandoor counter to feel useful. The à la carte leans generous and shareable, running from chaat and small plates through curries and biryanis, with tasting menus available for the more committed table.

A Grade II-listed Victorian fire station makes for a warmer dining room than the building's original tenants probably intended. This is a sit-down Indian restaurant in Westminster with a menu that ranges across the subcontinent and into neighboring countries. The team runs it with the kind of attentiveness that doesn't feel rehearsed, and the butter chicken is reportedly the one to order.

The room was a banking hall once, and it still has the bones to prove it: high ceilings, wood panelling, and neo-Gothic stonework that makes ordering a curry feel pleasantly theatrical. This is a proper sit-down Indian restaurant with a broad regional menu that leans north, where the spicing works to pull out flavour rather than announce itself. Cocktails at the central bar, and the window seats look out over Hyde Park.

East Ham holds London's largest Kerala community, and this casual South Indian spot sits at the heart of it. The fries are the thing everyone talks about: a half chicken fried hard with chiles and crispy onions, whole anchovies, battered mussels. Curries and roasts run deeper than their plain descriptions suggest, and the parottas and appams are there to make sure nothing gets left behind.