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British food hasn't always had the best reputation, but nowhere in the country is that reputation being completely upturned more than in London. The city has zoomed up the global gastro charts, and can now seriously compete with the world’s top culinary heavyweights. The truth is that no other city—barring New York—has the immense range of global cuisines that London has to offer. Standards have rocketed at all price points, and every year it seems like the London restaurant scene is better than ever.
Feel like eating the most-tender Kagoshima Wagyu beef on planet Earth? It can be yours for £150 at CUT at 45 Park Lane. Want to try old English gastronomy from the time of Henry VIII with an ultramodern twist? Ashley Palmer-Watts is your man at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. Do you only eat Sri Lankan hoppers? No worries, we’ve got just the thing: Hoppers in Soho will give you a taste of the Sri Lankan pancake, for £4.50 a pop. Can’t stand any more snobby culinary nonsense? The low-key British wild game is so good at The Harwood Arms in Fulham that they’ve earned London’s first gastro-pub-based Michelin star.
To appreciate how far London has risen in the food game, just look back to the days of Somerset Maugham, who was once justified in warning, "To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day." Change was slow after World War II, when it was understood that the British ate to live, while the French lived to eat. When people thought of British cuisine, fish-and-chips—a greasy grab-and-gulp dish that tasted best wrapped in yesterday's newspaper—first came to mind. Then there was always shepherd's pie, ubiquitously found in smoke-filled pubs, though not made, according to Sweeney Todd, "with real shepherd in it."
These days, standards are miles higher and shepherd’s pie has been largely replaced by the city's unofficial dish, Indian curry. London’s restaurant revolution is built on its extraordinary ethnic diversity, and you’ll find the quality of other global cuisines has grown immeasurably in recent years, with London becoming known for its Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Thai, Spanish, Italian, French, Peruvian, and west African restaurants. Thankfully, pride in the best of British food—local, seasonal, wild, and foraged—is enjoying quite the renaissance, too.
Enjoy the best pint of Guinness in London at the atmospheric saloon bar within this Georgian pub, grill, and restaurant just across the road from the Piccadilly Theatre. With its expert in-house butcher and wood-fired grill, expect phenomenal classics like Oban langoustines, lamb hotpot, or traditional beef cheek and Guinness suet pudding bathed in a rich gravy. Dogs are welcome, and be sure to ask to sit in one of the three cozy snugs hidden behind the ground-floor bar.
Downton Abbey meets The Crown at this quintessentially English, old-school dining salon located within an Edwardian-era hotel down the road from Buckingham Palace. A favorite with royalty and courtiers, here you can enjoy daily specials like traditional beef Wellington and Dover sole or antediluvian quirks such as Eggs Drumkilbo (a hard-boiled egg/lobster seafood cocktail with caviar, currently reinvented using soft quail eggs)—a onetime favorite of the late Queen Mother. The Michelin star is clearly not just for the food, but for the impeccable service as well. Opt for the raspberry sorbet with Ayala Champagne for a decadent end to your meal.
The unassuming breakfast room at the Stafford London hotel transforms into the Game Bird restaurant after noon, offering all-day dining until 9 pm; come in the evening for a wonderful atmosphere, and let the sommelier choose the best wine to accompany dishes that use the finest British produce. The menu includes crowd-pleasers like oysters Rockefeller, Devon dressed crab, and Dover sole meunière. Try the steak and ale steamed suet pudding, cooked to exquisite perfection, for a real taste of modern British cuisine. Executive chef Jozef Rogulski has worked collaboratively with Lisa Goodwin-Allen, the Michelin-starred executive chef at Northcote, so it's no surprise that every mouthful delights. Leave room for the lemon meringue parfait with basil snow.
There's an old Amsterdam coffeehouse vibe at this dark and creaky wine bar and restaurant on historic Lamb's Conduit Street in Bloomsbury. Run by two wine buffs and cult wine magazine publishers, you'll find deceptively simple ingredient-driven British dishes like roast Yorkshire pheasant with bread sauce and quince. There's an ever-changing French and British cheese plate menu, fantastic focaccia, sourdough, and soda bread, and an ambrosial wine list.
A Soho dining institution since 1926, and once home to Karl Marx in the 1850s, here revered British chef Jeremy Lee MBE creates classic dishes like smoked eel sandwiches with horseradish and long-lost rarities such as Scottish Cullen skink smoked haddock and potato soup. Also look out for traditional meat pies of the day and stupendous terrines, as well as towering pavlovas and tasty sticky toffee puddings.
London's most opulent dining salon here at The Ritz would impress even Marie Antoinette with its sumptuous Gilded Age rococo revival trompe-l'oeil frescoes, tasseled silk drapery, and towering marble columns. Sit at the late Margaret Thatcher's favorite seat overlooking Green Park (Table 1) and luxuriate in unreconstructed British haute cuisine, such as langoustine à la nage or beef Wellington, carved table-side. Don't miss the crêpes suzette, which are flambéed table-side by the maître d'. The chef's five- and seven-course set menus are also a delight.
