The Best Places to Eat and Drink in East Mayfair

The wood-fired grill does a lot of heavy lifting at this sprawling two-floor Soho restaurant from the team behind Brat and Kiln. Welsh and Spanish influences collide on a menu built for sharing, running from raw red prawns with stracciatella to whole lobster caldereta served in an earthenware pot. A Michelin star sits alongside a genuinely casual atmosphere where dropping in for one glass and a snack is as welcome as a full feast. The wine list runs to around 500 bottles.

1. The 50 #74 · The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Wine List of the Year · The National Restaurant Awards
3. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The dining room was designed so the pink palette would flatter a lady's blush, which tells you everything about the register you're operating in. This is formal hotel fine dining at full tilt, all gilt mirrors and chandeliers, with two Michelin stars and a spot at number two on the National Restaurant Awards 2026 list. John Williams has cooked here for close to two decades, keeping the cooking classical French but lighter than it looks.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #2 · The National Restaurant Awards
3. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

The man who ran the American Bar at the Savoy for nearly eight years now runs this sleek Mayfair cocktail bar a short walk from Green Park. Erik Lorincz built Kwãnt around drinks that don't resemble anything else in London, layering fermented teas, misos, and awamori into compositions that feel genuinely considered rather than merely unusual. It ranks on the World's 50 Best Bars list. The room is calm and grown-up, which lets the cocktails do the talking.

1. The 50 #79 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

The staircase climb to this three-Michelin-starred Modern French dining room in Pierre Gagnaire's Mayfair townhouse is half the experience, the anticipation building through every gilded, riotously coloured floor on the way up. Once seated, the kitchen sends out intricate multi-dish courses where a single protein arrives in several preparations at once, which sounds like a culinary thesis but somehow reads as generosity. Formal, grand, and absolutely not for a Tuesday-night pizza mood.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Stars
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The ground floor is a proper pub, rammed most hours with people working through what regulars insist is the finest pint of Guinness in London. Climb the stairs and The Devonshire becomes a grill room, where dry-aged beef butchered on site meets an open-fire kitchen. The team behind it includes a former Heston Blumenthal lieutenant, which explains the quiet technical seriousness underneath what looks, pleasantly, like a Soho pub having a very good time. Top 50 Gastropubs ranked it first in 2026.

1. World's 101 Best #45 · World's Best Steak Restaurants
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Gastropub of the Year · The National Restaurant Awards
3. Top 50 Gastropubs 2026 · #1 · Top 50 Gastropubs

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.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. The Infatuation #25 · The 25 Best Restaurants In London
3. Eater The 38 Best London Restaurants

Your coat gets dry-cleaned while you eat, which tells you everything about the register here. Row on 5 is Jason Atherton and Spencer Metzger's two-Michelin-starred fine dining room on Savile Row, where dinner begins underground with birdsong and champagne before you're led upstairs to a grand open kitchen. Tableside preparation, obsessive British sourcing, and a wine cellar situation that borders on theatrical. Dress accordingly.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #17 · The National Restaurant Awards
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Nieves Barragán Mohacho built her reputation at Barrafina, and Sabor on Heddon Street is where she went fully her own way. The ground floor runs as a lively tapas counter and bar, no reservations, seats gone fast; upstairs, El Asador takes bookings and centres on a wood-fired oven where Segovian suckling pig arrives crackling and serious. It holds a Michelin star, and the Chef of the Year nod from the National Restaurant Awards follows her here.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Chef of the Year · The National Restaurant Awards · Nieves Barragán Mohacho
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #53 · The National Restaurant Awards

