The Best Places to Eat and Drink in the United Kingdom

A converted warehouse in Liverpool's Baltic Triangle, Manifest is a modern British restaurant where an open kitchen takes up most of the room and the counter seats fill up with people who want to watch the work. The menu runs à la carte or a tasting menu that shifts with the seasons, and the wine list is set up so every bottle pours by the glass, which is a genuinely civilised approach to the problem of ordering alone.

The rocks and marble throughout the room were all shipped from Chile, which is either a flex or a geological love letter, depending on your mood. Mareida is a Chilean restaurant on Great Portland Street, slickly designed with a large open kitchen keeping things lively. The wine list runs exclusively Chilean, and lunch brings a shorter, kinder-priced menu for those not ready to commit to the full evening.

Focaccia and a whipped butter bean dip open the meal here, which sets the tone for what follows: unhurried Modern British cooking that chases seasonal flavour without making a fuss about it. The room next door belongs to Restaurant Twenty-Two, the same team's other project, and Margaret's has the calmer sibling energy, all neutral tones and genuinely relaxed service. A nice place to settle in for the evening.

Floor-to-ceiling glass looks out over a lake and parkland, which gives you a sense of how seriously Marle takes its setting. This Modern British restaurant sits inside a Georgian country house hotel and draws almost everything on the plate from the estate's own farm, so the vegetables taste like somewhere specific rather than nowhere in particular. Light, unfussy cooking that lets the land do the talking.

White linen, neutral tones, and a corner spot on Hanover Square set the register before you've touched the menu. Mazarine is a formal French seafood restaurant where the room is calm enough that the ingredients do all the talking. The kitchen takes a classical approach, which is another way of saying it trusts good scallops to be good scallops. Oysters, caviar, and langoustines keep the bill climbing, but nobody here looks surprised.

A Greek sharing-plates restaurant tucked into a quiet Kensington street, Mazi runs on the kind of warmth where the team will happily take the wheel on wine and food if you let them. The menu is built for the table to raid together, and the loukoumades have a way of ending debates about dessert before they start. On a good day, the terrace out back makes a convincing case for a different city entirely.

Apple green banquettes and faux blossoming trees set the tone at this relaxed Chelsea dining room, where the locals have clearly been coming long enough to stop looking at the menu. The cooking is classical, the kind where crab raviolo and roast quail show up and nobody feels the need to explain why. The wine list gets proper attention, with pairings suggested for every dish, which in this neighbourhood is considered basic courtesy.

Murals of ingredients and happy diners cover the walls at this cosy neighbourhood restaurant, which feels like a self-portrait the place has earned. A short walk from York's centre, it runs on local produce and long-serving staff who know the room. The cooking is classically grounded but quietly ambitious, and if a soufflé appears on the dessert menu, it would be rude not to order it.

Open flames on the ground floor and a quieter dining room upstairs, in a brightly decorated Cambridge townhouse steps from Trinity College. This Spanish restaurant pulls heavily from the north, Galicia and the Basque Country mostly, with Ibérica cuts cooked over fire and a tarta de Santiago to finish. The kind of place where the cooking is the decor, and nobody's complaining about that.

An Italian restaurant inside the Corinthia Hotel with two dining rooms, one high-ceilinged and plush, the other built around an open kitchen and a pasta-making counter where you can watch someone do things to dough you'd never attempt at home. Francesco Mazzei runs the kitchen, and the cooking leans into the classics, carbonara included, executed with the kind of confidence that doesn't need to announce itself. The wine list is serious and the service knows exactly where it is.

Peking duck is the signature at this elegant Chinese restaurant set inside a Georgian townhouse, where the dining room takes its cues from 1920s Shanghai. The menu roams across China with stops in Hong Kong and Singapore, and the kitchen leans into its Mayfair postcode with some conspicuously luxurious choices. The room is bright and the service polished, so dress accordingly and don't be surprised when the bill matches the curtains.

A restored 13th-century castle at the end of miles of single-track road on the Ardnamurchan peninsula, about as far west as mainland Britain goes. The restaurant inside runs a set menu built on local produce, venison from the estate among them, cooking that's hearty and rooted rather than fussy. The kind of place where the journey and the setting do half the work, and the kitchen is wise enough not to compete with either.

Twelve seats around a U-shaped counter, tucked behind the main restaurant at Dormy House Hotel, is about as intimate as a tasting-menu experience gets. The chefs serve and narrate each course themselves, which sounds theatrical until it isn't. Confit egg yolk with parmesan custard appears on every menu and seems to have earned a kind of permanent residency. The cooking is colourful and creative, and the wine pairings are well-matched.

The restaurant inside a boutique hotel that a fashion designer built from a former doctor's surgery, which is very Cotswolds when you think about it. The room pulls off a modern Nordic calm amid the honey-stone village scenery, and the Modern British cooking follows the same logic, dishes that read quietly on the menu but arrive with more going on beneath the surface than the description suggests.

A vast Japanese restaurant on Wardour Street built around live-fire cooking, with reclaimed wood, an open kitchen, a vinyl-lined counter, and a curved staircase leading down to a sushi counter and listening room below. The menu leans on prime British ingredients with Japanese inflection, and the skewers are the main event. Share everything, and resist the urge to over-order, which is advice this room will have to give you twice.

The old carriage houses of a Georgian estate don't usually double as a dining room, but here we are. This modern British restaurant sits within the Royal Crescent Hotel grounds, reached by a walk through the garden, which is either charming or a mild inconvenience depending on the weather. Seasonal produce from the south west drives the menu, Somerset lamb being the kind of thing the kitchen builds a dish around with quiet confidence.

Exposed stonework and soft lighting set the mood in this wine bar and restaurant housed in a converted old inn near the Palace of Holyroodhouse, from the team behind Timberyard. The wine list leans into lesser-known regions, and the sharing plates are built to match something interesting in the glass. A stool at the ground-floor bar counter is the right call if you can get one.

Irn Bru candyfloss lands at the end of your meal, complimentary and completely earnest, which tells you most of what you need to know about Moss. It's a modern restaurant in Stockbridge where the menu runs on Scottish produce only, the drinks list is strictly British, and a fair amount of the ingredients come from the owner's family farm in Angus. The room is spare and quiet; the cooking matches it.

A fresh fish counter greets you at the door of this Greek restaurant on Brompton Road, and the room follows suit with a bright, coastal feel that does its best to pretend the weather outside isn't happening. The menu runs through classic shared plates, breads with dips, sardines, moussaka, and the staff know the food well enough that asking questions is encouraged rather than endured.

A set-menu vegan bistro on a Peckham side street, Naïfs keeps the room simple and the kitchen in plain view, which is either reassuring or a dare depending on your disposition. The food runs hearty and seasonal, opening with shared snacks before moving to individual mains. The à la carte bar menu offers a looser way in. Bread comes from the nearby TOAD bakery, which tells you something about how seriously the neighbourhood takes this kind of thing.

The open kitchen runs hot and the room follows its lead, with a clean-lined dining room that sits comfortably between relaxed and considered. This modern bistro in Fowey's harbour town leans into Cornish produce, pairing roasted duck with miso cauliflower and local kea plum in a way that politely refuses to be predictable. Lunch deals, vegan menus, and a Sunday roast cover all the bases without the place feeling like it's trying to please everyone at once.

Low ceilings, exposed beams, and a family that's been working this 17th-century building for three generations make Next Door feel like it earned its charm the slow way. These days it's a cosy contemporary British restaurant run by a husband-and-wife team, he in the kitchen and she managing the wine. The beef comes from the family butcher two doors down, which is either very convenient or very good planning, probably both.

The concept is katei ryōri, Japanese home-style family cooking, which is a quietly subversive thing to hang a slick Mayfair dining room on. Celebrity chef Endo Kazutoshi designed the menus, which move between sharing plates, a sushi counter, and Japanese beef over charcoal. One room runs moody and clubby, the other brighter. The Nipperkin cocktail bar is the right place to start or finish, which in Mayfair is half the battle.

The flower-covered facade looks like Chelsea's idea of a country pub, and the inside delivers on that promise with brown leather banquettes, two plush floors, and more blooms than a florist. It's a modern British restaurant with a real grill running through the menu and proper roast lunches on weekends. The Ruby Bar turns out cocktails in a room dark enough to feel like a grown-up secret.

Dark wood, candlelight, and walls papered with covers of the owners' own wine magazine set the tone at this Bloomsbury wine bar and restaurant. The cooking runs classical and French, the kind of unfussy food that exists mainly to justify the next bottle. The team are the sort who genuinely love talking wine, so let them suggest a pairing and see where it goes.

Yotam Ottolenghi's Soho restaurant trades in the kind of cooking his cookbooks made famous: vivid, generously spiced dishes that pull from the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and across Asia. You can order your own main or go the sharing route, which most tables do. Downstairs seats look straight into the kitchen, which keeps the room lively. It draws cookbook devotees and Soho lunchers in roughly equal measure.

The sesame caraway pide arrives before anything else, and that's a good call. This Turkish restaurant sits on the ground floor of a glass-fronted Canary Wharf apartment block, moody enough inside, with tiled tables and a bar counter where a solo lunch fits nicely, and booths roomy enough for a group that has something to celebrate. The baklava, pistachio-topped and properly chewy, is the kind of ending that makes the financial district feel briefly forgivable.

Six tables in a snug Chester dining room make Noted feel more like a dinner party than a restaurant. The menu is built for sharing and roams freely, pairing British produce with international detours: prawn toast bao, crab arancino, that kind of thing. Sundays bring a sharing roast with a distinctly 1980s sensibility, which sounds like a gimmick until it arrives. The Michelin Guide has it selected.

Shelves along the front dining room hold jars and produce from the restaurant's own allotment just outside Bath, which supplies a good chunk of what ends up on your plate. Oak is an unpretentious vegetarian bistro running well-priced small plates built for sharing, where the kitchen leans hard into complementary textures rather than making vegetables feel like a compromise. A five-course feasting menu is there at dinner if the decision fatigue hits early.

The dining room sits above St Ouen's Bay with shuttered windows framing the kind of view that makes it hard to look at the menu. This hotel restaurant leans into Jersey's larder, with local fish, oysters, and black butter showing up in dishes that feel like they belong to the place. Desserts get particular attention from the kitchen. Service is warm without being stiff, which is more than you usually get with a room this good-looking.

Sitting inside the National Gallery's original William Wilkins building, this all-day bistro runs harder than museum cafes have any right to. The menu swings wide, from schnitzel to korma, and you can eat as a three-course sit-down or share plates as the mood takes you. Brunch and afternoon tea round out the day. The team is notably switched-on for a room that could coast on the foot traffic alone.

A stone former vicarage on the edge of Derbyshire, converted into a quietly ambitious fine dining room where the grounds alone are worth arriving early for. Two fixed-price menus anchor the experience, the longer of the two running through modern dishes built on serious sourcing, including game from estates you'd recognize by name. The setting has an easy grandeur that the cooking doesn't try to outrun.

Stone walls, wooden beams, and a fire that earns its keep make this Rutland village pub exactly what it promises to be. The kitchen leans into hearty British classics, sourcing locally and growing vegetables in their own garden. Confit duck, fish and chips, the kind of food you want after a country walk. Beech House, just across the road, handles the overnight question for anyone not ready to leave Clipsham quite yet.

Views over West Sands beach set the tone for this seafood restaurant inside the restored Seaton House hotel in St Andrews. The kitchen leans classic, letting crab, lobster, and sole from nearby East Neuk fishing villages do the talking rather than burying them in technique. It made its name in Edinburgh over many years before the move coastwards, which in hindsight seems obvious: the seafood was always pointing in this direction.

The name is a souvenir from a previous life in St Ives, which tells you most of what you need to know about the menu. This stripped-back seafood spot on Chandos Road anchors itself around oysters, then fans out into things like red mullet with shellfish sauce and a shelf of high-end tinned fish that makes a strong case for itself. Redland's little cluster of good eating surrounds it, and the pricing won't require a sit-down with your accountant.

Giorgio Locatelli's Italian restaurant sits inside the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing, which is either a very good reason to visit the museum or a very good reason to skip the galleries. Handmade pasta and burrata sit comfortably above the museum-café tier, and the bar downstairs handles coffee and freshly baked maritozzi for anyone who just needs to sit down after the Turners.

Oysters come first, in several forms, at this seafood restaurant on Gosforth High Street from the team behind Lovage in Jesmond. The kitchen keeps things deliberately uncluttered: think sea trout with Pink Fir potatoes and beurre blanc rather than anything that needs a glossary. Fish and shellfish are the point, treated as if the chef doesn't want to get in their way, which is often the right instinct.

A wood-fired restaurant inside a converted Leeds mill, sharing the building with a beer hall and cocktail bar, which means the room is loud and no one is pretending otherwise. The kitchen runs everything through smoke and flame, with a US-imported grill doing the heavy lifting and bold flavors layered on top, nduja with oysters, gochujang on crispy pig tails. Vegetarians get a serious run too. The côte de boeuf is there if the mood takes you.

The terrace here hangs over St Brelade's Bay so directly that the tide feels like a menu item. This is a seafood restaurant where Jersey rock oysters anchor the menu, and the kitchen keeps things bright and unfussy, letting the fish do the talking. The crab taglierini has a following of its own. Sunny days fill every outdoor seat fast, so the room has a pleasantly competitive energy about it.

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 drive in sets the tone: a long, tree-lined approach through a walled estate, ending at a garden full of sculpture before you've even sat down. This modern British restaurant offers a dining room open to the kitchen or a glasshouse with garden views, and the menu follows the seasons closely, leaning on foraged and local produce. Dorset countryside as both backdrop and larder, which is a hard combination to argue with.

A cosy French bistro in Little Venice named after one of the owners' grandmothers, which tells you a fair bit about the vibe before you've even sat down. Escargots, moules marinière, filet de boeuf, chocolate soufflé, an all-French wine list that doesn't punish you for ordering a second bottle, and a fridge of produce to take home. The kind of neighborhood place everyone claims doesn't exist anymore, quietly existing.

A wood-fired oven and glowing coals dominate the open kitchen at this lively restaurant overlooking Liberation Square in Saint Helier. The cooking draws on time spent in the Basque Country, so Jersey ingredients meet fire-based techniques, and cuts like turbot and ex-dairy cow share the menu with Ibérico ham collar. A few counter seats put you right in the heat, literally and otherwise.

Sand underfoot, fresh flowers overhead, and a greenhouse roof letting in whatever the English sky is willing to offer: this modern Italian restaurant tucked inside a working nursery in Richmond is one of those places that makes London feel implausible. The kitchen leans on herbs and vegetables grown on the grounds, and the cooking has a relaxed Italian sensibility. Worth noting that you can buy a plant on the way out.

Chess piece artwork on the walls is a quiet nod to the Petty brothers' love of board games, and the name itself is a pun the kitchen has to live up to. This linen-tables restaurant sits in the shadow of Truro Cathedral and runs a tasting menu where the team puts real effort into every course. A well-priced lunch carte keeps it from being an occasion-only destination.

A mushroom, coffee, and caramel dessert tells you a lot about a kitchen. This creative tasting menu restaurant occupies a long-standing Yorkshire pub, smartly refurbished with a Nordic lean while keeping its rough-hewn bones. The cooking is hyper-local and technique-forward, opening with a broth made from vegetable scraps and building from there. Rooms are available if the narrow lanes home feel like an unreasonable ask after all that.

Cooking over an open flame anchors the menu at this small-plates Spanish and Mediterranean spot in Mossley Hill, which moved out of the city centre and leaned into the neighbourhood feel. Tables are close together and the room is cosy in the way that encourages overstaying. If you want to watch the fire up close, the chef's counter is the seat to book. The Michelin Guide has it listed among its selected restaurants.

Named after its Sardinian chef, this Mayfair Italian leans hard into the classics, no unnecessary invention, no foam where sauce should be. Fresh seafood, prime cuts, pasta courses that hold the center, and a tiramisu that arrives without apology. The room runs chic and lively, which is a nicer trick than it sounds on Curzon Street, and the team treat service like it still means something.

Mary-Ellen McTague, a vocal champion of the northwest, runs the kitchen at this Modern British restaurant inside the Treehouse Hotel. Repurposed wood, vintage odds and ends, and splashes of colour give it a cozy, slightly eccentric feel. The menu leans on local Lancashire produce, and the hot pot alone makes a fairly compelling case for the region. Staff are the genuinely enthusiastic kind, not the trained-smile kind.

The garden opens up in summer, but Pippin's earns its keep year-round as a Modern British restaurant with a genuine neighbourhood feel despite sitting inside the Hotel Templeton Garden. Muted greens and beige keep the room calm, and the menu leans on British produce in dishes that have clearly been cooked and corrected over time. The Sprout Bar next door handles cocktails before or after.

The blonde-wood panelling gives this French bistro in Battersea an almost art deco warmth, which suits it: Ploussard has the feel of a neighborhood place that takes itself seriously without making you feel like a tourist in your own dinner. The menu runs classic Francophile territory, seasonal and carefully sourced, and the wine list is short but chosen with enough conviction that you'll probably just ask the staff what to drink.

The Poon name has meant Chinese cooking in London for generations, and Amy Poon has brought it back in an elegant, warmly hued room beside Somerset House. The menu runs from wind-dried meats and wontons to claypot rice and roast duck salad, with a late-night snack selection for anyone who shows up after nine. The open kitchen keeps things lively in what could otherwise feel like a rather grand dining room.

Counter seats wrapping an open kitchen on the ground floor, tables tucked into a cosy room above, and a menu of Italian small plates built for sharing: Popolo has a clear idea of what it is. Pasta anchors the card, and the low-intervention wine list keeps things honest. Shoreditch can run cold and sceney, but the room here has a warmth that feels unplanned, which is the harder thing to pull off.

A 1930s beach house perched directly above Porthminster Sands, with the kind of view that makes it hard to focus on the menu. It's a seafood restaurant with a bright, New England feel, though the kitchen wanders considerably further than Cape Cod, pulling in Indonesian curry and satay alongside moules marinière and linguine. The crowd tends to arrive in sunglasses and leave looking very pleased with their afternoon.

Thirty-plus cocktails and a natural-wine list that skews global set the tone at this small-plates and drinks spot tucked into Spring Gardens. The team behind 10 Tib Lane runs the room, and the food punches above its snack-sized ambitions: Jersey oysters come dressed several ways, and the Guinness rarebit on toast with pickled cauliflower has its own loyal following. When the menu feels overwhelming, the staff are the kind who actually help.

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.

The fish counter hits you before you've found a seat, and the wood-fired grill does the rest. This Victorian corner pub in Belgravia has been converted into a Basque-leaning restaurant where the cooking follows the chef's family heritage: good fish, good meat, live fire. The torrija with Guinness ice cream is one of those desserts that makes you wish you'd skipped the bread. Pimlico Road money fills the room, but the food has a rougher, more satisfying edge.

Tucked down a passageway just off the High Street, this quietly confident little restaurant has made itself part of Melrose's furniture. The cooking is Modern British with a strong Scottish accent, letting the produce do the talking: North Sea fish, Orkney crab and scallops, ingredients sourced from local estates. Nothing showy, just good things handled well in one of the more handsome towns in the Borders.

A flagstone pub that's been around forever, sitting beside a pretty church in the Lyth Valley with the kind of setting that makes people pull over on instinct. Inside, a beamed bar handles pints and informality while a more dressed-up dining room handles dinner, and the kitchen leans on Cumbrian lamb and local produce prepared without fuss. Rooms upstairs make it easy to stay and explore the surrounding hills rather than driving back in the dark.

Exposed beams and bare brickwork give this first-floor Sheffield dining room the feel of a converted loft that forgot to be pretentious about it. The tasting menu leans into modern British cooking with serious produce, and the Kitchen Bench seats you directly in front of the pass if you want to watch the work. A shorter set menu runs at certain times. The wine list is organised by style and character, which is more useful than it sounds.

A north London pub that gives its kitchen over to rotating residencies, the Compton Arms has lately landed on retro-British cooking with a relaxed, confident hand. The menu runs to things like ray wing on a crumpet with hot golden syrup, which sounds like a dare and eats like a revelation. The room stays properly pub-like, not gastropub-precious, and the service matches it. The Michelin Guide has taken notice.

Fish crackling lands first, a snack that functions as a mission statement for the meal ahead. Raymond's is a sharing-plates spot in Nottingham's Lace Market, the kind of room with counter seats, moody lighting, and a wine list heavy on by-the-glass options, as if someone sat down and ticked every box on the modern restaurant checklist. The crowd seems entirely unbothered by that, and honestly, so will you.

Named after the owner's childhood dog, this narrow little Modern British restaurant in Heaton runs a set menu in two lengths, built around seasonal cooking that leans into overlooked cuts and ingredients. The room has a quirky, corridor-like shape, family artwork on the walls, and rustic wooden tables. The wine list pulls in organic and biodynamic bottles, and the pairings are worth the commitment. Service is the kind that makes a small room feel like the right size.

A thatched Wiltshire pub sitting on the edge of Salisbury Plain, decorated with the kind of collected-over-decades clutter that no interior designer could fake. The kitchen is classically trained and takes its sourcing seriously, sending out generously flavoured dishes that feel grounded rather than showy. Rooms with private terraces overlook the river, which makes the argument for staying over so you can explore the countryside at a pace that isn't frantic.

The terrace runs the full length of the hotel, which means almost every seat at this waterfront restaurant in St Mawes looks straight out over the bay. Reef Knot keeps things bright and unfussy, and the kitchen leans hard into Cornish seafood, rock oysters and roasted skate wing among them. The "Mum's Bouillabaisse" is borrowed from the chef's mother, which is either charming or a lot of pressure, depending on how you look at it.

A flint-clad kiln, uncovered during renovation, anchors the dining room of this former warehouse on the Norfolk Broads. The set-menu restaurant works through seasonal produce from local artisans and the chef's own garden, with mushrooms grown on site, all filtered through a quiet Japanese sensibility. Sourdough starts things off before the menu finds its footing somewhere between Norfolk and somewhere rather further east.