Opened by Thomas Rule in 1798, London's oldest restaurant is still perhaps its most beautiful. The epitome of High Victorian design, overflowing with antique portraits, prints, cartoons, busts, and taxidermy, here you can indulge in traditional British fare like jugged hare, steak and kidney pie, or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. For a taste of the 18th century, choose game from the restaurant's High Pennines estate, including roast grouse, mallard, or pheasant. Snag a table in one of the skylit rooms or the spot where the Victorian-era Prince of Wales had trysts with the famed beauty and actress Lillie Langtry.
Everyone feels a zillion times more glamorous just stepping inside this candlelit restaurant attached to the swank Georgian-era hotel of the same name. Straightforward but endlessly fun retro British favorites include classic English pea and ham soup, primary school-style mince and potatoes, smoked haddock soufflé, and sticky toffee pudding. You'll also find quaint English scones and crumpets for afternoon tea and nostalgic 1970s-style fish finger sandwiches for traditional early evening high tea.
Medieval English cuisine meets molecular gastronomy in this reassuringly luxurious Blumenthal flagship, with two Michelin stars, within the Mandarin Oriental hotel. Try the signature "Meat Fruit" appetizer (last popular in the 16th century, it's a ball of ultrasmooth chicken liver parfait encased in a citrus-flavored gel "peel") or the much-more-appetizing-than-it-sounds "Rice and Flesh," a 15th-century dish of yellow saffron rice with beef cheeks and red wine. For dessert, don't miss the signature Tipsy Cake (circa 1810)—brioche soaked in Sauternes, brandy, and vanilla cream, with slices of pineapple slowly roasted on the restaurant's open-fire spit. A three-course set lunch (£59) offers good value, relatively speaking.
Diners flock to chef Miller Prada's Humo to enjoy the full-on experience provided by the chefs cooking on open wood fires in clear sight of tables. The 4-meter-long grill pit is the kind of flourish that lives long in the memory but is no mere interior design statement, it is the fuel that powers the entire kitchen: electricity and gas are removed from the equation and it is left up to flame, smoke, and ember to cook the likes of Jerusalem artichoke with roasted chestnut and aged Brixham turbot.
The area between Victoria and Westminster is something of a wasteland in terms of independent quick-bite eateries, but this minimalist café serves excellent coffee, salads, wraps, and more. Peak office lunchtimes can get pretty busy, so aim to avoid the rush if you want to dine in.
Tom Kerridge made his name earning Michelin stars at rural gastropubs, and there's still a sense of pub grub about the menu here, at his first London restaurant, despite the glamorous high-ceilinged dining room, flawless service, and rather steep prices. That's no bad thing, however, when you've got a chef as skilled as Kerridge—think rich, meat-focused dishes served alongside unusual twists, such as gherkin ketchup or black cabbage purée.
Hidden away in the depths of a Mayfair hotel, Ormer delivers modern British cooking at its finest. In the art deco–inspired basement haven, you can indulge in elegant dishes from executive chef Sofian Msetfi, which celebrate the seasonal and the foraged. You'll find options from roast anjou pigeon to warm Iberico ham jelly. The wide-ranging wine list features an excellent selection of English fizz. At £79 a head, the tasting menu is exceptionally reasonable for the quality you receive.
Stroll west along the Thames, past the interesting architectural remnants of the Greenwich Steam Ferry, to this bright, friendly, waterside pub. Downstairs, you'll find upmarket pub fare—think fish pie with lobster or artichoke and mushroom hotpot with hispi cabbage—while there's a fancier, fine-dining menu upstairs.
A laid-back, airy, Art Deco--inspired gastropub serving up quality Modern British food, The Prince Bonaparte offers a fine selection of ales and carefully chosen wines. A stone's throw from Portobello Market, it's the perfect place for a drink or a bite to eat.
You'll feel like quite the foodie insider once you finally track down the quirky Rochelle Canteen, founded by Melanie Arnold and Margot Henderson, two doyennes of the London food scene. It's set in a former bike shed at the Victorian-era Rochelle School—ring the buzzer next to a blue door, go through the "Boys" entrance, and enter the long white canteen, where you'll enjoy gloriously understated British fare ranging from monkfish liver parfait and crab apple jelly to beef and pickled walnut pie. Bump along with the Frieze London art crowd and enjoy braised chard with ricotta on toast, or go for a dessert such as poached quince with chocolate sauce and praline or a velvety custard tart.
You can feel the history at this 1889 Art Deco--dining powerhouse, which has hosted everyone from Winston Churchill to Marilyn Monroe. Nowadays it caters to business barons, well-heeled West Enders, and wealthy tourists, who come for the Grill's famed table-side silver serving trolley, which might trundle up laden with roast beef or a succulent saddle of lamb. Savoy signatures like twice-baked Arnold Bennett soufflé (with flaked haddock, chives, and Montgomery cheddar sauce) or Peach Melba dessert always impress, as do other timeless classics like Chateaubriand steaks, beef Wellington, and lobster Thermidor.
Lords, ladies, and other assorted aristocrats blow the family bank at this Edwardian bastion of traditional English fine dining on Jermyn Street (the place first opened near the Haymarket as a shellfish stall in 1742). Posh patrons tend to order half a dozen oysters, followed by grilled Dover sole, Blythburgh pork from the carving trolley, or fabulous native game, such as roast partridge, grouse, or teal. There is also soft herring roe on toast, plus pleasing desserts like Peach Melba or sherry trifle.
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