The clay pots, woks, and open grill do most of the talking at this compact, no-bookings Thai spot on Brewer Street. The menu pulls from northern Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and Yunnan, and when the kitchen says something is hot, believe them. Ingredients are sourced with quiet obsession, Cornish dayboats and serious British meat producers, at prices that make the Michelin Bib Gourmand feel like an understatement. Get there early, and grab the counter if you can.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Chef to Watch · The National Restaurant Awards · Meedu Saad
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #21 · The National Restaurant Awards
3. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The coral reef ceiling by Damien Hirst sets the tone before you've ordered anything: this is Mayfair doing Asian-inspired food and cocktails with a straight face and a very large budget. The room is all bronzed mermaids and mirrored walls, and the crowd dresses accordingly. The bar program is serious despite the spectacle, and the kitchen sends out sushi and robata to tables full of people who booked weeks out.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · Rising Star · Top 50 Cocktail Bars · Jelena Bulatovskaja
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #94 · The National Restaurant Awards

Mirrored ceilings and gossamer curtains separate this two-Michelin-starred fine dining room from the chaos of Regent Street below, which feels like exactly the point. The chef trained under both Alain Ducasse and Hélène Darroze, and the modern French cooking shows it: classical dishes arrive recognizable in name and transformed in every other way, plated with the kind of precision that makes the room go quietly focused.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A nine-metre steel bar anchors this tiny, dark speakeasy tucked beneath the Kricket restaurant group's original Soho site. The cocktail menu, called "In Search of the Divine," pulls from the Indian subcontinent, so your Old Fashioned comes with coconut and jaggery and your margarita gets chaat masala. It holds 23 people, runs until 3am, and operates mostly on walk-ins, which either sounds chaotic or ideal depending on your evening. Ranked in the Top 50 Cocktail Bars.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #48 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars
3. The Infatuation The 22 Best Bars In London

A flower-filled pool and a buzzing bar greet you on the way up to this Mayfair Indian dining room, which holds a Michelin star and pulls a crowd split evenly between power lunches and date nights. The chef's cooking takes Indian tradition somewhere more restless and precise, with the sourcing doing a lot of the quiet work. Private rooms make it a favorite with the suits, but the room itself earns the evening on its own.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The three floors here map to a tree: pale oak upstairs for branches, darker ground level for the trunk, and a basement bar for the roots. It's a Michelin-starred Modern British restaurant backed by Hedonism Wines next door, which means any bottle from the shop arrives at your table in fifteen minutes. A window seat on the top floor, with Green Park below, makes that arrangement feel almost unreasonably civilised.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Michael Caines holds a Michelin star at this fine dining room tucked inside The Stafford, a hotel so discreet in St James's that finding it feels like a small victory. Devon produce anchors the chef's signature dishes, while tableside beef Wellington handles the classics side of things. The wine list runs deep, with serious vintages in cellars that have been around forever. Quiet, unhurried, and very much for people who dress for dinner.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Tucked into the basement of Flemings hotel, this Michelin-starred fine dining room runs on set menus and unapologetically formal service, which in Mayfair is either a relief or a warning depending on who you are. The chef's Moroccan heritage threads through otherwise very British cooking, Orkney scallops and Cornish mackerel sitting alongside dishes built around preserved lemon and warm spice. A room for people who find "a scene" exhausting.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

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.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

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.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · Restaurateur of the Year · The National Restaurant Awards · Adam Byatt

Named for Queen Elizabeth II's childhood nickname, this Mayfair seafood restaurant sits on the Bruton Street site where she was born, a fact the room leans into without going overboard. The Edwardian interior moves through adjoining spaces that feel like a grand private house, each corner finished differently. The menu is built around live-fire seafood, with oysters, whole fish, and a rotating fish triptych served raw, grilled, and as a pressure-cooked soup. Stately and expensive.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #57 · The National Restaurant Awards
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Matisse hangs in the toilets, which tells you roughly where you stand at this modern French fine dining room on a quietly confident Mayfair mews. The chef, ex-Petrus and Le Manoir, draws produce from a private Northamptonshire estate and seafood from a Scottish island, then folds in subtle Sri Lankan touches throughout. The wine cellar, worth around a million pounds, somehow has some of the lowest mark-ups on the street.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #75 · The National Restaurant Awards
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The plush red curtain parts to reveal a narrow wood-panelled bar that feels like Mayfair's idea of a Brooklyn red-sauce joint, which is exactly what it is. The Italian-American menu runs to spaghetti and meatballs and prawn cocktail with horseradish, all served with a studied elegance that stops just short of self-parody. Order a martini, because the staff will swap your glass for a freshly chilled one the moment it warms, which tells you everything about the tone of the room.

1. National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #36 · The National Restaurant Awards
2. The Infatuation The 17 Best Italian Restaurants In London

The "Press for Champagne" button at every booth is not a gimmick so much as a philosophy. This reservation-only downstairs cocktail bar is all David Collins deco, monogrammed everything, and opulent blue-and-pink booths that somehow avoid being garish. Cocktails are the point here, served in surroundings that suggest a very glamorous train that never has to arrive anywhere.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Perched on the top floor of Kingly Court, this Filipino restaurant holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a room with a history of turning into something better than you expected. The chef grew up in the UK, so the menu runs Filipino flavors through British produce, with dishes like chicken inasal and lechon with liver and peppercorn sauce doing most of the talking. Come with friends and a tolerance for noise.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The Infatuation #17 · The 25 Best Restaurants In London
3. The Infatuation The 24 Best Restaurants In Soho

Vintage vinyl lines the shelves and a pair of decks sits tucked behind the bar, which tells you something about how seriously this Mayfair cocktail bar takes atmosphere. It lives inside the restaurant Nijū but operates on its own quiet logic, the kind of place where the hospitality anticipates what you need before you say it. The drinks are inventive without being showy, and the room feels more like a living room than a scene.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Restaurant Bar – Europe
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Art deco interior, deliberately low-lit, tucked into Kingly Court's covered yard off Carnaby Street. This is a cocktail bar that leans Italian aperitivo: the menu summarises itself as "luxurious libations and late-night liaisons," which is either perfectly on-brand or mildly incriminating depending on your evening. Drinks are elegant without being theatrical, garnishes kept in check. It ranked 45th on the Top 50 Cocktail Bars list, which the room carries without making a fuss about it.

1. Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2026 · #45 · Top 50 Cocktail Bars

Counter seats facing the open kitchen are the ones to angle for at this Soho izakaya, where the vibe tips firmly toward cold beer and loosened collars after dark. The team behind Roji opened it recently, and the robata grill and deep-fryer do most of the talking: fried chicken, duck udon, red shrimp off the coals. Small, lively, and not the place for a quiet conversation.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The Infatuation #10 · The 25 Best Restaurants In London
3. The Infatuation The 24 Best Restaurants In Soho

You reach it through a quiet cobbled mews off St James's Street, past a row of old stables, which is either romantic or mildly confusing depending on your navigation skills. The American Bar inside The Stafford Hotel is an old-school hotel bar draped in decades of accumulated Americana: baseball caps, club ties, and model planes hang from the ceiling alongside photos of guests ranging from Dolly Parton to Margaret Thatcher.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The basement lounge bar beneath Novikov's two restaurants has a supperclub atmosphere that feels engineered to make you order another round. It's a cocktail bar built for Mayfair money, the kind of room where the lighting flatters everyone equally and the spending tends to follow suit. A Moscow restaurateur's first London outpost, the whole building runs on theatre, and some of that energy makes it downstairs.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The Donovan Bar is the dim, clubby cocktail den tucked into a Mayfair hotel, where the menu runs from a normal £25 martini up to a vintage daiquiri that costs about as much as a used car. Nobody makes you order the car. The room is sultry and surprisingly unstuffy, a good setting for a punchy martini, some light public affection, and a quiet moment of financial reflection.

1. The Infatuation The 14 Best Hotel Bars In London, Ranked By Most Expensive Cocktail
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Hotel Bar – Europe

The marble counter running along the open kitchen is the seat to ask for at this long-running Soho Italian, where the menu lists each dish's region of origin as if the boot itself were the organizing principle. The cooking leans into classic technique, the room hums most nights, and the service keeps pace. When dessert comes up, they run Gelupo, an ice cream shop across the street, which is a tidy arrangement.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The Infatuation The 17 Best Italian Restaurants In London
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The Infatuation The 24 Best Restaurants In Soho

The slow-cooked lamb shoulder is the thing to order, though the hummus and falafel will make a case for themselves too. This Syrian restaurant on the top floor of Kingly Court started somewhere much smaller and outgrew it, which tells you something. The menu is built for sharing, heavy on Middle Eastern flavours, and priced to make you feel like you got away with something. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, and you can see why.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

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.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The crudo bar at this sleek Mayfair spot is the reason to pull up a stool rather than a chair. It's an Italian bar with serious cocktail credentials, Difford's Guide, listed, set inside a room that manages to feel both polished and relaxed. The terrace catches good light. Order something cold, eat something raw, and let the elegant surroundings do what elegant surroundings in Mayfair always do: make you feel you've made excellent decisions.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A vintage London Underground carriage parked in the middle of a Soho cocktail bar sets the tone early. Cahoots leans hard into its 1940s Blitz-era conceit, with a speakeasy vibe, live music, and vintage DJs to keep the period piece from feeling static. The cocktail list matches the theme, all rum and bourbon combinations with theatrical names. You'll need to book ahead for entry, which, at a bar built around a secret, feels about right.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Rose velvet banquettes, candelabra on every table, and a room so dim you'd miss it if you weren't looking: Kitty Fisher's is a small, romantic restaurant tucked into Shepherd Market that runs on British and Spanish instincts at once. The menu shifts with the seasons, but the kitchen's taste for punchy, carefully sourced ingredients stays put. Mayfair prices, obviously, though the room feels more like a secret than a scene.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The counter is 200-year-old cypress wood, which sets the tone immediately. This nine-seat Mayfair omakase room runs two sittings a night, one menu, no substitutions, and a level of precision that borders on the ceremonial. Mitsuhiro Araki's long-time deputy now runs the kitchen, carrying forward standards that leave no margin for improvisation. A special-occasion place by design, with prices to match. The 50 Discovery named it among their picks.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Beef Wellington carved tableside and ice cream floats on the dessert menu sounds like a contradiction, but 45 Jermyn St pulls it off without irony. This bright, comfortable brasserie in St James's runs a menu of European and British classics, with a cocktail list long enough to make the decision genuinely difficult. The room has a quietly luxurious feel, a nod to its former life as Fortnum's Fountain, and the service is polished enough to notice without being stiff.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Fire is the organizing principle at Alta, a Northern Spanish sharing-plates restaurant tucked across two floors of Kingly Court in Soho. The menu leans on Navarra influences, running everything from Middlewhite pork to white beetroot through the flames for a char that ties the room together. The team navigates the menu with you rather than reciting it at you, which in this neighborhood counts for something.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Lázaro Rosa-Violan's rainforest interiors set the tone at this sprawling Latin American restaurant in Mayfair: layers of timber and terracotta, enough leafy plants to require a machete. The kitchen travels the Amazon basin through the cuisines of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. It started in Madrid, spread to Dubai and Monte-Carlo, and the London room on Berkeley Square draws the kind of crowd that dresses for the jungle only if the jungle has a dress code.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Tajima Wagyu over binchotan charcoal, seasoned with nothing but salt and pepper, is essentially the whole menu at this Japanese steakhouse tucked into Mayfair. The cuts are serious enough that the restraint feels earned rather than fussy. The room has the feel of a very composed private living room, which either puts you at ease or makes you wonder if you've wandered into the wrong flat.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The black-and-white photographs and 1920s banquettes will feel familiar if you remember what stood here before, and that's rather the point. Arlington is a polished European restaurant in St James's where the menu stays firmly in the classics, dressed crab, chicken Milanese, a fishcake that regulars will argue about at length. The room runs with the kind of quiet efficiency that money tends to buy, and the back banquettes fill early.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The animal-adorned wallpaper is a nod to Rudyard Kipling, who allegedly wrote The Jungle Book while staying at Brown's Hotel. It's a handsome, traditional hotel dining room: wood panelling, deep armchairs, and enough colour to stop it feeling stuffy. The menu leans Modern British with a Mediterranean drift, so the homemade pasta earns its place alongside the roasts. The kind of room that makes you feel you should be wearing a jacket, and you probably should.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. The Pinnacle Guide 2 Pins
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The Knickerbocker Glory you build yourself is either the cheekiest move on any Mayfair menu or the most honest one, depending on your mood. Dovetale is a full-service restaurant inside 1 Hotel Mayfair, all natural materials and trailing greenery, with a terrace that earns its keep in summer. The food looks to Europe for its bearings, leaning into sharing plates and the kind of cooking that lets good ingredients carry the argument.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Light wood, trailing foliage, and hand-painted ceramic tiles fill two cheerful floors on Heddon Street, where Santiago Lastra of KOL has scaled up the fonda, Mexico's neighbourhood canteen, into a full-blown Mayfair restaurant. The format is made for sharing: carnitas arrive with fresh tortillas, cocktails come in quantity, and the chef's cheesecake has become something of a signature. The room runs loud and warm, the way it's supposed to.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A cocktail bar greets you at street level before you descend into the restaurant proper, where teppanyaki and sushi counters ring the room. This is a full-service Japanese dining room in the heart of St. James's, the kind of neighborhood that expects white tablecloths and gets them. The sake list runs deep, the à la carte covers serious ground, and nasu dengaku is the sleeper dish worth ordering.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Northern Thai barbecue is the spine of the menu at this lively Soho restaurant, which built its following through a residency near Borough Market before landing a permanent spot on Brewer Street. The cooking ranges across regions but keeps coming back to smoke and char, with the kind of vibrant, confident flavours that don't ask much of your wallet on the way out. It fills up fast and feels exactly like where Soho is right now.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The neon sign pulling you off Stratton Street is the first signal that Langan's takes its own mythology seriously. This Mayfair brasserie has been around forever, and the relaunched version keeps the art-covered walls and the formal-but-warm service that made the original a scene. The menu runs on classics: Caesar salad, fish pie, beef Wellington for two, chocolate mousse. It knows exactly what it is, and it isn't changing.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

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.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The chandeliers are made from repurposed wine and cocktail glasses, which tells you something about the room before you've even sat down. Sucre is a Latin American and Mediterranean restaurant set in a former concert hall in Soho, all high ceilings and ornate bones, with an open parrilla doing the heavy lifting on the menu. The team is genuinely charming, the flavors run bold, and the pre-theatre menu makes an evening in the West End feel almost affordable.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

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

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

There's no sign outside, just a bell to push and a lobby that makes you feel like you're about to do something mildly illicit. Milk and Honey is a members-style cocktail bar on Poland Street with a downtown New York pedigree, the sibling of Sasha Petraske's Manhattan original that helped reshape what a serious bar could be. The hush inside is very much the point.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

Glass demijohns of infused pisco line the bar at this subterranean Peruvian cocktail bar tucked beneath Coya on Piccadilly. The basement does a convincing job of making Mayfair disappear: carved woodwork and ornate South American details swallow the room whole. The crowd leans well-dressed, which tracks for the postcode. Pisco anchors the menu, flanked by tequila and mezcal for anyone who needs convincing.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Dukes Bar is a small, old-school martini room tucked inside a St. James's hotel, where Ian Fleming drank and "shaken, not stirred" is said to have been born. The glasses and spirits live in the freezer, and the drinks are mixed at your table with enough ceremony to make you forget the carpet. Expect strong pours, a hushed room, and cocktail prices that suit the postcode.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Infatuation The 14 Best Hotel Bars In London, Ranked By Most Expensive Cocktail
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

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

The Rivoli is the cocktail lounge off the Ritz lobby, where gold is less a colour than a house rule, right down to the leaf floating in the fizzing Ritz 110. Velvet leopard-print chairs add some mischief to the glamour. Expect a hotel-bar price tag and the sort of people-watching that makes you wish a Bravo camera crew were seated nearby, mid-Gibson, discussing a settlement. Champagne cocktails are the obvious move, given the address.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Infatuation The 14 Best Hotel Bars In London, Ranked By Most Expensive Cocktail

The copper-topped bar and wood-panelled walls give this Soho cocktail bar the feel of someone's very well-stocked living room, which suits the mood upstairs from Jason Atherton's Social Eating House. The drinks are serious, and the bar snacks, pork sliders and duck rillettes among them, are the kind of thing that makes leaving harder than it should be. "Dill or No Dill" remains on the menu, which tells you enough about the room's personality.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Georgian bay window at the front does a lot of the work here, pulling Mayfair's more well-heeled regulars in off Charles Street to lean against it with a pint. This is a proper pub, if a rather polished one, with crisp white linen in the dining room at the back and private floors above for when you need to be discreet about something. The footman of the name is long gone, but the postcode still sets the dress code.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Dark leather armchairs and pine-toned wood give this cocktail bar the feel of a library where someone eventually brings you a drink. It sits inside Jason Atherton's Mayfair flagship, though the Social Room earns its own orbit, unhurried and a little more stylish than the average hotel bar shortcut off Oxford Street. Settle into a couch along the wall and let the bar team do the rest.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Infatuation The 17 Best Ice Cream Spots In London

1. The Infatuation The 17 Best Ice Cream Spots In London

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The 1937 Cafe Royal Cocktail Book was written here, which tells you something about the building's relationship with a good drink. The bar itself, tucked off Air Street behind a discreet Art Deco sign, is darker and more industrial than the grand hotel around it would suggest. Dark green glass bricks line the walls, and an island bar anchors the room. A cocktail bar, in other words, that takes its history seriously without making you sit through a lecture about it.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Two floors of Polynesian-themed basement beneath Mayfair, where the "Lanai Lounge" comes lined with black bamboo and lauhala mats, and the "Aloha Party Room" below that pairs orange banquettes with 1970s lampshades. This is a tiki bar, not a quiet drinks spot, and the crowd arriving in evening wear to dance to funky tunes seems entirely unbothered by the contradiction. Come dressed for a party, because the room certainly has.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A neon Tracey Emin original reading "Keep me safe" guides you through the Royal Academy's courtyard and into a lift that opens straight into this cocktail bar, tucked in the old Keeper's House wing. The room is small and the setup is serious, with botanically driven drinks and service that manages to feel genuinely warm without trying too hard. An easy place to lose an evening, or an afternoon, for that matter.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Tucked in the basement beneath a Mexican restaurant on Brewer Street, this compact cocktail bar organizes its drinks menu around tequila and rum, divided into Batidas, Margaritas, Daiquiris, and the catchall "Gringos." Dick Bradsell, who invented the Bramble and the Vodka Espresso, has been known to hold court here, which is the kind of detail that makes a basement bar feel like a discovery rather than an oversight.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Infatuation The 24 Best Restaurants In Soho

1. The Infatuation The 24 Best Restaurants In Soho

1. The Infatuation The 24 Best Restaurants In Soho

1. The Infatuation The 24 Best Restaurants In Soho

Dark wood walls, dim lighting, and soft leather chairs sit below street level near Piccadilly Circus, giving this classic cocktail bar the feel of somewhere that has always existed, deep underground, waiting for you specifically. The room strikes a balance between sophisticated and slightly conspiratorial, the kind of place where you order a second drink before finishing your first and nobody thinks less of you for it.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide