The Best Places to Eat and Do in London

Owned by the people behind Frieze art magazine, this Mediterranean restaurant in a brutalist building near the Strand hangs Wolfgang Tillmans prints between art posters spanning four decades, so the room does most of the heavy lifting before the food arrives. The menu runs fresh and unfussy, the kind of cooking that pairs well with a terrace table and a glimpse of the Thames. Bookable by people who own tote bags, mostly.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Fried sage leaves with heather honey and chilli land on the table as snacks, and that tells you roughly where you are: a modern British restaurant in Covent Garden that takes seasonal produce seriously without taking itself too seriously. The room is designed to be noticed, the open kitchen keeps things lively, and a cocktail before dinner feels entirely encouraged. The quick lunch menu moves fast and costs little, which Drury Lane regulars have clearly figured out.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A former power station and coal store in Eccleston Yards, now a light-filled brasserie under a lofty glass roof with an open kitchen keeping things lively. The menu runs Mediterranean, with wood-fired cooking doing most of the talking. Flatbreads come out flame-licked and loaded, and the heartier mains lean rustic and unfussy. A small shop tucked inside sells provisions for anyone who wants to recreate the vibe at home, which is optimistic but charming.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Waxed wooden floors and terracotta walls overlook Chelsea Green in a way that makes you feel you've stumbled into a Tuscan trattoria without the flight. This Italian neighbourhood restaurant keeps things ingredient-led: a raw bar of oysters and tartares, prime cuts off the grill, and homemade pastas that quietly steal the show. The Wagyu oxtail tortelli has a way of making every other plan for the evening feel less urgent.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Crumpet snacks set the tone at this clubby restaurant and bar inside the Cadogan Hotel on Sloane Street, where the menu reads like a love letter to British cooking, right down to the wines. The two salon dining rooms lean comfortable and Chelsea-smart, and the kitchen follows through with lamb faggots, day-boat fish, and puddings that veer into deliberate nostalgia, a sherry trifle apparently traced back to the chef's grandmother.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Southeast Asian restaurant on Lisle Street that pulls from Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore rather than committing to any one of them. The menu is extensive enough to need advice, and the staff will actually give it. Portions are built for sharing, so this is the kind of place you want a crowd for: order widely, divide everything, and let the table sort itself out.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Neapolitan pizza in Hampstead, which tells you something about both the pizza and the neighborhood. L'Antica Pizzeria takes the tradition seriously without treating it like a sacred text, turning out light, airy dough with a fermentation that does the work quietly in the background. The room is cozy and informal, the pace unhurried, and the whole thing suits the leafy, unhurried village-that-forgot-it's-in-London energy of Heath Street.

1. 50 Top Pizza #28 · 50 Top Pizza Europe

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The Infatuation #7 · The 25 Best Restaurants In London
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The dining room is polished enough that you'd almost forget you're here for pizza, which is precisely the point. This Southwark pizzeria brings Neapolitan tradition to London with a tidier, more considered setting than the usual slice-and-go, the kind of room where the dough is still the star but it arrives in surroundings that take themselves slightly more seriously. A second London location shares the same formula.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

The dough here leans Neapolitan but doesn't prostrate itself at the altar of tradition, which is probably why this Peckham Rye pizzeria has carved out its own personality rather than just cosplaying Naples. The menu moves with the seasons, the crust is soft and handled well, and the whole room runs warm and informal in the way a good pizzeria should. It's on the 50 Top Pizza Europe list, and the Shoreditch outpost draws the same crowd.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

A no-frills Neapolitan pizzeria tucked into a quiet stretch of SW16, the kind of spot where the room gives you nothing to look at except your pizza, which turns out to be the point. Sharing plates and small bites fill out the table while you wait, and people do travel for it, which says something about the dough. Named on 50 Top Pizza Europe's list of Excellent Pizzerias, it wears the honour lightly, just like the place itself.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

A pizza spot inside a Mayfair pub, which is already doing something mildly subversive for the postcode. Crisp W1 sits within the Marlborough and keeps the formula that works elsewhere: good pizza, a lively room, and a mix of reservations and walk-ins so you're not locked out if planning isn't your thing. The crowd skews younger than the neighborhood usually tolerates, and nobody is pretending the food is precious. Casual, metropolitan, and not fussed about its surroundings.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

The dough is the whole argument here, kept light enough that a full pizza doesn't feel like a dare. DoppioZero is a casual Neapolitan-style pizza spot in Finsbury Park with the informal energy of somewhere that opened last year and already knows what it's doing. The fried starters round out the menu in the way they're supposed to, without trying too hard. Young crowd, loud enough to feel alive, not so loud you need subtitles.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

The dining room occupies Sir George Gilbert Scott's vaulted Gothic Revival interior at St Pancras, which sets an unfair standard for anywhere else you might eat a steak this week. This is a British steakhouse with a serious beef programme built on dry-ageing and live-fire charcoal, and the cooking doesn't try to match the architecture with drama. It ranked 13th on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list. The martini bar is a good place to start or finish.

1. World's 101 Best #13 · World's Best Steak Restaurants

1. The Infatuation #4 · The 25 Best Restaurants In London

A neighborhood pizza spot on Newington Green that doesn't try too hard, which is precisely why it works. The menu moves between classic Italian pies and more unexpected combinations, and the room keeps things informal without sliding into shabby. Service checks in without hovering. The kind of place Islington residents probably pretend they haven't told anyone about, then tell everyone about.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

Neapolitan dough with a Spanish accent, long-fermented and cooked at a pizzeria that seems genuinely unbothered by what a pizzeria is supposed to be. The menu drifts happily into tapas and fried things, all of it built for sharing rather than eating efficiently and leaving. Two locations now, started in Leytonstone, and the energy in the room matches the cooking: informal, loud in a good way, and not trying to impress anyone in particular.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

A Neapolitan pizza joint on Lavender Hill that doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is, which is the whole point. The dough, the char, the generous hand with toppings all trace back to a Naples family recipe that's been around forever. No tasting menus, no mood lighting, just a proper pizzeria operating on the logic that if you know what you're doing, you don't need to dress it up.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

A Battersea pizzeria where the dough is treated as a statement rather than an afterthought, light and carefully finished in a way that politely asks you to pay attention. The room is orderly and calm, more candlelit-date than checkered-tablecloth, and the whole thing is pitched at people who want the craft spelled out without the fuss. Neapolitan tradition run through a precise, contemporary sensibility.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

The name is a promise: narrow Neapolitan streets, and the sense that someone's nonna is expecting you. This Stoke Newington pizzeria keeps its focus on dough, heat, and a short list of things done right, with classics sitting alongside a few more personal recipes. Nothing here is trying to be a postcard of Naples; it's more like a habit for the people who live nearby, which is the better thing to be.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

Long-fermented dough is the quiet argument at this Neapolitan pizza spot in Ealing, where lightness is the point and showmanship is decidedly not. The room leans into warm Italian-trattoria comfort, the kind that makes a Tuesday feel like a reasonable night for a long dinner. It works equally well for a relaxed catch-up or something slightly more date-shaped, which is more than most pizza places can honestly claim.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

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1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

A Vietnamese sandwich shop in Hackney so small it barely has room to be modest about itself. One table, a few seats, and a duo behind the counter pressing fresh bánh mì to order. The baguette alone is the kind of thing that makes you reconsider every other baguette you've ever met. Eater counts it among London's 38 best restaurants, which is a lot of weight for a shop this size to carry.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

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1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The Hit List: New London Restaurants To Try Right Now

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

One thing on the menu: tantuni, a street-food wrap from Mersin in southern Turkey that you won't find on many London menus. Beef is boiled, seasoned, and fried in cotton oil, then packed into thin lavash with parsley, tomato, and onion, bent into shape, and handed over. Jonathan Nunn called it the superior late-night snack template, and the West Green Road regulars filing in after dark are not arguing.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

1. The Infatuation #19 · The 25 Best Restaurants In London

1. The Infatuation The Hit List: New London Restaurants To Try Right Now

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

The da pan ji, a big plate of chicken and potato stew built on Sichuan peppercorns and hand-pulled flat noodles, is reason enough to make the trip to Walthamstow. This neighborhood Uyghur restaurant near Walthamstow Central is a warm, low-key room where the cooking is the whole point. The chaomian, short noodles stir-fried with beef and tomato, is a good place to start before the main event arrives.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

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1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The Hit List: New London Restaurants To Try Right Now

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Pepper pot and garlic pork cooked low and slow at a market stall that has survived longer than the shopping centre it once stood beside. The chef draws on Guyana's layered culinary history, where cassareep, clove, and cinnamon turn a stewed chicken the color of mahogany. This is Guyanese home cooking at a counter in Castle Square, and the queue tends to answer any questions you might still have about it.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The Hit List: New London Restaurants To Try Right Now

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The Hit List: New London Restaurants To Try Right Now

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation #22 · The 25 Best Restaurants In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

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1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

Nagare is a Spitalfields coffee shop that treats a flat white like a small ceremony. The dark wood chairs look antique in a way that took some planning, and the milky white La Marzocco sits behind the counter like a piece of kitchen design you'll be quietly coveting by the second sip. Beans can come from a small-batch roaster in Hong Kong, and the menu covers iced, milky, filter, and drip. Expect a quick coffee and a very photogenic pause.

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

A wine bar and kitchen on Farringdon Road where the menu changes weekly and wanders across southern Europe, lately drifting toward the Aegean. The chef's instincts are eclectic enough to move from gildas to lobster rolls to herbed meatballs in avgolemono without the menu feeling lost. The room is small enough that you notice when someone orders something you want, which happens often.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

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1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

The dining room sits, quite inexplicably, on the ground floor of a Holiday Inn Express just off the Blackwall Tunnel, which should tell you everything and nothing about what to expect. This is a dim sum and Cantonese restaurant with real pedigree, the kind where the wok-fried king prawn noodles arrive with genuine smoke still on them. Eater named it one of London's 38 best restaurants, and the trek to SE10 is a perfectly reasonable price of admission.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

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A laid-back Thai restaurant and bar on Shoreditch High Street where the wok does most of the talking. Homemade sausages, grilled skewers, fragrant curries, and a short menu that changes just enough to keep regulars guessing. The chef's focus on wok cookery gives it an edge beyond the usual comfort hits. Busy in the way Shoreditch always is, though here the playlist and the friendly service make the noise feel earned rather than accidental.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Coffee Shops In London

1. The Infatuation #11 · The 25 Best Restaurants In London

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1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The 23 Best Bakeries In London

1. The Infatuation The Hit List: New London Restaurants To Try Right Now

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.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

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Near King's Cross, this tiny Irish lunch room seats fewer than twenty and takes reservations by landline or postcard, whichever feels less absurd to you. Hugh Corcoran runs it at two sittings a day, cash only, with the wine list stored entirely in the proprietor's head. The cooking is quietly old-fashioned, the kind that makes you wonder when Dublin coddle stopped being on more menus. Eater named it one of London's 38 best restaurants.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

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New York-style slices on Bethnal Green Road, from a spot that built a cult following out in Watford before anyone in E2 noticed. The classics, cheese, tomato, pepperoni, lean on low-moisture mozzarella and a properly crisp base. Then there's a spanakopita slice with Scotch bonnet honey, and a thicker grandma pie that rotates between vodka sauce and hot honey pepperoni. Eater named it among London's 38 best restaurants.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The Hit List: New London Restaurants To Try Right Now

The roast duck hanging in the window has been the opening argument on Wardour Street for longer than most of Soho's current residents have been alive. Wong Kei is an old-school Cantonese restaurant across several floors, famous for wontons, char siu, and service so legendarily curt it became a tourist attraction in its own right. Chinatown has moved on to bubble waffles and regional menus; Wong Kei has not moved, which is entirely the point.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

The wooden staircase leading up above a mixed martial arts gym tells you everything about this Docklands dim sum restaurant before you've even put your name down for a table. Sunday lunch here means joining a queue of dozens, then surrendering to a rolling procession of tea, prawn and chive dumplings, cheung fun with XO sauce, tripe, ribs, and roast meats. It appears on Eater's list of the 38 best London restaurants, and the regulars driving out to E16 would not argue.

1. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants