Omakase typically features a variety of raw fish, including nigiri and temaki, as well as hot dishes like tempura or soup. It can be a formal, traditional experience, or veer toward a more unconventional, modern interpretation. Either way, an excellent omakase is an unforgettable experience that goes beyond the food itself. 

The past decade has brought a slew of new omakase options to London. The Araki, initially led by sushi master Mitsuhiro Araki, debuted in 2014 and by 2018, had earned three Michelin stars. Endo at the Rotunda, from revered chef Endo Kazutoshi, arrived in 2019, setting a high bar for London omakase. (Endo closed last year after a fire, and is currently operating a pop-up at Annabel’s.) Sushi Kanesaka, from Shinji Kanesaka, opened in 2023, upping the ante for quality and discerning service. 

Less traditional takes, like Luna Omakase, and more approachable options, like Kurisu Omakase, have ensured that locals and visitors can access a similar experience in a more accessible setting. There are, of course, plenty of casual Japanese and sushi restaurants throughout the city, but these omakases represent a coveted premium—the best of the best.

Sushi Kanesaka

• 45 Park Ln, London W1K 1PN

Hidden inside the Dorchester’s 45 Park Lane hotel, Sushi Kanesaka is widely considered London’s premier omakase. It is also the most expensive, at £420 per person. That price tag gets you a 20-course experience with head chef Hirotaka Wada, who creates each piece of sushi with extreme precision and dedication. The menu features numerous high-end ingredients, including multiple cuts of tuna, A5 Kobe beef, beluga caviar and blue lobster, all served with the accouterments that best suit each product. Watching Wada work is worth the cost—the space is so intimate, you are up close to the action from every seat. It’s a splurge, but a special occasion necessitates this level of artistry. You’ll be thinking about the mouthwatering negi-toro hand roll, chopped and rolled to order, for weeks to come.

Sushi Amamoto

• 36 Albemarle St, London W1S 4JE

Formerly Sushi Taku, Sushi Amamoto is led by founder and executive chef Shogo Amamoto, whose Taipei omakase restaurant has a year-long waitlist. The chef is known for Edomae-style sushi and an obsession over each element of the experience, from the fish to the rice to the water used to cook the rice. Sushi Amamoto, helmed by head chef Jongho Park, showcases this precision in an immaculate space, complete with a stylish cell phone mat at each place setting. There are two menus available: a 17-course lunch omakase (£180) and a 22-course prestige dinner omakase (£380), with an option to add a sommelier pairing. The menu shifts based on what’s available, but the rolled oshizushi course is a delightful constant. There are only 16 seats, so book early.

Luna Omakase

• 100 Liverpool St, London EC2M 2AT

Located within Los Mochis London City, Luna Omakase is a contemporary, fashionable take on an omakase. It features 12 seats and showcases a reimagining of Sosaku-style Edomae cuisine, inspired by the 12 phases of the moon. Guests are served 12 courses, each corresponding to a distinct lunar cycle, and no menu is the same. It’s led by executive head chef Leonard Tanyag, who envisioned an omakase experience that embraced tradition while also exploring creativity—a sensibility also showcased in the stylish décor. The menu runs £230, with the option to add drinks and additional sushi.

Juno Omakase

• 2-4 Farmer St, London W8 7SN

Only six guests at a time can partake in Juno Omakase, also from chef Leonard Tanyag. It combines Japanese tradition with Mexican flavors and styles—an unusual take that results in ingredients like purple perilla salt, gusano, and guajillo soy. The menu, at £230, spans 15 courses, with each day offering something completely unique. It’s tough to score a reservation due to limited seating, but it’s well worth the time and effort. Like Luna Omakase, Juno is part of Los Mochis, a group of Japanese-Mexican fusion restaurants spanning London (and, next year, Los Angeles). It’s a less traditional pick, but a great entry into omakase for those who aren’t as familiar with it.

Maru

• 18 Shepherd Market, London W1J 7QH

Chefs Yasushiro Ochiai and Taiji Maruyama helm Maru, a formal omakase in Mayfair that primarily uses British ingredients and fish. The restaurant takes a farm-to-table approach—everything is seasonal and at its peak flavor. The space is exceptionally stylish, with great detail in each serve. Maru’s self-described “pure art” menu typically runs 18 courses, with the option for a sake pairing. Dinner costs £220, with lunch offered for £180 on Saturdays only. Maru is a sister restaurant to Taka, a contemporary Japanese eatery in Marylebone with a more accessible and budget-friendly menu.

Mayha

• 43 Chiltern St, London W1U 6LS

Mayha unfolds in an elegant Mayfair space with just 11 seats around a curved wooden countertop. The dinner menu, £200 per person, is served across two seatings, while the shorter lunch menu, £100 per person, is available Tuesday through Saturday for those who want a more compact experience (dinner is by reservation only). The ever-changing, seasonal menu focuses on craftsmanship and tradition, and the service is synchronized for all guests. Reservations are most often available during the week, making this a good pick for a last-minute dinner that won’t completely break the bank.

Tobi Masa

• 30 Grosvenor Sq, London W1K

The opulent Chancery Rosewood hotel is home to Tobi Masa, the latest outpost from revered chef Masayoshi Takayama. The sushi restaurant is as elegant as the hotel, which opened last fall, and inside its vast dining room is a seven-seat omakase counter. There are two seatings per night—6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.—and for £260, guests can enjoy a range of sushi and sashimi served with impeccable attention to detail. The menu shifts based on what fish is currently available, but often features tuna, scallops and Scottish langoustines. It’s not as intimate as some of the other London omakase options, but it’s a great way to enjoy Takayama’s approach.

For Aktar Islam, cooking is a process of discovery. Each dish on the expansive tasting menu at his two-Michelin-starred restaurant, Opheem, is the result of years of curiosity and cultivation—something you can taste in each course. The restaurant, a calm oasis off a busy street in central Birmingham, showcases the breadth of Indian cuisine across 10 courses, from an elevated take on Delhi’s aloo tuk to a West Bengal-inspired fish broth called amla tok. 

Instead of focusing on a particular region, as many Indian restaurants do, Opheem tells the story of a British chef who grew up in a multicultural city with immigrant parents. Islam, 46, has spent his entire career exploring the possibilities of Indian flavors, ingredients and traditions. 

“My parents are from Bangladesh and West Bengal, and I had cultural delicacies I was brought up with and I understood,” he tells Observer, speaking from the dining room of his more casual London restaurant, Oudh 1722, which opened in April. “But I was able to also experience so much more, which led me to be curious about cooking from other parts of India and the Indian diaspora. My approach and understanding of Indian food is very wide and varied.”

Islam grew up in the Aston area of Birmingham, a diverse neighborhood near the soccer stadium. His parents owned a restaurant, India Palace, but his mom also often watched the long-running BBC Two culinary show Food and Drink and copied the recipes, which meant Islam learned about more than just Indian cuisine. His neighbors would also trade dishes, exposing the chef to food from all over the world. 

“We got a little bit of everything,” he says. “People ask why the cooking at Opheem is so broad, and it’s because I’m a Brummie, born and bred. I don’t actually have any cultural ties or biases. I enjoy everything just as much.”

Since then, Islam has eagerly studied Indian culinary traditions and cooking styles. He’s built a library of hundreds of books, some of which are on display in Opheem’s lounge, while others are at his home or in the test kitchen downstairs. But a lot of his knowledge comes from firsthand experience. He travels frequently and always spends time cooking with locals—that’s where the nuance comes from. 

“It’s great reading recipes, but to actually cook with someone from that part of the world and have them explain certain things is best,” he says. “Books are great because they are factual—everything’s written down in black and white. But with Indian food, recipes are guidelines. It’s how you cook and the reactions happening in the pan or with the spices. It’s a very personal thing. To cook alongside someone and hear their stories, you get the full essence of what they’re trying to do.” 

Islam began cooking as a teenager. At 13, he worked in his parents’ restaurant and later branched out to other eateries around England’s Midlands region. He opened his first restaurant in his 20s, but it wasn’t until he debuted Opheem in 2018 that Islam really hit his stride as a chef. The elegant, modern space (a former nightclub) was the ideal forum to showcase his own take on Indian dishes, regardless of region. It was an opportunity to put his vision at the forefront of his work. 

“I remember being 13 or 14 and being very opinionated,” he says. “When I started cooking, I would try to tell these older curry chefs what to do. Early on, I realized what we thought of as Indian food in England wasn’t true Indian food. We have this model for British curry houses, but the dishes there had very little to do with the root recipes or root inspirations. I wanted to fight that standard.”

Those older chefs usually told Islam to shut up and keep chopping onions. “I would sit there muttering to myself, ‘Someday I’ll show you,’” he says. “I’ve spent most of my life learning and then teaching people and trying to encourage the curry industry to come along on that journey with me. And that journey isn’t always about moving forward. It’s about looking to the past and to our roots.”

Opheem earned its first Michelin star in 2019, becoming the first Indian restaurant in the U.K. outside of London to do so. “It was a massive moment,” Islam remembers. “It was something I’d worked towards my whole life. At my [former] restaurants, I was involved with other people with so many opinions. One of them had said to me, ‘Nobody wants your fancy plates of shit.’ With Opheem, I could do whatever I wanted to do, irrespective of anyone’s opinion. Plus, I had enlisted a really young team, so when I got the star, I did it with a bunch of 19-year-olds.” 

In 2024, Opheem received a second star, becoming the first restaurant in Birmingham to achieve the honor. Although Islam won’t specifically say if he’s aiming for a coveted third star, it’s clear from the experience at Opheem that he and his team—now all grown up—are operating at an elite level. The service is precise, the experience is refined but not stuffy, and the dishes reflect years of detailed evolution. Certain plates, like the Orkney scallop and the aloo tuk, have been constants on the menu, continually tweaked to near perfection. Other dishes shift with the seasons—I had a beautifully presented iteration of asparagus in late May that had already been replaced with a tomato dish by mid-June. 

The fish broth, augmented with Cornish sea bass and gooseberries, initially seems like an unusual course. The fruity, slightly tart broth tasted like nothing I’d ever had in an Indian restaurant. But Islam says it’s actually one of the most traditional dishes he does. 

“People look at us and say that we’re very progressive, which we are, and they assume that the mainstream curry restaurant is what’s more authentic,” he says. “But in reality, Opheem is more authentic than any of those. That broth is cooked exactly how it would be in a home in a village somewhere in Bangladesh. All we do is we refine it by removing some of the impurities and by heightening the flavor of the acidity, the umami and so on.”

He adds, “In India, would they take a six-kilo bass and dry age it for a week in a salt aging chamber? No, they wouldn’t. But that’s the difference between us and them. But ultimately it’s about the flavor itself. What you had is the purest distillation of that flavor.” 

Opheem’s journey concludes with a nod to Birmingham rather than India. One of the desserts is titled “After Eight,” a nod to the British chocolate that is often handed out at the end of a restaurant meal. When Islam worked on Stratford Road, in an area known as the Birmingham Balti Triangle, as a teenager, guests often left with an After Eight in hand. His version is far more elegant and complex, but it hits the exact same chocolate and mint notes. 

“It’s an ode to that time and that part of my lived experience,” he says. “I wanted to nod to the traditions of Birmingham that have affected and influenced how I cook and what I cook.” 

If Opheem is a personal exploration of Indian cooking, Oudh 1722 is the result of personal interest. The restaurant showcases Islam’s interpretation of Awadhi tradition, a historical cuisine from Lucknow shaped by Persian, Mughal and Central Asian influences. Islam has gotten numerous opportunities over the years to expand Opheem or to open restaurants elsewhere, but he has generally resisted. Oudh 1722 is something else entirely. 

“I’ve always wanted Opheem to be a totally unique space in the world,” he says. “It’s food that comes from my heart, and it’s not going to be replicated anywhere else. At Oudh, it’s food I hold dear from a culture I revere, and I’m delivering it with my accent. In Europe, people always gravitate towards classical French as the best. In India, it’s the same with Lucknow.”

It features familiar dishes like biryanis and curries, as well as lesser-seen dishes like gilawat, a finely minced kebab that quite literally melts in your mouth. Islam describes the kebabs, invented in the 18th century, as historically “the height of decadence and sophistication.” 

“The Nawab [Wajid Ali Shah] wanted to be able to enjoy all the meaty flavors, but not even have to chew,” he says. “So you ended up with this kebab that’s soft and silky smooth, a bit smoky with all of the aromatic spices—it’s got 32 spices in it. To do that faithfully and do it properly is a lot of work and a lot of tradition. To be able to do that is absolutely awesome.” 

Islam’s latest fixation is on Indian tribal cooking, a style of cuisine rarely experienced outside of India. “The Indigenous tribes [in India] are still probably the largest group in the world,” he says. “That’s something that I’m looking into now because I want to learn more. It’s great learning about the royal courts and the finer side of cooking, but to understand something fully, you need to be able to look at everything from every possible angle.”

For Islam, it’s important to differentiate these styles for diners and to celebrate the differences around the country. “It still falls under one banner, but I want to try and break it down more,” he says. 

Coming up as a chef, Islam lacked a true mentor. He has primarily taught himself, though he acknowledges that Gordon Ramsay has given him a lot of valuable advice. The chef appeared on Ramsay’s Channel 4 series, The F Word, in 2010, a pivotal moment in his career. “He unlocked my potential,” Islam recalls. “He made me look at food and myself very differently. He told me, ‘If you believe it and invest in it and really put in the hard work, you can make it happen.’”

That’s advice Islam now passes on, both to his team and to other chefs in the U.K. Since Opheem’s success, several other fine-dining interpretations of Indian cuisine, like London’s BiBi, have emerged. He encourages chefs not only to do their own research, but also to find their own voice. 

“I’ve always been someone who is very supportive of anyone wanting to better themselves,” Islam says. “Where people get lost is looking at what we’re doing and thinking they can replicate it without fully investing in and understanding the cuisine. I’ve seen restaurants up and down the country emulate us, but a few times I’ve had to say to them, ‘You need to start doing food that represents you. Be on your own journey.’ I know that if you do food that represents you, you will reap the success.” 

He adds of his potential legacy, “I’ve been doing this a long time now. I think I was able to help a cuisine mature, and to help a cuisine that I love and respect start its next phase of the journey.”

To do that, Islam has played a long game, always indulging in his curiosity. His long-held sense of discovery means that there’s always something new to learn and always another dish to create.

Our boat has only just arrived at Cape Point, on the far southern point of South Africa’s Cape Peninsula, when one of the fishing lines begins to pull. It’s a sunny day at the end of April, the beginning of autumn in this part of the world, and it’s yellowtail season. We are on one of many small boats circling in hopes that the fish will bite. As it turns out, today is a particularly good day on the sea.

I’m fishing with Ryan Cole, executive chef at Cape Town’s Salsify at The Roundhouse, and his brother, Donovan, a commercial fisherman who runs Ocean Life Charters and supplies a lot of the seafood served at Salsify. They’ve been fishing here since they were kids—their father, Roy, was also a commercial fisherman—but the excitement of landing a catch is still palpable. As soon as one line is reeled in, another begins to pull. After less than an hour, there are 17 enormous yellowtail lying on the boat’s deck. Another 10, at least, were thrown back because they were too small.

For an amateur angler like myself, it feels like good luck, especially since some of the other boats aren’t so prosperous. “It isn’t luck,” Cole explains later that day, back in Salsify’s dining room. “You need to be able to read the signs and the conditions. That, for me, is the magic and the romance of fishing. And that’s what cooking is, too. You need to be able to see the signs. It becomes an extension of who you are. Donovan and I have been like this on the water, but I can feel it in the kitchen, too.”

Cole, now 37, grew up in Cape Town in a self-described “poor” family. His most vivid early memories are driving from his parents’ house in the back of his dad’s old van with his crew, hauling their fishing boat behind them. He was six the first time he went out on the boat, and he still goes fishing as often as possible.

“A lot of the commercial guys are out today [fishing], who have their own boats, learned to fish with my dad,” he says. “He’s like a living legend. I watched my dad toil and slave away to craft a living and provide for his family. I knew you had to work fucking hard. For me, the ocean has always been where food is from.” 

The fish we catch that morning in Cape Point can’t be sold (it has to be fished under a commercial license to do so), but it will be doled out to friends and family or donated to a local retirement home. Cole does, however, serve his brother’s catch at Salsify, paying a premium for first pick. When I dined at the restaurant a few days earlier, the yellowtail was presented raw and accompanied by coconut and mebos, a South African dried apricot. Later, Cole served kingklip, a white fish, with dressed prenia, a local succulent, and confit leek. But it isn’t just the sea that inspires Cole. Local ingredients like prenia and num num, a South African fruit, appear on the menu alongside more well-known ones.

“I spend my life outside,” Cole says. “When we’re not out at sea, I’m looking at landscapes and what’s around me. I’ve got a naturally inquisitive mind, so when I walk the dogs, I naturally veer off the path, and I’m like, ‘Fuck, what is that? Is this edible?’ I’m always looking for sources of inspiration. That’s how I got into foraging.”

All Cole ever wanted to do was become a chef. He remembers helping the lunch lady at school make sandwiches instead of joining the other kids on the playground when he was only four years old. In high school, he spent a week working in a hotel kitchen as his first apprenticeship, and was flummoxed when the chef asked him to fetch rocket—the British term for arugula. 

“It was a whole new world because there were so many things we didn’t grow up with,” he remembers. “We never had Parmesan or mozzarella. For me, cheese was orange. It was all a big discovery.”

After high school, the members of his mom’s church sponsored Cole for a practical apprenticeship, which served as a substitute for a more rigid culinary school experience. Despite admittedly struggling with authority, he was hungry to learn anything he could. “My attitude was, ‘I’m going to force myself to learn, and I’m going to be really good at this, and then I’m going to take your job,’” Cole remembers. 

At 21, he bought a one-way ticket to London—his first-ever flight. “I went with two suitcases,” he says. “One had my chef’s uniform and my knives. The other one had summer clothes. I had one hoodie. I landed in London in the middle of April, and it was freezing. I didn’t have a job, but I knew that I wanted to work at a place like The Square.”

His first gig was at Lawson Place, where he was put through the wringer before landing at The Square with chef Phil Howard. It surpassed his expectations. “That was its golden era, because they were trying to push for three Michelin stars at that time,” Cole notes. “So it was on everyone’s lips. It was just crazy the amount of talent that was in that kitchen over those three or four years. Phil’s approach is so restrained with beautiful ingredients, beautiful cooking, no fluff.”

Cole moved back to Cape Town in 2015 and eventually became head chef at The Test Kitchen, South Africa’s top restaurant at the time, under Luke Dale-Roberts. In 2018, he and Dale-Roberts had the opportunity to take over the restaurant space at The Roundhouse, a hillside historic building on the edge of Table Mountain in Camps Bay. The Roundhouse has a complicated past, rooted in the country’s tumultuous colonial history—it was an 18th-century guardhouse for the Dutch East India Company and later a British hunting lodge.

The building itself inspired the restaurant’s name. Cole dubbed it Salsify, after a root vegetable he first encountered at The Square. 

“It’s a beautiful vegetable,” he says. “The most incredible thing. It’s like an ‘aha moment’ when you cook it and eat it—like the world stops. The first time we walked in here, I said to Luke, ‘This place is like salsify. It’s sandy and gritty and disgusting, but if you peeled it back, you could get something really beautiful out of it.’”

Salsify at The Roundhouse opened in October 2018. The initial team consisted of only six people, including Nina du Toit, whom Cole met at The Test Kitchen. She’s now Cole’s romantic partner as well as the restaurant’s head chef. “We’ve been together since we opened Salsify, so I’ll never forget our anniversary,” Cole jokes.

Initially, there wasn’t much of a vision for Salsify’s menu. It began as an à la carte offering for lunch and dinner, but soon evolved into a tasting menu. Now, it’s a 10-course chef’s tasting menu, priced at approximately $130 per person. 

“Because I came from running The Test Kitchen, which was not my restaurant, I had to actively not cook what I would intuitively cook there,” Cole says. “So it was like untraining and retraining. I had to develop a completely new style. And I was still pretty young at the time, so I was still trying to figure out what I was trying to say with food.”

Cole admits he still isn’t completely sure what he wants to say with food. He likes to put the focus on his ingredients and to pay homage to his home country, as well as the building and location of Salsify. The food is South African because he is South African, but other than that, he doesn’t know what defines the food here.

“South Africa also doesn’t have much of a culinary identity,” Cole says. “With it being such a melting pot of so many different cultures, there isn’t one voice. I think we’re still very much developing it. But because we’re in a national park and in this historic building, I feel like we have to tell the story of where we are. It’s our responsibility to dig deep into South African culture and look past the obvious.”

An example is the Karoo lamb dish, a take on a South African “Seven Colours” meal. It’s traditionally served for lunch on Sundays and often includes meat, rice, vegetables and slaw. It seemed like an obvious thing to do, but Cole wanted to celebrate the local heritage and the communal feeling the meal generates. Salsify’s version includes lamb, rice and vegetable purees, as well as a lamb rib skewer on the side. 

“The lamb rib is based off of Donovan’s favorite way to eat lamb,” Cole says. “You cook it for five hours and get too drunk to know that it’s still on the fire and forget about it. It’s these kinds of playful interactions that contribute to the main course. Our service has a high level of detail, but I wanted to be approachable. The first time I ate in a fine-dining restaurant, which was The Square, it was the worst experience in the world. You feel like an imposter. I don’t want people to feel like that here.”

For Cole, it’s important to continue to reinvent Salsify. He changes out the décor in one of the dining rooms on a regular basis—it’s currently adorned with hundreds of elegantly folded old menus—and the menu is always evolving. He discovers a new ingredient almost weekly. Everything on the menu is sourced in Africa, including the caviar, which comes from Madagascar. Cole works with local farms, like Meuse Farm, which grows ingredients specifically for his menus. He’s always trying to do something new or something better. Since Salsify became independent from Dale-Roberts’ restaurant group in 2021, Cole has been the sole creative voice and can do whatever he wants. 

“We need to challenge ourselves because it’s human nature to want to do the same thing over and over,” Cole says. “But that equals death. It’s very difficult to constantly put yourself under that and through that, but at the same time, it forces you to go, ‘Well, fuck it.’ Today, I want to go sideways. Tomorrow, I want to walk backwards. And we can do it. Nobody is telling us we can’t.” 

Along with Salsify, Cole now helms Coy, a more casual, African-inspired restaurant in Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront, and Cabo Beach Club. He also runs the adjacent The Lawns at the Roundhouse, a beer and pizza garden. During the busy summer season, this means managing up to 500 employees across the four restaurants. But Cole isn’t daunted by the logistics. He wants to keep refining, keep improving and keep making his teams happy.

“I want everyone who works for me to do well, and I want the restaurants to do well,” he says. “This idea of ‘the best’ doesn’t exist. I want us to be everyone’s favorite in everything we do. I just want people to be like, ‘Fuck, I love that place so much.’ I want this to last, and I want this to be sustainable, and I want us to push as far as we can with what we have and see where it takes us. Because I don’t know what the end looks like.”

When we visit Meuse Farm, Cole and Du Toit showcase a traditional braai, a process of cooking over a wood fire. It’s not, as I’m told multiple times, the same thing as a barbecue. Cole cooks a whole yellowtail, caught by Donovan earlier in the week. After rotating it on the fire, Cole does almost nothing to it, instead presenting the fillets with lemon zest and salt. More yellowtail is sliced and served raw with some of the farm’s herbs and Salsify’s own hot sauce. Prenia reappears in a salad with charred broccoli. It’s a simpler version of Cole’s food, but it exemplifies his curiosity about what’s possible. 

“This is one of the most beautiful places in the world,” Cole says. “For me, Cape Town is paradise. Salsify is a story of our journey of discovery of where we are. I want it to be an expression of South Africa.”  

By showcasing the country’s bounty, an unexpected array of textures and flavors, Cole is doing just that. As it turns out, he is completely clear on what he wants his food to say.

Being stuck in an office or at a cramped desk at home can get tedious. And if the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that you can work from almost anywhere. While many people have since returned to the office, work has remained flexible for others. Having the right place to work remotely can make a huge difference in productivity. Light, atmosphere, location and views can impact how a space feels and what you can get done while there. And when you’re on the road, being stuck in a hotel room often starts to feel tedious and cramped, and can be isolating if you’re used to being in an office. Those in London, whether local or visiting, are in luck, as the city is quite conducive to remote working, especially if you enjoy answering emails with a good coffee in hand. 

The city’s many neighborhoods are filled with cafes and coffee shops that cater to remote workers looking for somewhere to meet with colleagues or a quiet working space, from the buzzy area of Shoreditch to the centrally-located Fitzrovia. Whether you’re looking for a quiet, discerning space to focus or a livelier option to keep the energy high, there is a WFH option out there for you (yes, even if you don’t have a Soho House membership to take advantage of). Here are 14 of the best cafes and coffee shops to work from home in London, including hotel lounges, hipster coffee joints and museum cafes.

FWD:Coffee

• 54 Farringdon Rd, London EC1R 3BL
• Multiple locations

If you want somewhere cool and casual to work, FWD:Coffee is just the place. They bill their three locations as “a space to socialize, think, create and get inspired,” which might be exactly what you need to get that screenplay or proposal over the line. The Farringdon address offers seating, big windows, and enough food options that you can spend the day there. Remote workers are welcome, rather than hustled out, making this a good choice if you have a lot to do.

Caravan King’s Cross

• 1 Granary Square, London N1C 4AA
• Multiple locations

Caravan’s original location, just north of King’s Cross station, has a massive dining room, as well as tables in the back where people can work or hang out over a cup of coffee. And Caravan’s coffee is particularly delicious—they typically have several brews, served along a full food menu. If it’s nice outside, there is an outdoor terrace with views of Granary Square. If Caravan is full, head around the corner to Redemption Roasters or down the street to Notes.

Gecko Coffeehouse

• 49 Bethnal Grn Rd, London E1 6LA

Plant-based eaters will be right at home at Gecko Coffeehouse, an independent coffee shop located in Bethnal Green. There’s a good selection of coffee and matcha, as well as brunch, lunch, and dinner. The vibe is chill and social, with plenty of neighborhood locals regularly turning up to work or to grab a latte. Laptops are welcome, making this a great pick for those in and around east London.

New Forms

• 9 Chelsea Manor St, London SW3 3TW

Chelsea’s New Forms is part cafe, part bar and part boutique record shop, and it has an impeccable vibe for a low-key work meeting or a brainstorming session. You can enjoy a good coffee during the day and then stick around for one of their evening events, where cocktails and light bites are on the menu. This is the sort of place you go if you want a work colleague to think you are effortlessly hip.

Frequency Bermondsey

• 157 Tower Bridge Rd, London SE1 3LW
• Various locations

Frequency has several locations around London, including near Paddington and Kings Cross, but the Angel Square spot, which opened in early 2026, is the best pick for remote workers looking for a nice place to sit. It has a lot of seating, big windows and most importantly, very good coffee. There is food available, including pastries, sandwiches and sweet treats. The brand also has meeting rooms available for rent by the hour or day in Kings Cross and Angel, which come with free coffee.

Redemption Roasters Holborn

• 71 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3JA
• Various locations

There’s a plethora of seating at Redemption Roasters Holborn, a two-level coffee shop with a basement space that’s ideal for remote workers and meetings. It offers delicious coffee, as well as brunch, and during the warmer months, there’s outdoor seating that can be very popular. Redemption, which has 11 total locations in London, is known for its social impact, with a mission to train roasters and baristas from the prison system. Not only is it a comfortable spot to spend a few hours working, but every beverage supports a good cause. In North London, the Hampstead Heath location is also a good bet for WFH.

Attendant Coffee Roasters Shoreditch

• 74 Great Eastern St, London EC2A 3JL
• Various locations

Attendant Coffee Roasters is one of London’s favorite coffee brands, with four coffee shops around town. The Shoreditch location is best for remote work, with a peaceful interior and a breakfast and lunch menu that will keep you satiated. It’s relatively small, so it’s best for a meeting or a few hours on your computer rather than a full day. The shops in Clerkenwell and Mayfair are equally nice, and the original, a former Victorian restroom in Fitzrovia, is a fun brunch spot (although not great for laptop sessions).

Wellcome Collection Café

• 183 Euston Rd., London NW1 2BE

Located near Euston Station, the Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library dedicated to exploring health and the human experience. The museum’s café, which serves drinks and food such as sandwiches and cakes, is a well-kept secret for remote working. It welcomes laptops and encourages meet-ups, making it a great place to catch up on emails for a few hours. The museum is well-located for those catching a train from Euston or Kings Cross, or anyone staying in Marylebone or Bloomsbury.

Café at the Lavery

• 4 Cromwell Pl, South Kensington, London SW7 2JE

If an elegant, sophisticated aesthetic is important to your workday motivation, snag a table at the Café at the Lavery, previously known as Cromwell Place Café. Found inside Cromwell Place, a series of Kensington townhouses that host art exhibitions and events, the café is charming and quiet—and they specifically welcome solo working and meetings. It serves drinks, including Assembly coffee, alongside breakfast and lunch. Arrive early to secure your table of choice.

Barbican Cinema Café & Bar

• Beech St, London EC1Y 4SB

The Barbican is an underrated WFH spot in general, with lots of cafes and quiet areas scattered throughout the vast complex of museums and art spaces. The best is the Barbican Cinema Café & Bar, set in the lobby of one of the Barbican’s movie theaters. The café offers coffee, pastries and pizza. Laptops are welcome from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., but they ask patrons to limit their stay to two hours if it’s busy. Elsewhere, visitors to the Barbican can find seats and tables around the Barbican’s lake or throughout its massive foyers.

In Positano, there is no escape from the crowds, who gather in hordes in the picturesque Amalfi Coast town between March and October. While Positano has become iconic for its colorful, cliffside buildings and umbrella-covered beaches, Praiano, its neighbor down the road, is less famous. Nestled on the cliff’s edge with endless views of the Tyrrhenian Sea, Praiano is just as scenic as its bustling neighbor to the west, but far more tranquil and, some argue, more authentic to the Italian way of life. 

The difference between Positano and Praiano, even during the quieter season, couldn’t be more stark. When I visited the area in late October, as many of the hotels were preparing to close for the winter, Positano was still heaving with people. The town felt like a tourist trap or a Disneyland attraction, created to evoke the feeling of the Amalfi Coast in the most cliched way. I left after only a few hours, eager to return to the charming streets of Praiano, which feel far less like a film set and more like a place where you might live. 

Home to approximately 2,100 people, Praiano is notably quaint, thanks in part to its small size, stretching along the Italian coast between Positano and Amalfi. It would perhaps go completely unnoticed by tourists if it were not home to Casa Angelina, a luxury hotel that was opened in 2005 by Antonino Cappiello, who transformed an existing 1970s property into something far grander. 

The hotel’s location offers the best view on the Amalfi Coast, at least according to Casa Angelina’s managing director, Domenico De Simone. From the town and from Casa Angelina, you can see Capri, Li Galli and Positano, offering a sense of the region’s true scope. “Praiano is the last village here that is authentic, real, genuine and very relaxed,” De Simone tells Observer. 

Casa Angelina is perched atop craggy cliffs on the western side of Praiano. Guests have access to La Gavitella Beach Club, a private club located down dozens of stairs, but the better way into town is via a discreet side door from the pool deck. It opens into the maze of narrow streets surrounding the hotel, where cats sun themselves, and teenagers roam playing music on a weekend afternoon. The streets eventually lead to Parrocchia di San Gennaro, the parish church, which first opened its doors in 1589. There are a few other hotels and apartment rentals, including the contemporary and intimate Hotel Onda Verde and the more budget-friendly La Divina Amalfi Coast, as well as some local shops and restaurants along the main road. Further east, the Marina di Praia, a hidden cove, is home to fishermen, cafes and an intimate beach. 

Travelers can easily access Positano, Amalfi and Ravello by car or bus. Casa Angelina offers an hourly shuttle that goes between the hotel and Positano (it takes less than 10 minutes), though De Simone notes that many guests don’t stay long, especially during the busier summer months, which is exactly what I experienced. “In the last two years, the real situation is that people go to Positano, spend a maximum of two hours there and have a very bad experience,” he says. 

Praiano is exceptionally well-located. “It is really easy for all of our guests to reach all the surrounding areas,” Antonia Gambardella, one of Casa Angelina’s concierge specialists, says. “Positano is an iconic destination, but it is really crowded. Praiano evokes an authenticity that the rest of the towns of the Amalfi coast are losing a little bit.” 

That idea of authenticity is repeated often. It’s something that’s hard to explain definitively, but you can certainly feel it. Praiano is smaller than the surrounding towns; it’s less than a square mile. Children play soccer in front of the church, and families go for weekend walks along the coast. Cafes are frequented by locals, who seem unbothered by visitors. Despite its size, there’s plenty to do. Praiano is situated in a key spot along the Path of the Gods, a hiking trail that extends from Bomerano to Nocelle. The entire trail, best traversed in spring or autumn when the weather is less intense, is about six kilometers long and takes the better part of a day due to the inclines. The catch is that to access the path from Praiano, you have to ascend nearly 1,000 stairs. It’s an intense climb, but worth it for the views. 

An easier walk is in town, where visitors can stroll to the Torre a Mare, a medieval tower, or follow the coastal road to Marina di Praia, which can be accessed on foot via a winding path. Unlike the crammed beach clubs in Positano, the small beach at the Marina di Praia is secluded and often filled with locals. It’s there that Di Martino recommends Trattoria Da Armandino, a family-owned waterside restaurant that has been around for more than 100 years. “The seafood is very fresh because the fishermen catch it in the morning and then they serve it at night,” she says. 

“This particular restaurant is iconic all around the Amalfi Coast because it is one of the few restaurants that still has their own fishermen,” Gambardella adds. “It’s usually older fishermen out on their boats at 2 a.m., and in the morning they bring everything that they catch during the night. Praiano is famous for totani, which are a kind of squid that has to be caught during the night.”

Totani, a variety of European squid, are found in the waters along the Amalfi Coast. They are so plentiful that Praiano has a signature dish made from them known as totani e patate, a combination of squid and potatoes sautéed with olive oil, tomatoes and garlic. It’s a rustic dish, but hearty and surprisingly light. It’s available in many of the restaurants, but those who want to better understand the connection between the sea and plate can join Casa Angelina for a nighttime squid fishing expedition. The experience is available between May and September, depending on sea and weather conditions, and is a great way to be part of the local tradition.

Enjoying seafood is important in Praiano. Although travelers can find the expected Italian fare, like pasta and pizza, around the Amalfi Coast, simple dishes of fresh fish, especially totani and pezzogna, reflect what the residents eat, again offering a genuine experience of the area. Other noteworthy dining options include La Taverna del Leone, a family-owned spot that dates back to 1965, and Ristorante Km0, a newer restaurant that focuses on hyper-local ingredients and also offers cooking classes. For breathtaking views, book a terrace table at Il Pirata Ristorante. 

There is less shopping in Praiano than in Positano, but what you do find is often more interesting. Peruse La Bacheca for gift-worthy homemade ceramics. At Rosalinda Flowers Lab, which provides floral arrangements for high-end weddings, passersby will often encounter an older man weaving flower baskets outside.

“Praiano almost brings us back to ancient times, where there were more emotional and family connections,” Gambardella says. “We have some guests who leave from our shortcut, and they say, ‘I found your neighbor, and he asked me to come inside and drink some coffee.’ That is really simple, but at the same time, it is so authentic and so emotional that in more famous parts, you cannot find it. Over here, there’s a piece of life that is calm. You feel the rhythm of the local life, and that is very beautiful.” 

In October, Praiano was calm to the point of almost feeling abandoned—except, of course, for the cats. Positano, on the other hand, was chaotic and loud. It’s not surprising; Positano attracts more than 12,000 daily visitors between Easter and October and nearly 5 million visitors annually. There are no numbers widely available for Praiano, but it’s likely far less. It gets busier in July and August, like the rest of the coast, although it’s not felt in the same way as Positano. Traveling during the shoulder seasons in spring and autumn can help ensure complete tranquility. 

That serene feeling is augmented by views of the water and the intense sunsets that unfold each evening. They were especially concentrated in hue in October, which many of Casa Angelina’s employees said is characteristic of the time of year. Some locals even refer to Praiano as the “sunset town.”

“Every sunset, every month, every year is different,” De Simone confirms. “You come to the Amalfi Coast and to Praiano and to Casa Angelina to see the sunsets and the panorama.” 

The allure of the Amalfi Coast is certainly undeniable, particularly the way it’s framed on Instagram, where the crowds are often cropped out. Positano’s over-tourism can be overwhelming and detract from what a trip to the region should feel like. While there are several compelling destinations nearby, including Ravello and Atrani, for a certain type of traveler, it’s more appealing to base yourself outside the tourist fray. Praiano may not be as dramatic as Positano, but it has something more important: the feeling that you are home.

For Bart Stratfold, the ethos of Timberyard is simple: the ingredients should be “as best as possible and from as close as possible.” That’s the approach the chef takes to every dish on the Edinburgh restaurant’s menu, which showcases the plants, seafood, and meat that come from the region. It can be seen on the pickle plate, which includes a pine cone, and throughout the softs pairing, created with foraged, fermented components like fig leaves and sea buckthorn. Even if something comes from slightly farther away, like citrus from Spain, it has to have a provenance and a narrative.

“We’re willing to use the citrus because Scotland was the first country to commercially sell and produce marmalade,” Stratfold tells Observer. “But I get excited sourcing amazing things from where we are. I know everyone talks about seasonality, and everyone talks about local, but there are different levels of seasonality and locality. The reality is that restaurants are not a sustainable entity. If you look at the energy consumption of a busy restaurant, it’s far higher than the equivalent consumption of everybody cooking for themselves at home. So we have to be as responsible as possible.”

Part of that responsibility is only using wild meat. Stratfold’s one exception is pork—Timberyard acquires about 10 pigs each year and always uses the entire animal, mostly curing the various cuts of meat and preserving the fat. 

“They come from one particular butcher,” Stratfold says. “And I have to know about the pigs and their origin. So the butcher constantly sends me photos, and then I pick and choose. He knows what breeds I like. He knows the fat cap I like. He knows if there’s a story behind it that will sway me. That’s the same with my fishmonger: He sends me photos of fish, telling me where it’s from and sending me videos of the fisherman landing it.”

Stratfold joined Timberyard, which opened in 2012, three years ago, under its previous executive chef, James Murray. Before that, he worked at Coombeshead Farm, a farm-to-table guesthouse and restaurant in Cornwall that grows everything they serve, and in London for chef Karl Goward at Bistro Union and Shepherd’s of Westminster. It was Goward who taught Stratfold the value of knowing where ingredients come from.

“He valued the product over the technique,” Stratfold remembers. “He always would say, ‘Let’s buy a really nice tomato and not do too much to it.’ That just then got amplified when I was in Cornwall. To be honest, the restrictions at Coombeshead Farm were too much. We didn’t use anything from outside of Cornwall, other than coffee and wine. We had no chocolate, we had no olive oil, we had no citrus. It was really rewarding, but I came out of it wanting to be more flexible.”

At Timberyard, Stratfold has developed a vast larder. Anything that can be pickled, fermented or preserved is stored and kept. Stratfold estimates there are currently hundreds of bottles and jars on the shelves. There’s no real plan, either. Whatever is available is added to the stock, and occasionally the chefs will discover something they didn’t realize was still there. The time spent preparing ingredients for preservation fluctuates depending on the season and what’s available. The restaurant always preserves ramps, capers, cherry blossoms, pine cones, coriander seeds and seasonal vegetables, but they also look for other possibilities. 

“Timberyard has been open for 13 years, and over those 13 years, we’ve definitely developed an idea of what we like and what we don’t like,” Stratfold says. “And every year we’ll be introduced to a new ingredient. It’s a process of trial and error to work out a) how we can use it and b) how well it preserves. Not everything can be indefinitely held.”

One of his recent discoveries is the root of an herb called sweet cicely, which tastes similar to chervil. Earlier this spring, Timberyard’s forager, Anna Sebelova, showed up with a cardboard tub of roots. “It wasn’t that appetizing to look at,” Stratfold admits. “But I chewed on it, and it was incredible. It was perfumed and aromatic and a little bit numbing, like Szechuan peppercorns. I haven’t worked out how to use it yet.”

Although Stratfold isn’t originally from Scotland, growing up in Yorkshire offered him a similar array of ingredients. He grew up cooking with his family. His grandmother taught home economics, his dad was a trained chef, and his mom ran a catering company. “It was unavoidable,” Stratfold says. “But also, I am a glutton. So it was something I showed interest in from a young age.”

He got his first restaurant job at 16 as a dishwasher at the National Railway Museum in York. “I told them, ‘I’m going to clean the pots as quick as I can so I can then do extra kitchen jobs,’” he recalls. “And they would give me the really horrible jobs. But I reveled in it.” He spent two years cooking in ski towns in France, but eventually moved to London to “get serious” about cooking. He understood early on that being a chef meant adapting to different kitchens and different chefs’ styles. At Timberyard, he’s tried to carry on the restaurant’s initial vision while also bringing in his own ideas, like transitioning to wild meat last August.

“Timberyard’s food is Timberyard’s food, and it would be strange to fight the space, the larder and everything that leads to how we cook here,” he says. “It would be wrong of me to try and change too much. And my palette and my repertoire is along the same lines, so it hasn’t been hard. But I’ve definitely brought a few extra skill sets along with me, like some of the preservation, the charcuterie and the sausage making.” 

He describes Timberyard’s approach to both cooking and presentation as natural, like room temperature butter. “Everything has to be shiny, soft at the edges, looking appetizing and appealing,” he says. “There was a Japanese chef that said room temp butter is the most umami thing, and ever since, I’ve always said it to my staff. I don’t want it to look too regimented. It needs to look comfy and soft.” 

It’s this approach that makes Timberyard so effortlessly cool. The contemporary dining room, set in a former 19th-century warehouse near Edinburgh’s famous castle, has an upscale, rustic vibe. The tables are dark wood and uncovered, and in the adjacent courtyard, Sebelova and her team have created a small cabin filled with ferments and cordials. The lights are so low that it’s almost impossible to capture photos of the food for Instagram. Some dishes are presented on modern plates, while others arrive surrounded by feathers or nut husks—another effort to avoid waste. Stratfold prefers everything to look as if it’s “just holding together.” 

“We use tweezers, but that’s because we’re putting small things on the plate,” he says. “Karl, my mentor in London, said that everything needs to look like it’s fallen from heaven, guided by angels. There’s definitely a right or a wrong place to put things. I talk to my chefs a lot about angles, but the angles are not forced.” He pauses and admits, “It’s really hard to explain. You just feel it.” 

Even the bathroom at Timberyard is cool. The industrial-looking space, located in the basement, evokes an avant-garde art installation as the sound of wine fermenting plays over the speakers. It’s all part of the overall goal of making diners feel immersed in the experience, whether they’re booked in for the shorter lunch menu, which costs £55, or the full dinner tasting menu, which costs £160. Stratfold wants guests to “get lost in the moment” throughout their visit. 

“There needs to be a warmth,” he says. “You need to feel relaxed and at ease. And I want everything to feel generous. We talk about abundance and generosity. We need to be generous with our time. We need to be generous with our produce. We don’t want people to feel uptight. I know all the restaurants say that now, but it’s true. When they step into Timberyard, it’s important to us that people don’t have the sort of tense shoulders that can come with fine dining.”

Timberyard received its first Michelin star in 2023. But Stratfold is prouder of the restaurant’s green star, which was awarded in January, only a few months after he was promoted to executive chef. It’s something Timberyard was aiming to achieve, and the team implemented sustainable measures to help get there. Stratfold also knows the green star isn’t the end of the road. 

“It’s going to be a continuous journey,” he says. “We’ve got a lot more to do, and that’s for our own gratification. Yes, the star puts the guest at ease, and they can come in knowing that we’re being a bit more responsible. We’ve done a lot on the sourcing and the provenance side of things, but that’s also because you get better produce by doing that. It seems weird to not try and find the best things from the most dutiful, diligent people. And we’ll keep doing that better.” 

Along with Timberyard, Stratfold oversees the menus at Edinburgh wine bar Montrose and chic new opening Haze, which is located on the Leith shore. All three are owned by the Radford family of restaurateurs, and emphasize a modern Scottish identity. Stratfold and Timberyard’s sommelier, Jo Radford, have gone so far as to dub the style “new Scottish.”

“We’re trying to define new Scottish,” Stratfold says. “The food of Scotland is well-known around the world. Everybody knows haggis, everybody knows porridge. It’s rugged food for harsh winters and hard labor, so people don’t always refine it. But as we’ve been diving into the repertoire for the preservation methods, we’ve tried to showcase the Scottish larder and present it to the wider audience. Sometimes we’re put in the new Nordic bracket, but we want to be defined by where we are because we’re proud of that.” 

Whatever you want to call Timberyard’s style, it’s compelling. The dishes are simultaneously familiar and unique, and you’re likely to discover a new ingredient during the meal. Stratfold’s intended narrative is clearly woven throughout each course, creating a memorable experience that may help you seem just a little bit cooler.

In February, Sally Abé got the keys to her first solo restaurant, Teal. Located on Wilton Way, a buzzy street in Hackney, it was previously home to Michelin-starred eatery Pidgin, which closed in 2024 and was replaced by the short-lived Sesta. Abé had been looking for a potential spot since 2019, and it took a long time to find a small site that would be achievable without investors. She remembers opening the door for the first time in complete shock. 

“I was here on my own, and I walked in, and it was all dark,” she tells Observer in early May, six weeks after Teal’s debut. “I was stuck here for a minute, just thinking, ‘My God, this is real now.’ A restaurant is something that most chefs aspire to have your whole career. And certainly in the last six or seven years, that was more turbocharged for me. But I couldn’t believe it was actually happening.”

It took only Abé and her business partner, Abe Drewry, six weeks to transform the space into Teal, named for Abé’s favorite game bird, a type of wild duck. There are only 25 covers across the tables and countertop, which overlooks the bar and kitchen. The colors are soft and welcoming, and the atmosphere is relaxed—a carefully curated home-away-from-home vibe.

“I want it to feel like an extension of my living room, warm and inviting,” she says. “Everything on the shelves is from my house. All of my books and loads of my knick-knacks. Some of the artwork is from my own walls. My goal was to make it feel very calm when you’re in here. Like it’s somewhere that you can settle into for lunch or a dinner and waste a few hours and not look at your watch.” 

Opening a restaurant without investors is unusual, but Abé didn’t want to answer to anyone else. She and Drewry funded the restaurant without going into debt, which they were able to do by sticking with a smaller room and hiring just five additional staff members. 

“The best thing about this site was an achievable reality,” she says. “To build a restaurant from the ground up, you need a million quid. Obviously, we’ve spent nowhere near as much as that here, but that’s because it’s so much smaller. And I’m really proud that we’ve done it that way. We can open and close when we want, and set the prices that we want. It’s a much freer way to work. All I’ve really ever wanted to do is be my own boss, and now I am.” 

Growing up in Mansfield, England, not far from Nottingham, Abé never dreamed of becoming a chef. She initially wanted to be a journalist, but she didn’t do well enough in school to pursue it as a career. Instead, she studied hospitality business management—a degree that is finally paying off. Her first job in a London kitchen was at Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill. “The first thing I enjoyed about it when I was 20 or 21 was the pressure of it and the chaos of it,” she recalls. “I’m a bit ADHD and drawn to the chaos. It’s so different from any other job you could do.” 

After the Savoy, Abé worked at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s, before moving on to British restaurant The Ledbury, where she worked with chef Brett Graham for five years. Graham became a sort of mentor to Abé, helping to guide her both at The Ledbury and later at his Michelin-starred pub, The Harwood Arms, where Abé spent four years as head chef. She left in 2021 to helm The Pem at the Conrad London St. James, and then did a short stint at The Bull Chalbury last year as she prepared to launch Teal. 

“They were all formative experiences,” she reflects. “You learn and you take away different things from different places. All of the jobs that I’ve had, I’ve had for quite a long time. Staying in one place for a long time, you learn a lot more because you really solidify what you’re learning. You don’t just learn to do it their way and then move on to the next thing. You do it so many times that you can do it with your eyes closed.” 

When Abé moved to London in 2006, there were a few other female chefs. At Claridge’s, there were a couple of women in the kitchen out of a team of 30. For about a year and a half at The Ledbury, Abé was the only woman. “I don’t think it consciously impacted me, but subconsciously, it definitely did,” she remembers. “At the time, I was like, ‘I need to be one of the boys, and I need to do this, and I need to do that.’ I wouldn’t let myself be feminine, whereas now, it’s the other way around.”

Abé has since actively encouraged more women into the kitchen. At The Harwood Arms, she aimed for a 50/50 gender split in hiring and tried to give women a chance, even if their resumes weren’t as strong as those of their male counterparts. “If nobody gives women a chance, then they’re never going to get that chance and get anywhere,” she says. At Teal, all of the chefs are female.

“Only 17 percent of all chefs [in the U.K.] are women,” Abé points out, citing a stat from her book. “I’m trying to work on changing that and moving that a little. It took me a long time to realize the differences. I was putting my head down and getting on with it, but eventually, your eyes are opened to the way of the world and the patriarchy and sexism. I got to a point where I realized maybe I could make a difference.” 

In 2024, Abé published her first memoir, A Woman’s Place Is in the Kitchen, which recounts some of the challenges she faced as she rose in the culinary world, including toxic behavior from chefs. Some of that culture has evolved since. “There are a lot of people working to stomp it out, and people who won’t tolerate that in their kitchens anymore,” she says. “And that’s really good to see. But I think there are some slightly older chefs who need to get on board. Or maybe they should retire.” 

Abé has always had a feminist streak, which she attributes to her mom. When she was 11, she was so infuriated by her school’s refusal to allow girls to wear trousers that she took matters into her own hands. 

“I made a petition and got every single girl in the school to sign it,” she recalls. “I took out a book called Know Your Rights from the library, and took them to the head teacher and threatened to take him to court. They tried to pretend they’d made an independent decision about it, which was annoying, but we got what we wanted.” 

Abé has worked in several fine-dining restaurants, but in recent years, she has become more interested in casual dining experiences. She goes out to places in London like Rita’s, The Pelican and The Smoking Goat, all of which serve really good food without any sense of pretension. “As I get older, I want to cook and I want to eat more relaxed, approachable food,” she says. “I’ve never really been a tweezers gal. I find it all a bit too finicky and frustrating. I’d rather put a big spoon of mashed potato on the plate and make someone smile.”

That’s exactly what the menu at Teal aims to do. The modern British bistro showcases contemporary takes on nostalgic dishes. Abé likes to seek out forgotten historic recipes and revive them, like the Locket’s Savoury, a Stilton cheese-based starter that was served at the Locket’s Club, a gentleman’s club in Westminster, around 200 years ago. There’s a very good Scotch egg, a deviled crab tartlet, baked bone marrow topped with snails and English mussels served with Jersey Royal potatoes—all of which feel current, even if many date back hundreds of years.

“I previously found it quite hard to express what it is that I want to showcase, but now I think that it is certainly the best of British food, but also the history of British food,” Abé says. “I find it very interesting to look into that history and modernize those dishes.” 

The desserts include a marmalade ice cream sandwich, which has quickly become a signature, and a Penny Lick, which is composed of a small dollop of ice cream in a mini glass, which originated on Victorian ice cream carts. Because not everyone could afford a full scoop of ice cream, the carts served a lick for a penny. Teal offers their own take for £1, which is donated to the Hackney Food Bank.

“They actually made Penny Licks illegal in, like, 1899 because they were spreading tuberculosis,” Abé says, laughing. “I haven’t looked at the law, but I’m kind of hoping that they are still illegal, because it would make great content if the police came and arrested me.”

She adds that the Penny Lick is intended as a bit of fun at the end of the meal. It requires guests to stick their tongues into the small glass, a reminder that dining isn’t always something to be taken too seriously. “I don’t want people coming in and worrying about which knife and fork, or how to hold their napkin,” Abé says. “My friend came in to eat the other day, and she said she found it all quite whimsical, which I really like. That’s a nice way to describe it.” 

Teal just opened in late March, but Abé has already changed the menu. She wants the dishes to shift with the seasons, although that doesn’t have to be weekly or even monthly. She carefully sources all of her ingredients, mostly from British farms. She’s aware that perceptions of British food, especially internationally, can be negative, but it’s this local produce that really defines what chefs here are currently doing. 

“These things come around in circles,” Abé says. “In the ‘70s and ‘80s, British food had a really bad rap. And then you had the advent of Gary Rhodes and Marco Pierre White, and then Gordon Ramsay in the ‘90s. Now there are certainly a lot of younger chefs doing British food their own way now. And the supply chain has got a lot better. There’s a lot more access to smaller growers and small farms, so you’re actually able to get much better products.”

Owning your own restaurant is a real gamble. Abé knows the early hype for Teal has to translate into return visits from guests, something she hopes to cultivate in the coming months. That will certainly be aided by the restaurant’s sunny terrace and the convivial vibe in the dining room, as well as the food itself. 

“This is a massive risk,” she says. “But you’ve got to put yourself out there. Most people are too scared to do it, which is why most people don’t open restaurants. One of the important things for me now is to take stock and actually be proud about what I’ve done, instead of ‘Oh, it probably could be better.’ To just be like, ‘Yeah, we’ve made a good thing here.’ I am very proud of that.”

Stuart Ralston never imagined he would become a hotelier. In fact, the Scottish chef had no concrete plans for his career, beyond owning his own restaurant one day. “Everything else has come up by chance or organically grown into what it is,” Ralston tells Observer, speaking from his one Michelin-starred restaurant, Lyla, in Edinburgh in late March. “When I started as a chef, I didn’t know anything.”

Ralston opened his first restaurant, Aizle, in Edinburgh in 2014. Since then, he has launched a succession of eateries around the city, including Noto in 2019, Tipo and Lyla in 2023, and Vinette in 2025. Earlier this year, he added a hotel component to Lyla. The four bedrooms, located above Lyla in a historic townhouse close to Edinburgh’s city center, were previously run by someone else. Ralston had the opportunity to take them over last year and subsequently enlisted design firm Scarnish Studio to renovate the rooms and bring them in line with Lyla’s contemporary, elegant decor. 

Scarnish Studio initially designed Lyla’s dining room, as well as Ralston’s restaurants Vinette and Vivian. “I wanted the rooms to feel as high-end as the restaurant, and I wanted them to feel individually designed, so they’re not all the same,” says Ralston, 42. “I don’t like the idea of having a cookie-cutter process. Each of them has different features, so it makes more sense to work around those features.”

Ralston drew on his own travel experiences to ensure each room felt comfortable and well-appointed. “I’ve seen a lot of hotels,” he says. “I wanted something where you would feel it’s a bit like a home, and you’ve got things that you need. Music, homemade cocktails—those sorts of things.” The minibar even includes Kaviari caviar for £50 and a bottle of Krug Grand Cuvee MV for £350. 

“I work with caviar a lot,” Ralston explains. “So to have something that really ties in with the restaurant and what we do in the restaurant felt important. It’s a bougie thing to put in there, as well, to keep it feeling high-end and elegant. There are a lot of places where you get absolute rubbish.”

In the morning, an included breakfast is delivered to the room in a chic picnic basket. Originally, Ralston considered serving it in the restaurant downstairs, but the space seemed too grand for only a few hotel guests. He took inspiration from a place he stayed on Lummi Island, where they offered a spread of items rather than a cooked breakfast. 

“It’s quite nice to have breakfast in bed,” he says. “I can deliver you all the things that I think you would enjoy in the morning and have it be an extension of the restaurant’s quality. Also, you eat a lot of food at Lyla. So in the morning, I don’t think you’re looking for a big breakfast. You want something more picky and choosy.”

Opening hotel rooms is a calculated risk for Ralston, although in a tumultuous hospitality industry, he thinks they might be a surefire bet. “Rooms are economically pretty bulletproof,” he notes, pointing to Edinburgh’s popularity with visitors. “Edinburgh is a tourist city, so there is always a need for hotel rooms. Running a high-end restaurant like Lyla is pretty expensive, so the profit margins are next to nothing. We may as well take advantage of everything we have in the building.” 

Lyla’s rooms, which start at £295 per night, operate separately from the restaurant. Although many guests will likely book in for the 10-course tasting menu, Ralston knows that others will come just for the hotel. The dining experience at Lyla is lengthy—my dinner ran more than three hours—so it’s a bonus to be able to crawl upstairs once you’re done. “There are no expectations for the guests,” Ralston says. “As long as both the rooms and the restaurant are independently full, that’s fine.”

Ralston’s clear vision for Lyla is well-established. The fine-dining restaurant, which received its Michelin star in 2025, emphasizes local seafood, occasionally drawing on global influences, like Japanese techniques. Although Ralston is from Scotland and has established himself as one of the top chefs in Edinburgh, he doesn’t consider the food itself to be Scottish. “My food is a reflection of the places I’ve lived and worked,” he says, noting that his years in New York City working at the now-shuttered Gordon Ramsay at The London had a big impact on him. “We’re mainly using mostly Scottish products in the restaurants, but with influences and techniques from around the world.”

It was Ramsay who taught Ralston, who moved to New York at 22, how to channel a specific culinary vision. “Gordon had a very clear style of food with a French link all the way through the menu,” he remembers. “We’d never put anything wild on there, either. You wouldn’t have wasabi on the menu, for example. But also, I think living in New York probably really did a lot for me, too. There were so many different styles, like, ‘This is a Cuban restaurant, and that’s what they do.’ They’re not fucking about with cheeseburgers. They’re doing Cuban food.”

The chef applies that idea to all of his restaurants. Each has a specific identity. Noto is his version of a Japanese pub, Tipo serves pasta, and Lyla is fine dining. Ralston ensures that everyone he hires at each eatery is serving that particular vision. But he also spends a lot of time in each restaurant, helping channel his inspiration through the chefs. Currently, his only day off is Sunday. 

“It’s about allowing the chefs to have some sort of freedom, but with the control of me having to say yes to everything that goes on a menu,” he says, noting that everything on his menus goes by him first. It’s a remarkably unapologetic acknowledgment. “Because no matter which way you slay it, no one’s ever going to care about the brands as much as I do, and they’re never going to see it the way that I see it,” he adds. 

Ralston has become a mainstay in Edinburgh, but he hasn’t always lived there. He grew up in Glenrothes, and spent his early years as a chef working around Scotland. After seven years in New York, he moved to England to work at Lower Slaughters Manor House in the Cotswolds. His next job was at the Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados, where he stayed for three years. When he felt it was time to open his own restaurant, Ralston decided to base himself in Edinburgh. It was financially more secure than New York or London. But Ralston had trouble finding a job back in Scotland, which he needed to make the move. 

“I had been away for such a long time that nobody knew who I was,” he recalls. “I felt a little bit pissed off about that, like no one in my home country had any clue about my career or things I’d done. I needed to prove to myself that I could come home and reestablish myself. But actually, now looking back, that was the best thing, because it made me work a lot harder to make sure that I was really good at what I was doing.”

After 11 years in two different locations, Ralston decided to close Aizle in the fall of 2025. It hadn’t been the same since he opened Lyla, where he dedicated most of his time and energy. The food was good, but it wasn’t the same as it was in its heyday. And being inside the Kimpton hotel was a challenge. 

“Everything was saying to me, ‘Yeah, it’s time to call it,’” Ralston says. “I always said if it ever felt like it was becoming one of those restaurants where people are like, ‘Well, it used to be really good, but now it’s not really that good,’ I would move on. So I made the heavy decision to kill it off. The reason we opened Vinette and Vivian is because I didn’t want to lose all those staff who had worked for me.”

It was a hard decision, but also one that came with some relief. “It gave me closure for a lot of reasons—some professional, some personal,” Ralston says. “To not have the burden of something. A lot of people really loved that restaurant. The amount of people who have come to me and told me about significant times in their lives that have been spent in that restaurant is amazing. So it was like: Everyone’s loved it. It’s been a good run. Now we can just put it to bed.”

Ralston now has four restaurants and a bar, but his focus is on Lyla. It’s the only restaurant where he regularly cooks in the kitchen. He’s constantly inspired by the seasonality of produce in Scotland and the U.K., and changes dishes frequently, sometimes because there’s a new ingredient available, like rhubarb or asparagus, and sometimes because he’s bored. “It has to feel like, ‘This is better than we’re currently doing and it’s a step up’ for us to change things,” he notes. “The langoustine dish hasn’t changed because people love it so much and I’m not sick of it, either. I love it.”

For Ralston, Lyla represents all of the things he thinks about “with food and professional creativity.” The dishes are artful and complex, and the service is impeccably precise. Everything in the dining room and in the kitchen is carefully considered—an approach that extends to the bedrooms upstairs, as well. 

“I put a lot of work into how things look and how they feel and how you eat them and how that transcribes to a dining experience across the menu,” the chef says. “Not everybody will see how complicated things are—there’s a lot of work in certain things that look really simple. Each time we do something, it’s about the combination of the dish, the color, the texture, the flavor, what thing it’s going to be served on, what plate suits it the best, at what point in the meal it is served. That’s where you get something that becomes very personal and very unique that no one can really replicate. Because there’s not a system to it. It’s a feeling.”

Dining and sleeping at Lyla reflect that unique feeling that Ralston wants to convey. The rooms are homey and comfortable, but also stylish and elegant—the sort of place where you flip over lamps to see if you can buy one for yourself. The tasting menu, which is priced at £185 for dinner, £79 for a five-course lunch and £105 for a seven-course lunch, feels like a journey. Everything evokes something, even if you’re not quite sure what it is. The chawanmushi—a Japanese custard—was served with fresh spring peas and ham. It was the best thing I’ve eaten this year and completely singular. It brought with it the hope of spring, but also a sense of a far-flung place. 

“The dishes need to have a personality,” Ralston says. “They can’t be filler. And everything has to be delicious—that’s the most important thing. In my restaurants, there’s not a dish on the menus across the group that I don’t enjoy eating, from a salad to a soup to a pasta. These are the flavors and the foods that I like. That’s why we never put turnips on the menus, because I hate turnips. We’ve never served turnips, and we never will. Everything we do has to be worthwhile, or we shouldn’t do it.” 

Ralston’s controlled, thoughtful approach always comes through, whether it’s in specific dishes or in Lyla’s bedrooms—evidence that a singular vision can have impressive results.

Down an alleyway in London’s Chinatown, discerning diners can venture into Evelyn’s Table, one of London’s most unassuming restaurants. It’s here that I find myself on St. Patrick’s Day—not exactly an evening typically associated with fine dining. But Evelyn’s Table, located in the basement of the Blue Posts pub, is an apt place to celebrate the impending arrival of spring, even if the bathroom queue is slightly longer than usual thanks to the drunken revelers congregating upstairs.

But thankfully, the restaurant, which opened in 2018, has a cocoon-like effect, insulating its 12 guests from everything other than the two-and-a-half-hour tasting menu. The dining experience is the vision of Seamus Sam, the third chef to helm Evelyn’s Table since its inception. Sam took over from James Goodyear in the fall of 2024, but it was the prior team—brothers Luke, Nat and Theo Selby—who earned Evelyn’s Table its Michelin star in 2022. Sam spent four years as the head chef at Muse by Tom Aikens, and previously worked at Restaurant Story and The Clove Club. He was ready to embrace an opportunity to showcase his own style. Taking over an established restaurant, especially one that already had a Michelin star, was a daunting prospect. 

“You always have to believe in your own ability,” he tells Observer, speaking from Evelyn’s Table a few days after St. Patrick’s Day. “It takes a while until that feels natural when you come somewhere new. And it’s always evolving. I look at our menus, and there’s such a stark contrast to when I started. But sometimes you do need that fear to drive you.”

Sam has generally kept to the original menu format at Evelyn’s Table. It’s always been tasting menu only; the countertop holds a maximum of 12 diners per seating. Currently, the five-course dinner menu is £135, while the four-course Friday and Saturday lunch menu is £95. But Sam has also made the food his own. He introduced snacks ahead of the first course—an eel custard from his first menu is still served today—and developed the bread course. The sourdough is baked in-house daily and offered with three spreads: butter, cheese foam and a cashew nut parfait. 

“At first, it was just the bread and the butter,” Sam recalls. “I was contemplating doing another bread, but that felt like too much. It becomes quite filling.” 

Instead, he opted to make his own crackers and grissini. One of the crackers is shaped like a piece of wild garlic, allowing guests to enjoy all the accompaniments in different ways. The wild garlic-shaped cracker is dusted with actual dried wild garlic—a favorite ingredient for Sam. He dries and preserves the garlic every spring to use all year. He also forages for elderflower to ensure it’s always on hand. 

“I’ll make oil from it, vinegar from it, cordial from it,” he says. “I always do enough so it lasts all year round. The elderflower vinegar and oil I actually bring home, because there’s just not space here. It’s on top of my bookshelf.”

The intimacy at Evelyn’s Table is part of its charm. The chefs prepare each course in front of the diners, many of whom become new friends during the meal. It requires a lot of preparation because there are two seatings every night and three seatings on Fridays and Saturdays, so the chefs can’t disappear into a back room during service. It has a dinner party vibe, which is bolstered by the location. 

“It just creates a lovely atmosphere,” Sam says. “We take the food seriously, but the service feels more fun. The fact that we’re underneath a pub feels quite exciting and hidden. There’s a lot of attention to detail, and this is fine dining in that sense, but it has a vibrant feeling to it, as well. It’s great when people chat to each other, and those walls are broken down.” 

That sense of whimsy comes through in the plating. The dishes are beautifully presented and exceptionally precise, but not all of the crockery is pristine. Instead of tossing out plates and bowls when they break or chip, Sam and his chefs use the Japanese art of kintsugi, a practice where broken crockery is repaired with gold, to mend them. When I dined, my friend and I playfully fought over who got the plate with more gold lacquer as if it were some kind of prize. 

“Crockery is expensive,” Sam says. “This is a good way to preserve things. I do it sometimes myself. If it’s a Friday or Saturday, one person will deviate from doing the lunch service and spend the time up just to do the plates. The philosophy behind it is quite cool, but also, it’s very practical.”

Sam brought the technique with him from Muse, where Aikens enlisted him as head chef for its 2020 opening. Sam, who grew up in Luton and studied civil engineering in school, had previously worked for Aikens at the now-shuttered Restaurant Tom Aikens early in his career. It was his first fine-dining experience; he got his start in the kitchen at Hampstead pub the Bull & Last, where he learned the value of making things from scratch. 

“It was a good learning curve and a good starting point because we basically did everything there,” he says. “We made our bread, we made our own charcuterie, we made our own terrines, our own ice cream, everything. And it was very busy. It was good to have that sense of urgency from the start, which is an important trait to have as a chef. I learned how to cook properly there.”

During his two years at the Bull & Last, Sam moved up the ranks quickly. He describes the job as a “baptism of fire,” but he also soaked up every piece of knowledge he could. He headed to Restaurant Tom Aikens in 2012, which was its own kind of baptism. 

“He was very intimidating,” Sam says of Aikens. “I was very young, and he obviously saw something in me at the time. He’s one of the best chefs ever to come out of the U.K., so I had him on this pedestal. I managed to progress quite quickly there because I got on with it and was able to adapt in service quickly. It took a year for that relationship between us to really happen, and by the time I got to Muse, he had become an amazing mentor for me.”

Spending time working for other chefs helped Sam to define his own cooking style, which incorporates seasonal ingredients with global flavors. He’s inspired by whatever excites him at the time, whether it’s a new technique, a compelling ingredient or a type of cuisine he’s recently tried. Sam’s father is from Malaysia, and his interest in Asian seasonings comes in part from his heritage. But he draws inspiration from all around the world, even places he hasn’t visited just yet.

“I definitely have a fondness for Southeast Asia,” Sam says, adding that a recent visit to Malaysia excited him even more. “But a lot of it comes from living in London. It’s so eclectic here, and the food is so exciting. There are amazing Turkish restaurants, Mexican restaurants, Thai restaurants, Malaysian restaurants. I get inspiration from that, and it also depends how I’m feeling.”

When I dined at Evelyn’s Table, touches of Korean staples like kimchi and gochujang were apparent in several dishes, as was a Japanese influence. In the past, Sam has also looked to Mexico for inspiration simply because he found a British farm growing poblano chilies. “I found that fascinating, and it sparked the idea of using them,” he says. “We smoked and dried them in a similar fashion to how they do it in Mexico, and we made our own mole using British ingredients, which was served with pork. I love having that freedom and that flexibility.”

The demands of his job and a young child at home mean that it’s hard for Sam to find time to dine out himself. But he does his best to experience as much of London’s dining scene as possible. Some of his recent favorite experiences in the city include meals at Restaurant St. Barts, The Ritz Restaurant, BiBi, Wildflowers and Perilla. He’s watched the city’s culinary landscape evolve over the past 15 years and is enlivened by what’s around him. 

“It’s a very exciting place to work, and it’s very inspiring to see all the great restaurants that are coming up,” Sam says. “It also means that you have to really shine and to stand out and to survive. Competition is good, and there’s a great camaraderie between restaurants and chefs now. It’s a really nice place to be as a chef.” 

Sam hopes to keep improving at Evelyn’s Table, too. There are plans for a kitchen revamp and, hopefully, the introduction of a bathroom attendant to clean up after the pub goers. Sam describes himself as someone who wants to “get better and better and better,” and he’s always looking for new ways to do that. 

“I want to create as good of an experience as possible for the guests,” he says. “I’ve never stopped to admire what we do and say, ‘This is good enough.’ It’s always got to get better, whether it’s small details like different glassware or a new chicken supplier. It can be anything. We’re blessed that we are busy at the moment, but you can’t rely on that or previous accolades. In a small restaurant like ours, every seat counts, and we can’t take things for granted because the industry is struggling. I want us to keep continuing being busy. And in order to do that, we need to keep our eyes on the ball.”

If my recent meal is anything to go by, Sam and his team haven’t lost sight of that goal. Stepping outside into the fray of St. Patrick’s Day drinkers was jarring, but also a sign that dining at Evelyn’s Table is all you need for a brief respite from the real world.

Some of London’s most compelling tasting menus are still relatively new, like the seafood-led array of dishes at Hackney’s Behind and the modern Indian approach to dining at BiBi in Mayfair. These relatively recent additions, a more contemporary version of fine dining, offer a glimpse of how the city’s culinary landscape is changing. You really can’t go wrong with any of them, especially if you’re looking to celebrate a special occasion. Here are the 19 of the best tasting menus to book in London.

Behind

• 20 Sidworth St, London E8 3SD

Chef Andy Beynon opened Behind, his first solo restaurant, in the fall of 2020 and won a Michelin star only three weeks later. The 10-course tasting menu changes almost daily; Beynon focuses on British seafood, served around a horseshoe-shaped countertop where diners can watch the chefs at work. It has a buzzy vibe, thanks in part to its Hackney location, and there is a sense of camaraderie in both the kitchen and amongst those around the counter. At £125, it’s extremely well-priced, and a six-course lunch menu is available on Thursdays and Fridays for £64. Reservations are available up to three months in advance.

Evelyn’s Table

• 28 Rupert St, London W1D 6DJ

Hidden under Chinatown pub The Blue Posts, Evelyn’s Table is one of London’s most under-the-radar fine dining restaurants. Chef Seamus Sam serves five courses to 12 diners at a time in a remarkably intimate space. The countertop seating gives you a close-up view of the chefs’ precise, thoughtful work. The dishes center on seasonal ingredients–or whatever Sam is interested in exploring at the moment. The bread course, which features house-baked sourdough, is truly memorable, as are the snacks. There are two seatings each night, as well as a Friday lunch, and you’ll need to book at least a few weeks in advance.

Restaurant Story

• 199 Tooley St, London SE1 2JX

Tom Sellers’ Restaurant Story is an elegant, high-end dining experience that prioritizes the patron, often tailoring the meal to the person at the table. The tasting menu unfolds over eight courses, although it ends up being far more with the snacks. Sellers’ memories are imbued into many of the dishes. The space, located in Bermondsey, overlooks a garden, and the chefs often invite guests into the kitchen for one of the dessert courses. It’s a great time from start to finish, and the price tag, at £275, is worth every pence.

BiBi

• 42 N Audley St, London W1K 6ZP

Although London has several acclaimed fine dining Indian restaurants, BiBi is the most compelling. It arrived in Mayfair in 2021 courtesy of chef Chet Sharma, who draws on his childhood memories and his family’s dishes to create a modern tasting menu that is both surprising and comforting. The seven-course chef’s selection menu is varied and complex, including both meat and seafood dishes (a vegetarian option is also available). Sharma doesn’t serve curry or anything too expected—the highlight is Sharmaji’s Lahori chicken, a dish you’ll think about for weeks to come. Book early if you plan to come for dinner. 

Akoko

• 21 Berners St, London W1T 3LP

Founded by chef Aji Akokomi in 2020, Akoko puts West African fine dining into the spotlight. The tasting menu showcases various flavors and techniques from the region across 11 courses, elevating and evolving traditional dishes. It earned a Michelin star in 2024, but has remained affordable at £130 for the full tasting menu at lunch and dinner. A shorter lunch menu, for £65, is a good way to experience the restaurant with less commitment. Reservations are readily available, so it’s a great option for a last-minute booking. If you like Akoko, try its sister restaurant, Akara, which takes a more casual approach.

Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal

• 68 Regent St., London W1B 4DY

Alex Dilling has helmed his eponymous restaurant in Hotel Café Royal, which has two Michelin stars, since 2022. It’s a true luxury experience, with an emphasis on premium ingredients such as caviar, chocolate and truffles. The tasting menu features 10 courses and is available in traditional or vegetarian options. The space is light and airy, with impeccable service, and tends to attract the sort of diner looking for conventional culinary excellence. It’s an especially good choice for a special occasion or holiday. 

.

A. Wong

• 70 Wilton Rd, Pimlico, London SW1V 1DE

Chef Andrew Wong has been leading London’s Chinese fine dining scene since 2012. His restaurant, A. Wong, now boasts two Michelin stars and a dedicated following, attracted by Wong’s creative take on traditional dishes. It’s best enjoyed via the “Collections of China” tasting menu, a 30-dish offering priced at £235 per person and is also available in a vegetarian version. The menu celebrates 3,000 years of Chinese culinary history and is served in multiple courses that focus on specific regions. It’s a journey you won’t want to miss, so be sure to book well in advance of your visit.

Humble Chicken

• 54 Frith St, London W1D 4SJ

There are no white tablecloths at Humble Chicken, a vibrant countertop-only restaurant in Soho. Led by chef Angelo Soto, the two-Michelin-star restaurant was renovated last year, which augmented its experience to an even higher level. The omakase-style tasting menu, priced at £235 for lunch and dinner, is inspired by Soto’s Japanese heritage. The dishes are precise, complex and unconventional, including Soto’s clever take on prawn toast and his awe-inspiring main dish of pigeon. There are only 13 seats, so consider booking as early as possible.

Muse by Tom Aikens

• 38 Groom Pl, London SW1X 7BA

Revered British chef Tom Aikens debuted Muse in 2020, in a grand return to the London food scene. It quickly won a Michelin star and drew acclaim for its thoughtful approach, drawing on Aikens’ personal memories from his life and career as inspiration for the dishes. Dinner and lunch are available to enjoy over 10 courses for £195, while less ravenous diners can opt for the six-course lunch for £105. The dishes are beautifully presented with a whimsical flair, and make sure to sit at one of the chef’s counters if there are seats available.

Ikoyi

• 180 Strand, Temple, London WC2R 1EA

One of London’s most sought-after meals can be found at Ikoyi, a high-end restaurant offering a menu inspired by the cuisine and spices of West Africa. The restaurant, which holds two Michelin stars, is helmed by chef and founder Jeremy Chan, who combines West African flavors with British produce to create memorable, seasonal dishes. The experience comes with a high price tag (£380 for dinner), but Ikoyi also serves a shorter tasting menu on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays for £170. The reservation has become slightly easier to score, but you’ll still want to plan ahead. 

Kol Restaurant

• 9 Seymour St, London W1H 7BA

Kol is one of the only places in London where you can find authentic Mexican cuisine. It opened in 2018 and has since become a coveted reservation for a special occasion—or just a chic night out. The seven-course tasting menu, also available in pescatarian, vegetarian and vegan versions, changes with the season and features modern, British-inspired takes on traditional dishes like tacos, flan and mole. Guests can opt for a wine, mezcal or soft pairing. Tables go quickly when reservations open two months in advance, so be prepared.

Brooklands

• 1 Grosvenor Pl, London SW1X 7HJ

Brooklands opened in 2023 on the rooftop of the Peninsula London, and immediately became a destination eatery. Led by Claude Bosi, the modern restaurant is inspired by the Concorde, with a slick design that feels almost futuristic. The dishes are classic French with a touch of whimsy, and use primarily British ingredients and produce, like lamb and celeriac. The menu is available in three-, five- or seven-course variations, and compelling vegetarian alternatives are available. Opt for the wine pairing or stop by Brooklands Bar for a cocktail before dinner.

Mauro Colagreco

• 57 Whitehall, London SW1A 2BX

Raffles London at the OWO was one of London’s buzziest hotel openings in recent years, and with it came fine dining establishment Mauro Colagreco. The restaurant is the brainchild of Argentinian chef Mauro Colagreco, who also helms three-Michelin-starred Mirazur in France. The menu features inventive, produce-forward dishes that emphasize locally-sourced products (the lettuce, for example, comes from an urban hydroponic farm down the road). The service is thoughtful and attentive, and the cheese trolley, custom-made for the restaurant, is especially impressive. The menu is available in five- or seven-course options, with an option to add the aforementioned cheese.

Core by Clare Smyth

• 92 Kensington Park Rd, London W11 2PN

Core is the gold standard by which other London restaurants set themselves. The elegant restaurant, which appeared on the London season of Top Chef as the setting of “Restaurant Wars,” features sustainable British food created by Clare Smyth, who is well deserving of her three Michelin stars. The dishes are beautifully crafted, with a sense of celebration for regional ingredients like scallops, venison and oysters. The tasting experience is available in two versions: a seasonal menu and a Core classics menu, with the option of a wine pairing. Book at least a month in advance.

Ormer Mayfair

• 7-12 Half Moon St, London W1J 7BH

Located in the Flemings Mayfair hotel, Ormer Mayfair offers some of the most immaculate service in all of London. Although the restaurant doesn’t always have the hype of its peers, the tasting menu from executive chef Sofian Msetfi is creative and stylish, with options for vegetarians and vegans. Much of the produce comes from the one Michelin-starred restaurant’s own kitchen garden in Essex, and the wine pairing is especially thoughtful and interesting. Go all-in for the nine-course option, as well as the supplementary cheese trolley.

Kitchen Table

• 70 Charlotte St., London W1T 4QG

James Knappett and Sandia Chang opened Kitchen Table in 2012, quickly earning two Michelin stars. The rectangular counter seating immerses guests in the cooking process, with Knappett discussing the menu as it unfolds. The dishes are modern British with a focus on a single ingredient, and Chang showcases a wine, Champagne or softs pairing to match. The menu changes daily, so you’ll never experience the same thing twice, and Knappett is careful not to reveal it beforehand. A vegetarian version is available, and non-drinkers will appreciate the non-alcoholic cocktails and softs. 

Casa Fofō

• 158 Sandringham Rd, London E8 2HS

Off the beaten path in Hackney, discerning food lovers will find Casa Fofò, an intimate spot that serves a set menu that changes daily. The one-Michelin-starred restaurant is the vision of chef Adolfo De Cecco, who draws on Japanese and Italian inspirations.  At only £76 per diner, it’s a remarkably affordable tasting menu experience from a Michelin-starred restaurant, but it’s also a surprising and delightful array of unexpected dishes. If you’re looking for somewhere to impress your friends and want to stay out of central London, this is the place. 

Sketch

• 9 Conduit St, London W1S 2XG

Known for its lively, Instagram-worthy interiors and space-age bathroom, visitors to London are often surprised to discover that Sketch’s upstairs Lecture Room fine dining restaurant also boasts three Michelin stars. The restaurant, created by revered French chef Pierre Gagnaire and currently led by head chef Daniel Stucki, serves a tasting menu that is as whimsically colorful as the rooms themselves. The dishes are unique and lavish, often with multiple smaller accompaniments. The service is discerning, the chairs are comfortable, and the experience is both fun and high-end. The four-course lunch, priced at £150, is a more affordable way to dine, though the £225 dinner tasting menu offers a more complete experience. 

For Jeremy Chan, the chef behind London’s two-Michelin-star restaurant Ikoyi, hot sauce is the ultimate condiment. It’s spicy, salty and umami, adding a depth of flavor to any dish. He likes it so much, he’s launched his own under the name Magma Concepts.

“Whenever I cook at home, I always use some form of chili condiment with my food,” he tells Observer, ahead of the brand’s April launch. “People want stimulation, flavor and speed of seasoning, and that’s what hot sauce is about. It’s such a simple thing, but if you can elevate people’s experience with it, that’s really exciting.”

Magma Concepts, presented in a stylish aluminum bottle, is billed as a “hot sauce from Ikoyi,” although Chan is quick to note that it isn’t actually made in Ikoyi. It was, however, developed there over the past eight years. Chan decided to produce it for consumers two years ago, and it’s gone through a long process of trial and error since then.   

“It’s very different to other hot sauces on the market,” he says. “It’s rounder. It’s not just spicy—it also has a savory character. It has sweetness. It has citrusy notes. We blend two varieties of peppercorn into it, so it has other elements of heat, not just chili spice, and that makes it more versatile than a regular hot sauce.” 

Despite the complexity, Chan says it’s not meant to be overly “chef-y.” He wants it to feel elevated and precise, yet approachable for everyday use, whether it’s splashed on fried chicken, sprinkled on popcorn or used as a marinade for roasted vegetables. In Ikoyi, it’s used within the £380 tasting menu, which celebrates British seasonality and West African flavors. But at home, the sauce, which retails for £10, can be added to anything. 

“People might be expecting something quite expensive, technical and intricate,” Chan notes. “But it’s not. We’re trying to make an everyday condiment.” 

Hot sauce has long been a popular item in home pantries, but in recent years, higher-end, chef-led versions have been emerging on the market. For some, it’s a happy result of the pandemic. For others, it’s a way to meet customer demand. It’s a retail opportunity, of course, but also a way to showcase a particular culinary sensibility outside a restaurant kitchen. In 2020, David Chang’s Momofuku debuted its viral Chili Crunch, and in 2023, Noma’s Noma Projects introduced Corn Yuzu Hot Sauce, created in the Copenhagen restaurant’s test kitchen. At Denver’s modern Taiwanese eatery Pig and Tiger, co-chef and co-owner Travis Masar started playing around with chili crisp during the pandemic. 

“I thought I could do it better,” Masar explains. He combined the warming spices and heat of a Szechuan-style hot pot, with the aim of ensuring it was “super textural.” 

“Most chili crisps on the market weren’t crispy,” he says. “It started out [as something] to give away for free to the guests at the restaurant.”

The chili crisp became so coveted by guests that Pig and Tiger began jarring it in-house. Eventually, they added a custom label and began selling it at shops in the area, as well as online, for $15. Today, the restaurant offers three versions of chili crisp, and Masar says they plan to expand their reach and variety. Some of Pig and Tiger’s online customers have never even visited the restaurant, showcasing how the products are allowing their food to reach beyond Colorado. 

The same is true for London’s Fallow, which sells a signature British sriracha. The restaurant opened a few weeks before the first pandemic lockdown, and wanted to do something with the surplus of fresh garlic and chilis that would otherwise have gone to waste. “We started fermenting them and experimenting with different batches,” chef, owner, and co-founder Will Murray tells Observer. “After a few months, we landed on the sriracha-style sauce we use today, which is now used across a number of dishes at the restaurant, including our smoked cod’s head with sriracha butter and leek oil.”

Murray has since launched Fowl and Roe, and all of his restaurants share many recipes and cooking videos online. Because of that, their audience isn’t limited to those who have dined in at the restaurants. “Between our YouTube channel and social platforms, we reach a large number of people who follow our cooking, and products like the hot sauce give them a way to engage with the restaurant at home,” he says. 

He adds that, from a business perspective, a product can help diversify revenue. “Restaurants are limited by covers and opening hours, whereas a product can reach people in shops, online or at home,” Murray says. “The key is that it should come from the cooking and feel authentic to the kitchen.”

Authenticity is key. There are plenty of mass-market hot sauces and chili crisps available, but something that comes from a restaurant kitchen has to feel more unique. Roberta Hall McCarron, who owns and runs Edinburgh’s The Little Chartroom, Eleanor and Ardfern, started her own product line after enough customers commented on the quality of the hot sauce at Ardfern. “I thought it would be an interesting side business,” she says. “But it also felt like a good way to give something back.”

The chef launched Ardfern Provisions in December ahead of the holidays. She began with two products: a nori hot sauce and an elevated take on the U.K. favorite brown sauce, often served on breakfast sandwiches. The team produced 400 bottles of hot sauce, which retails for £7.50, ahead of Christmas, and now makes around 50 bottles at a time. It ships throughout the U.K., but still feels relatively niche. For McCarron, hot sauce is a good way to showcase a chef’s personality and technical skill. 

“To really understand hot sauce, you need creativity and technical abilities, like when you create a dish,” she says. “So why not take something that’s very worldwide and very simple in some ways, but can also be very complex? There are so many things that you can add to give it more depth.”

Sebby Holmes, chef at London’s Farang, feels similarly. Holmes has always made his own curry pastes and sauces at the Thai restaurant. Again, it was the pandemic that offered an opportunity to expand the kitchen outside the building—a commonality with many of the products chefs are now making and selling. Holmes’ Payst by Farang now sells several varieties of curry paste, stir-fry sauces, and four types of chili sauce. The sauces are £5.99, while the curry paste costs £4.75. 

“Over the years, we refined them through service, seasonality and constant tweaking,” Holmes says. “A lot of guests would ask how to recreate certain dishes at home, and we realized there was a gap between ‘authentic ingredients’ and something genuinely usable on a weeknight.”

Sometimes, the decision to bottle and sell a particular sauce comes directly from customer demand. Chefs Daniel Patterson and Keith Corbin have been serving their signature Fresno chili hot sauce at Los Angeles restaurant Alta since it opened in early 2019. Soon after, guests began begging to take some home. “We were pouring it into random bottles,” Corbin says. “We were putting it in deli cups or two-ounce ramekins. People really wanted to take it home—they didn’t care what kind of container it was in.”

The hot sauce was popular with Alta’s customers once it was available to purchase for $10, especially during the holidays. But the sales skyrocketed after Phil Rosenthal and Nancy Silverton’s new diner, Max & Helen’s, reached out last October. The restaurant wanted to use a local hot sauce on the tables. Alta’s sauce was rebranded with a custom label, which diners can now purchase in-person at Max & Helen’s. 

“It’s been getting a lot of traction because the place is very popular and other stores are wanting to use it,” Patterson says. “So we’re actually having to try and figure out how to increase our production. Hot sauce is a funny thing—it’s the same stuff that was in the bottle that we sell. Put a different label on it in a different context, and the sales go up. So much of it is about the marketing. They’re going through more at Max & Helen’s than we’ve ever sold on our own.”

There are so many possible variations on what a hot sauce, chili sauce or chili crisp can be and how it can be presented. Brixton nose-to-nail eatery Whole Beast serves several types of homemade hot sauces, available to purchase on request. A fermented red hot sauce accompanies their pickled egg, while their smoked pineapple hot sauce comes with a burger and fries as part of their Happy Meal-inspired “Smile Meal.” Tacos Padre, in London’s Borough Market, sells their own salsa macha. Chef Rick Toogood created his own hot sauce for his Prawn on the Lawn restaurants in London and Padstow, England, and sells a £6 mini version online, as well as a crispy chili sauce. 

“We always thought about doing our own version of Tabasco because we go through a hell of a lot of it being served with oysters,” Toogood says. “So with all the excess chili and garlic from the garden, we just went for it. I’ve always been obsessed with chilies. Before I started working in restaurants, I nearly opened an online shop for hot sauces and chilies, which was going to hopefully lead to a restaurant based solely on chilies. We’ve done it the other way around.”

One product can expand into many. Elizabeth Haigh launched her line during the pandemic, when her London-based restaurant, Mei Mei, was closed. She made, bottled, packaged and shipped the first batch of kaya, Southeast Asian coconut sauce, herself. “It was chaos, but it worked,” she recalls. “We made enough to reopen Mei Mei, and when we did, people kept asking when the kaya and chili sauces were coming back.”

Last November, Haigh launched a broader selection of Mei Mei sauces, including a sweet soy sauce, a house chili sauce and a hot honey. The chili sauce costs £5.50 per bottle. “A big part of our customer base has never set foot in Borough Market,” she says. “They found us through the products—online, through a gift, through a friend recommending the black bean crunch chili oil. And then some of them make the trip. The product does the storytelling before they ever sit down at one of our tables.”

For Haigh, it’s also a way to share her Singaporean cultural background with people in the U.K. “It’s the most accessible way to taste something real,” she notes. “If you want authentic Southeast Asian flavor, the alternative is a flight to Singapore. It’s the real thing—just a lot cheaper than a plane ticket.”

High-end, chef-created condiments may be on trend, but they aren’t necessarily a new phenomenon. Peninsula Hotels have been selling their XO chili sauce, developed at Hong Kong’s Spring Moon restaurant, since the mid-‘80s. The spicy sauce was designed to enhance every sort of dish, from fried rice, noodles and dim sum to fresh seafood. It’s available in many of the Peninsula hotel restaurants around the world, and guests can buy it in the hotels’ shops. In London, it costs £30.

“It allows us to extend our reach into people’s lives, offering them the chance to experience a touch of the restaurant expertise at home,” says Wai Ming Wong, executive chef of Canton Blue at the Peninsula London. “We get a lot of customer demand after guests dine at Canton Blue.” 

At Ikoyi, Chan is already thinking about future iterations of Magma Concepts, which will be available to order outside of the U.K. “I have a whole repertoire of ideas that I want to release,” he says. “At Ikoyi, we have a limited number of seats, and it’s a very high-end, experiential restaurant. When we started, we were more accessible. I want to go back to that. I want to share the flavors of the restaurant with a much wider audience.” 

At the top of the list of Edinburgh’s best-known luxury hotels is The Balmoral, a historic grand dame now run by hotel group Rocco Forte. It was originally the city’s only real luxury property, and has since been joined by other hotels, including recent debuts like 100 Princes Street and Gleneagles Townhouse, which bring a more intimate sense of luxury, with a members-only vibe. These days, the hotel scene is more varied and exciting, although not all of the top hotels offer the expected big-city amenities, like a spa and gym. 

Many lean into their historic elements, while other properties, like the W Edinburgh and Kimpson Charlotte Square Hotel, offer a more contemporary vibe, with modern décor to match. Almost all of our picks are centrally located, ideal for walking around the Old Town and the New Town, and all can be easily accessed from the train station or airport by car or tram. Here are eight of the best luxury hotels in Edinburgh, from grand classics to sleek newcomers.

The Balmoral

• 1 Princes St., Edinburgh EH2 2EQ

The Balmoral initially opened as the North British Station Hotel in 1902, with its popularity bolstered by its proximity to the city’s Waverley train station. It became The Balmoral in 1988, and in 1997, was acquired by Rocco Forte as the first property in the luxury brand’s hotel group. Over the years, the property has hosted many notable guests, including one particular author who finished the Harry Potter book series in one of the suites. Today, it’s an ideal home base for an exploration of Edinburgh, especially the city’s tourist sites.

The Balmoral is a grand building,  home to 167 rooms and 20 suites, which evoke a Scottish countryside aesthetic with blue and green tones and comfortable furnishings. There are really no bad views, although the rooms that overlook Edinburgh Castle, Arthur’s Seat and Calton Hill are the most coveted. The vast Irene Forte Spa was recently renovated, adding five treatment rooms, and the gym is particularly impressive for those who enjoy a hotel workout. Downstairs, on-site fine dining restaurant Number One serves a seasonal Scottish tasting menu, and the breakfast in Brasserie Prince is one you’ll remember thanks to its heaping portions of Scottish smoked salmon. Afternoon tea is on offer in the Palm Court, and whiskey lovers can imbibe in Scotch, which offers 500 varieties of the Scottish spirit. It’s something of a bucket list hotel and well worth the experience, especially if you take full advantage of the spa and breakfast.

Gleneagles Townhouse

• 39 St Andrew Sq, Edinburgh EH2 2AD

Gleneagles, Scotland’s most famous hotel, debuted its first city property, Gleneagles Townhouse, in 2022. It’s equal parts luxury hotel and members club, with a rooftop bar that overlooks the adjacent St. Andrew Square. The 33 guest rooms are each uniquely designed and configured, with velour accents and sumptuous jewel tones. The gym and fitness classes are equally luxe, and guests can recover with cryotherapy, infrared sauna sessions and spa treatments. The Spence serves breakfast, lunch and dinner in a bistro-like space, while the exclusive rooftop bar welcomes only guests and members for drinks and snacks. A stay here is, of course, best paired with a journey to Gleneagles itself.

100 Princes Street

• 100 Princes St., Edinburgh EH2 3AB

One of Edinburgh’s newest luxury hotels, 100 Princes Street, opened its doors in the spring of 2024, although the location has a much longer history. Over the decades, it has been a private home, a hotel and the site of the Royal Over-Seas League, established in the four-story townhouse in 1929. Red Carnation Hotels acquired the property in 2019 and transformed it into a 29-room, residents-only hotel, emphasizing high-end service rather than over-the-top amenities. The décor pays homage to 100 Princes Street’s nautical roots, and the hand-drawn murals in the stairway are inspired by far-flung destinations, such as India and Antarctica. 

The rooms and suites vary in size, color scheme and layout, with five different tartan patterns adorning the walls and textiles. The Archibald Signature Suite, named for a famed Scottish explorer, is a real showstopper. The Wallace is more like a living room than a traditional restaurant, and only hotel guests can partake in breakfast or dinner and drinks. Ghillie’s Pantry holds more than 100 bottles of rare whiskey, including one that dates back to 1954, and you can book in for a tasting. The collection at Ghillie’s Pantry is so exclusive that the highest level of tasting costs £1,000 per person. For those looking to score hard-to-get tickets, the concierge is always on hand, from the moment you check in until departure.

The Caledonian Edinburgh, Curio Collection by Hilton

• Princes St., Edinburgh EH1 2AB

Rumor has it that Taylor Swift stayed at The Caledonian Edinburgh, formerly the Waldorf Astoria Edinburgh, while in Scotland on her Eras Tour. While her patronage is not confirmed, the historic hotel, which overlooks Edinburgh Castle, is certainly fit for a celebrity. Although it was built in 1903, The Caledonian Edinburgh has seen several refurbishments, including its bar and several suites. The 235 rooms and suites are elegantly understated, with large windows and views of the castle and Princes Street. Guests can indulge at the spa and indoor pool, and take advantage of a large fitness center. Scottish chef Mark Greenaway serves a local, seasonal menu in The Court restaurant, while chef Dean Banks helms fine dining eatery 1925 at The Pompadour. The location is especially well-suited for those who plan to walk around Edinburgh—many of the city’s best spots are only blocks away.

The Witchery

• 352 Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2NF

Those with a sense of drama and a love for history will find themselves at home in The Witchery, which opened in Edinburgh’s Old Town in 1979. The buildings, set at the gates of Edinburgh Castle, date back centuries, and the hotel’s name references those who were burned at the stake as so-called witches on Castlehill all those years ago. The décor is pure opulence, especially in the nine guest suites, each of which has its own gothic vibe. The namesake restaurant, set across two historic rooms, is open to visitors and guests and serves classic dishes with an upscale flair. Although there are few hotel amenities available, the lavish décor may be all you need.

Prestonfield House

• Priestfield Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5UT

Just outside the city center, travelers can find Prestonfield House, a sister property to The Witchery. Prestonfield was once the home of architect Sir William Bruce and was eventually transformed into a boutique hotel in 1958. It was acquired by James Thomson in 2003 and has since been restored, both inside the elegant rooms and in the well-maintained gardens. It’s an intimate experience—there are just 18 rooms and five suites, all outfitted with luxurious fabrics and antique furnishings. There is a fine dining restaurant, Rhubarb, and the option to enjoy afternoon tea in one of the reception rooms. The location offers the best of both worlds: 20 acres of quiet gardens and parkland around the hotel, but the city center is a short drive away. It’s about a 30-minute drive from Edinburgh Airport.

W Edinburgh

• 1 St James Square, Edinburgh, UK

Open since 2023, W Edinburgh is one of the city’s most modern—and uniquely designed—hotels. The centrally located collection of three buildings contains 199 rooms and 45 suites, many with outdoor terraces. The rooms are split between a sculptural contemporary building and historic townhouses, lending a sense of old and new to the property. There is a gym and spa, which has five treatment rooms, and the hotel is home to SushiSamba’s Edinburgh outpost. The best views can be found from the rooftop bar, the W Lounge, which serves snacks and drinks. The hotel is well situated in the St. James Quarter, an area filled with restaurants and shopping.

Kimpton Charlotte Square Hotel

• 38 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh EH2 4HQ

Kimpton Charlotte Square Hotel, located in New Town, arrived in Edinburgh in 2019. One of several InterContinental Edinburgh properties, including the InterContinental Edinburgh The George, it features 184 guest rooms and 15 suites, spanning seven interconnected Georgian townhouses, and represents one of the city’s more modern luxury hotels. There is a notably expansive spa, which includes an indoor pool, sauna and steam room, and a gym. There are two restaurants, Baba and The Garden, although there are a plethora of exciting dining outposts in the surrounding streets. This one is a great pick for solo travelers—along with its larger rooms and suites, Kimpton Charlotte Square Hotel features compact single rooms that will encourage you to spend the day exploring.

In 2020, Simpson’s in the Strand, one of London’s most historic restaurants, shuttered its doors. The restaurant had existed on the Strand for nearly two centuries, initially opening in 1828 as the Grand Cigar Divan, before transforming into Simpson’s Tavern and Divan in 1848. For years, it was a center of chess in England, and it became known for its silver carving trolleys, which wound through the dining room to avoid disturbing the chess players. The Savoy Hotel acquired Simpson’s in 1898 and retained ownership until it abruptly closed during the pandemic. It was a sad demise, seemingly marking the end of a classic era of dining.

But on March 3, Simpson’s reopened. It felt almost miraculous to those on the outside, but its rebirth had been in the works for years. Restaurateur Jeremy King, known for shepherding London icons like The Wolseley and The Ivy, had been trying to get his hands on Simpson’s for years. 

“Simpson’s has beguiled me ever since I saw it for the first time in the ‘80s,” King, 71, tells Observer. “It caught my eye, but I never dreamed I would ever be able to afford or acquire that sort of restaurant at the time. The possibility of taking over Simpson’s came through around 2000, but failed. And then I tried again in 2008 and 2015 and, to a degree, just before Covid.”

In 2022, King heard there might be a new possibility. Simpson’s hadn’t reopened after its closure during the pandemic, but the space was still there, so he made a bid to the Savoy. It took three years from the initial bid to the handover, but once all was said and done, King was still facing the challenge of restoring Simpson’s multi-room, multi-floor layout. The current building dates back to 1904, when the Strand was rebuilt, and he wanted to ensure its historic flourishes remained intact.

Unlike many of London’s popular dining spots, Simpson’s is rooted in old-school British tradition. Newer restaurants like Maison Francois and Brasserie Zédel have evoked that sensibility, but to find a grand dining room, you often have to look to classic hotels. 

“It was a purpose-built restaurant, and there’s nothing like it left in London,” King says. “It is really unique. If we’d had to create the sort of restaurant it is from scratch, it would have been remarkably expensive. We rebuilt two of the rooms, but used a lot of what was already here. We even managed to keep the chandeliers.”

The biggest updates have been to elements like the kitchen and the air conditioning system, rather than what guests will notice. “I’ve tried to make it feel like it’s been lovingly maintained by the same family over the years,” King notes. “So you can feel the age, but at the same time it’s quite sharp. Most of the modernization has been behind the scenes.”

The most well-known room in Simpson’s is the Grand Divan, a wood-paneled dining room where carving trolleys arrive tableside (the room famously banned women until 1984). Upstairs, there’s a bar and private events space (British Vogue and GQ hosted a BAFTA party there in February). There’s also a second dining room, which will become a café-style restaurant called Romano’s. It’s named after Romano’s Restaurant, another famed eatery that existed on the Strand until 1941, when it was destroyed during World War II. 

“It’s my tribute to Romano’s,” King says. “If it hadn’t been bombed during the war, I would certainly have been trying to acquire it as well. It was another grand dame restaurant in London.”

Over the years, the Grand Divan has gone through various manifestations. The color scheme has shifted, and the table layout has evolved, although the wood paneling and the chandeliers have remained. King decided to add more booths to the space, and they meld so seamlessly that returning customers can’t see the differences.  

“Somebody I knew brought in a man who knew the restaurant very well,” King says. “And he pointed at one of the booths under the window, and said, ‘Between late ‘80s through into the turn of the century, I used to sit at that table at least twice a week.’ That booth never existed beyond three weeks ago. But, for me, that’s a triumph. People love a sense of belonging, and they love history and nostalgia and feeling part of something.”

As someone who dined at Simpson’s several times pre-pandemic, the revitalization is almost uncanny. Although the Grand Divan has a different table layout and the beef Wellington is currently missing from the menu, the experience of being in the room feels the same. When I dined recently, a second week after its reopening, it was full of excitement and energy. Guests were young and old, many with a nostalgia for what it used to be. The service is still a work in progress (the servers, for example, were not always available or particularly attentive), but the vibe is true to prior form.

Reminders of the past appear throughout. In the Grand Divan, the dishes are adorned with the Simpson’s logo, which has also been refreshed. King compares the logo to a Coke bottle. “If you look at the Coca-Cola bottle at the moment you think, ‘That must be the same Coca-Cola bottle they’ve had for years,” he says. “But it’s changed quite radically. We used the basic Simpson’s logo, and it feels the same.”

Before King signed the lease, the Savoy auctioned off some of the old décor, plates and glassware. A few of the silver trolleys were also sold; however, King managed to salvage seven of the original beef trolleys and merged their working parts into the four that now circulate through the room. The trolleys currently offer roast beef, but will soon feature other dishes as well. 

“We’ll expand them to lamb,” King says. “I’m dying to do salmon coulibiac. People really enjoy the trolleys. We have four carvers, and one is someone we brought back who used to work here. The beef Wellington may come back at a later stage. We didn’t want to confuse people, so we’re staying with the regular beef for now, and then Wellington can come in.”

During breakfast, which the restaurant had stopped serving in 2017, the trolleys come around with condiments like brown sauce and marmalade. Overall, the menu is traditional English fare, with nods to prior Simpson’s offerings, like the roast beef. Starters include a very generous portion of prawn cocktail, doused with Marie Rose sauce, and venison tartare. There are oysters, hand-dived scallops and Waldorf salad—dishes that can be shared or eaten selfishly. The main dishes are simple but well-cooked, with options for vegetarians and pescatarians. King says the roast beef is exceptionally popular so far, as is the so-called tongue-in-cheek, featuring ox cheek and tongue served in peppercorn sauce. 

“There are dishes that are very much part of the past, and they tend to be the simple dishes,” King says. “I worried that it might be a bit boring, but David Stevens, who is the executive chef, came back with one of the most exciting menus I’ve ever had. It’s very British: We’ve got puddings and pies every day, and dishes like boiled ham, which sounds not very exciting. But a great boiled ham with parsley is fantastic and is being well received. The sense of generosity is important. And we’ll keep developing it.” 

Vestiges of Simpson’s past as a chess mecca remain. Chess pieces still adorn the entrance, and there are painted murals in the lobby that reflect the building’s history, including one of female chess champion Vera Menchik. King even displayed a few of the original chessboards. While King says chess isn’t a main feature of the restaurants or bars, he notes that “chess will get played.”

King has been part of some of London’s most famous restaurants. He and his former business partner, Chris Corbin, acquired Le Caprice in 1981 and reopened The Ivy in 1990, both of which became celebrity hotspots. They restored seafood restaurant J. Sheekey, originally opened in 1896, and launched European-inspired brasserie The Wolseley in 2003. He has been behind everything from Brasserie Zédel to The Beaumont, a luxury hotel in Mayfair. After the admittedly tumultuous dissolution of Corbin & King in 2022, he founded Jeremy King Restaurants, which now helms Arlington (a revitalization of Le Caprice), The Park and Simpson’s in the Strand. 

Despite his impact, King says he isn’t ready to acknowledge his legacy. “I do get told it,” he admits. “But if I start to believe all the press and publicity, I’m more likely to drop the ball. I’m always trying to get better. The great enemy of restaurateurs is complacency and overconfidence. I don’t think I’ll fully enjoy it until after I’ve retired and probably not even then. Unless I’m in a position to look down or look up from somewhere post-death. Then I might go, ‘Maybe I did make a difference.’” 

For now, Simpson’s is King’s primary focus. He’s been present for every service since it opened. Romano’s will likely join the Grand Divan by the end of the month, meaning around 250 guests could be dining in Simpson’s at a given time. Still, King, who cites The River Café and The Fat Badger as his favorite places to dine in London, may still have more ways of changing the city’s dining scene. 

“I have no plans for anything new,” King admits, although he’s open if the right building comes up. “But my focus is to get Simpson’s running well. I think it’s the Jesuits who say, ‘Give me a child until they’re seven, and they’ll be set up for life.’ So give me a restaurant for seven months to lay down the DNA and the way of operating and how it should be.”

He adds, “I’m not one to blow my own trumpet, but the number of people saying that Simpson’s has gone into the best hands makes me proud. It also really puts the pressure on.” 

Even those who’ve never set foot in Sketch are likely familiar with its maximalist, colorful interiors. The London dining destination is one of the city’s most Instagrammed spots, often attracting guests just for its egg-shaped toilets and ornate afternoon tea. 

But despite its flashy appearance, Sketch, which houses multiple restaurants and bars within a historic 18th-century townhouse, wasn’t created for the sake of attention—and particularly not of the online kind. In fact, Sketch existed before Instagram debuted in 2010. Its owner, Mourad Mazouz, acquired the space a few years after successfully opening North African restaurant Momo in 1997. The plan was for a friend to install a nightclub in the Grade II-listed building, which was previously the headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects, a headquarters for British suffragettes, and one of Christian Dior’s London ateliers. That plan didn’t come to fruition.

“He didn’t want it,” Mazouz tells Observer, speaking in Sketch’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant, The Lecture Room, in early March. “I had no clue what I was going to do with the building. Should I keep it? Should I give it back? But the beauty when you’re younger is you don’t really think. So we decided to jump and see where we would land.”

Mazouz had a hospitality background, and at the time, he also ran a record label. He wanted to converge all of his interests in one place—art, food, music, partying. “There wasn’t really a vision,” Mazouz admits. “It took me four and a half years to build this thing, and I didn’t even know what it was going to be. I just wanted to give it as much of my heart as I could.”

Mazouz knew he would need a chef with a similarly creative spirit. In 2000, he visited Pierre Gagnaire’s eponymous Paris restaurant to ask if one of his chefs wanted to join Sketch. The project reminded Gagnaire of his original restaurant in Saint-Étienne, Le Clos Fleuri, which shuttered due to bankruptcy in the mid-‘90s, despite earning three Michelin stars. So he replied, “Why not me?”

“Coming together with Mourad was a chance to redo what I didn’t achieve,” Gagnaire says. “It was also an opportunity to work with somebody who was not from my world. We were so different culturally, and that was interesting.”

Sketch opened in 2003 as part restaurant, part bar, part art space and part nightclub. The Gallery, now a more casual bistro-type restaurant where afternoon tea is served, showcased video installations during the day. The space, conceived by Mazouz and Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, was originally a blank white room with 12 screens. “Most of them were quite provocative,” Mazouz says of the videos played there. In the evenings, it transformed into a restaurant, and later each night, the furniture was cleared to make a nightclub. The culinary offerings befuddled the guests, especially the appetizers that arrived via trolley. 

“It was food that you’d never seen before in your life,” Mazouz says. “People were scared. They thought it had been on the trolley for a long time, although everything was fresh. Everybody thought it was a bit too much. The idea at the beginning was for people to experience something extreme. We dimmed it down a bit and tried to reach the people. If it was just up to me, I would always push this place even more.”

The early assessments were harsh. The Independent ran a review under the headline “Dog’s Breakfast and Baby Sick” while another outlet described it as a “horror gallery.” People told Mazouz that Sketch would be closed within six months. It’s now been more than 20 years. Although there are still a lot of opinions about Sketch, its reputation is far better. Getting a Michelin star in the Lecture Room, the upstairs fine dining restaurant, in 2005 helped, as did the second and third stars. 

“Michelin judges the consistency of a restaurant, the personality of the chef, the culinary techniques and the menu and the creativity,” says Daniel Stucki, who has been the head chef of the Lecture Room since 2020, after joining Sketch as sous chef in 2014. “But one important point is the consistency of a restaurant. You need to create a story lasting over the years. And Sketch is such a beautiful story. Getting those stars five years, 10 years, 15 years after means the restaurant is continuously striving to do more.”

Gagnaire says the recognition is “reassuring,” but earning three stars in the Lecture Room hasn’t changed his approach to the food or service. He and Stucki shape the restaurant’s menus, which include an à la carte option, based on the idea of plunging guests into an experience. Each dish arrives with “satellite” plates that allow the chefs to showcase an array of techniques, textures and flavors. 

“The guests come here for something with a different culinary approach and a different service,” says Stucki, who got his start in his home country of Switzerland and applied for a job at Sketch to work with Gagnaire. “Nothing is conventional. Everything is special. Coming to this restaurant is like going to an art gallery. It doesn’t matter if you actually understand it—people want to be immersed. And it goes two ways: either they’re a bit shocked and surprised and traumatized, or they open up and let us guide them.”

Stucki estimates that his team, which ranges from 15 to 20 chefs at a given time, uses between 100 and 250 ingredients to create the dishes at the Lecture Room, including the tasting menu, vegetarian tasting menu, à la carte menu and the lunch menu. It’s unusual for a three Michelin-starred restaurant to offer à la carte, but Mazouz says he keeps it because he hates being forced into a tasting menu. “That’s not my conception of a restaurant,” Mazouz says. “I want to choose.”

A lot of the decisions behind Sketch stem from Mazouz’s personal preferences and interests. He stays away from social media and doesn’t really watch TV. The restaurant’s spaces are filled with art, but he doesn’t collect any at home. He certainly isn’t interested in external perception. That’s perhaps why Sketch has been able to be so imaginative in its offerings and décor over the years. 

“I don’t give a shit what people think,” Mazouz says. “I really don’t. And when people criticized us early on, I could have changed the chef or taken another direction. But I didn’t do that. We continued what we were doing.”

It also helps that Mazouz isn’t particularly attached to anything in Sketch. The name reflects the idea that the space is like a sketchbook, always being erased and redrawn. He tweaks the décor constantly, and Gagnaire and Stucki shift the dishes on the menu seasonally, never repeating a particular menu. In 2014, Sketch debuted a cotton-candy-pink design in the Gallery—a decor choice that amped up the Instagram fervor. It became visually synonymous with Sketch and was perpetually photographed and filmed for online bragging rights. Seven years later, the restaurant announced a redesign and ditched the popular pink hue. 

“I had enough of pink,” Mazouz says. “With so many people taking pictures of it, I should be very happy. But I had enough. People were obsessed with the pink room and taking pictures all the time, and that was too much.”

The artwork in Sketch also shifts. The venue has showcased more than 50 exhibitions since it opened, and Mazouz regularly invites notable artists to transform the Gallery. Earlier this year, British artist Jonathan Baldock created 84 clay masks for the restaurant, which were installed alongside wool cocoons and floral wall sculptures. 

“Sketch felt like an exciting opportunity, as my work often sits somewhere between sculpture, theater and lived environment,” Baldock tells Observer. “I’m interested in how objects behave in spaces that are already emotionally and socially charged—not just neutral white cubes. The restaurant setting allows the works to be encountered in a more embodied, informal way.”

He adds that Sketch offers artists an audience who may not regularly go to galleries, but who enjoy looking at art. “It’s a very different sort of exposure, not just about visibility, but about the work entering everyday life and being experienced over time rather than in a single focused visit,” Baldock says.

The toilets, known as the “pod loos,” are as famous as the Lecture Room or the artwork—maybe more so. The abstract, self-contained stalls are built into giant eggs, which fill an enormous room behind the Gallery. The space was originally intended as a bar. While building Sketch, Mazouz regularly awoke from nightmares about the design. One morning, he woke up in a panic about the bar and called Duchaufour-Lawrance. 

“I said, ‘We have to change it,’” Mazouz says. “I used to go to a lot of music festivals with [porta-potties], so I thought we could make eggs. So we did a dozen eggs to fill the space. It was very complicated. We found someone on the Isle of Wight who does boats [to make them].”

He shrugs when asked about the photo obsession guests have with the toilets. “It’s a bit annoying,” he says. “But at the end of the day, it’s the world we live in. It’s a ridiculous thing.”

The Lecture Room is similarly Instagrammable. Everything is immaculately and artistically plated, and the décor is pleasingly ornate, with patterned walls and colorful silk drapes. Mazouz says he’s “always adding layers” to the room, and Stucki says the designer, Gabhan O’Keeffe, regularly comes in to update or fix elements. 

The décor and the food are big, bold and unapologetic. The tasting menu is £225, the vegetarian edition is £205, and the four-course lunch is £150. When I dined in February, the meal started with eight small snacks. The bread course came with three types of butter. The famous Pierre Gagnaire’s Grand Dessert was presented as six different desserts, served simultaneously. 

“It’s about generosity,” Gagnaire says. “We want to give people the best, so we want to give them more when possible. The dessert is like a flower bouquet that comes together at the end.”

The Grand Dessert can be comprised of as many as eight different plates. It changes four times each year, but particular items shift more often depending on what’s in season. “We want to ensure it’s always exceptional,” Stucki says. “If we don’t have eight good dishes, we do less. It’s about quality and consistency, not quantity. A journalist, a culinary critic or an inspector can come every single day, so everything you do you need to do it at a three-Michelin-star level.”

Stucki adds that, like Mazouz, he chooses to ignore the social media flurry around Sketch. “It doesn’t affect the style of the food,” he says. “The most important thing is tasty food. I’ve realized that honesty, sincerity and being genuine are more important than what it looks like in a picture. We do our best, but it needs to be genuine.”

Currently, Sketch has four restaurants: the Lecture Room, the Gallery, the Glade and the Parlour. There is also a small bar underneath the room with the toilets, open until 2 a.m. on weekends. Afternoon tea is a booming business in the Gallery and the Glade. Some guests are under the misconception that it’s a three-Michelin-starred afternoon tea, but the Lecture Room is unrelated to the tea offering. Each space has a completely different vibe.

“I see it as being like a street with different places that make sense for different people,” Mazouz says. “At the beginning, I thought, stupidly, that we could put all types of people in one room. But I realized how someone wants to feel is not the same thing for everybody. So there is a room for anyone.”

Mazouz and Gagnaire both split their time between London and Paris. Gagnaire has numerous restaurants around the world, while Mazouz also owns Moroccan eatery Le 404. Stucki devotes seven days a week to maintaining and improving the Lecture Room—something he enjoys. “We invest our time, creativity and energy continuously to strive to achieve perfection every day,” he says. “We don’t take anything for granted.”

Mazouz has plenty more ideas for Sketch. He wants to swap out the bar in the Parlour, and he has plans for further tweaks if the budget allows. Ultimately, he wants to maintain an evolving vision. If people like or want to photograph it, great. If not, he isn’t that concerned. 

“We are concentrated on what we do and what we feel,” he says. “Honestly, I don’t even know if people copy us, because I don’t look outside [of Sketch]. I look inside. Pierre does also. We look at what we can do and what we can change. I know I have to change something when it becomes a burden in my head. And then, if the money allows, I change it. I never look at what’s happening around me.”

It’s a philosophy that’s benefited Sketch, proving that an uncompromising sense of imagination results in true longevity.

For years, Amy Poon wasn’t sure she wanted to take over the family business. Although her father, Bill Poon, is a well-regarded Chinese-British chef and helmed a successful group of restaurants in London and Geneva, Poon didn’t initially follow suit. After years pursuing other paths, she opened her first restaurant, Poon’s at Somerset House, in November 2025.

“I am the least strategic person,” Poon tells Observer. “My entire career has been haphazard and accidental. And I’m not sure I would have known how to do it any other way.”

Poon grew up in London, a witness to her parents’ success as chefs and restaurateurs. Bill and his wife, Cecilia, immigrated to the U.K. from Hong Kong in the late ‘60s, and eventually opened a group of restaurants that completely changed the London dining scene. The first Poon’s debuted in 1973. In 1980, Bill became the first Chinese chef to earn a Michelin star.

“Food is deeply embedded in our family,” Amy Poon recalls. “Growing up, our Sunday activity wasn’t going to a museum or swimming pool. It was traveling to eat. It was driving out to the country to try a new restaurant.”

Although Poon learned a lot from her parents, she didn’t immediately want to follow in their footsteps. Instead, Poon studied Japanese at Oxford and eventually moved to Tokyo to work in PR and advertising. Over the years, she’s lived between Japan, Australia and Singapore, never fully settling on a single career. In 2007, following a divorce, Poon moved back to London from Sydney, a year after her parents retired from the restaurant business and closed the last remaining Poon’s.

“The timeline is all a bit hazy,” she notes. “At the peak, there were seven restaurants. My parents retired, but they kept their dried meats business. When I came back to England, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next, and I revisited the idea of maybe bottling and selling their sauces, but the timing wasn’t right.”

Instead, Poon remarried and went back to Singapore, where she took a job in luxury recruitment. It wasn’t long before one of her friends sat her down for a serious talk. “She said, ‘What on Earth are you doing faffing around like this?’” Poon remembers. “She said, ‘Listen, the only time you’re happy is when you’re eating, thinking about eating, talking about cooking. It’s in your blood. It’s in your genes. I wish you would stop trying to distract yourself and get on with it.’”

Poon was so blown away by her friend’s faith in her that she quit her job. “I sat down and wrote a plan for a new iteration of Poon’s and how I would bring it back and what it would look like,” she says. “I was quite naive at the time. I met with everybody from private backers to big funds to private equity and everything else, and initially, I was quite excited that somebody would want to see me. I quickly realized that I was talking about a funky restaurant, as opposed to something fancy. So the first tranche of money I raised was from friends and family, and that was how it started.”

In 2018, Poon launched her first pop-up in Clerkenwell. She followed with a year-long residency at Carousel called Wontoneria, and in 2022, she launched a line of Poon’s sauces, which are now widely available in the U.K. Poon’s at Somerset House, near Covent Garden, is Poon’s first permanent site. It reflects both her family’s history and her personal preferences, particularly with the convivial vibe and the décor, which includes many of Poon’s own books.

“This is where you come if you don’t have a nice Chinese friend who will cook for you,” she explains. “I don’t think the way Chinese food is cooked at home is widely understood or appreciated. This should feel like you’re coming into my house. Hence, all of the books, because I love books. In so many Chinese restaurants, there’s an expectation that they should be themed in some way, that there will be a dragon somewhere.”

She adds, “If I could just feed everybody in my house, I would.”

Because the kitchen at Poon’s at Somerset House is small, the menu is somewhat constrained. Poon focuses on an assortment of cooking methods, as well as what she herself might want to eat. When she began working on the menu for the restaurant, she imagined how she would order dishes.

“When you order food in a Chinese restaurant, you want a range of cooking methods, a range of proteins, different taste profiles, a bit of everything,” she says. “Because in Chinese cooking, it’s all about balance. So when I put together the menu, that’s the focus.”

A few dishes reference the original Poon’s restaurants. The signature clay pot rice, topped with the family’s wind-dried meats, is nearly identical to the original. The Covent Garden roast duck salad originates from Bill’s version from the ‘70s. “It was very much a part of my childhood,” Poon says. “He was using leftover roast duck that he had in the restaurant because we were doing roast meats, but we aren’t doing roast meat here. But it’s quite close.”

Other dishes are refined versions of the Chinese home cooking that Poon enjoys. The steamed fish, typically seabass, is what she calls a “household classic.” “A lot of families will have their version of that,” she explains. “I’m quite keen to show that it’s not restaurant food. It really is very much home cooking. So if you’re expecting spring rolls or sour pork or lemon chicken or chicken with cashew nuts, you’re going to be disappointed.”

A standout menu item is Poon’s take on prawn toast, an exceptionally popular dish in British Chinese restaurants. Hers is cheekily dubbed “The hill that Amy didn’t die on” and features a heritage recipe suggested by her father.

“I really dislike prawn toast,” she says. “Prawn toast is ubiquitous, and it’s been hijacked by every gastropub between here and Scotland. I really didn’t want to do it. My mother said, ‘You know, darling, there are some things that will pay the rent. If people really want it, why won’t you accommodate that, even if it isn’t quite what you had in mind?’”

Poon floated a few possible iterations by her father, including a rösti version made with potatoes. He recalled an old recipe that used lardo instead of bread. The process is extremely involved, but results in an undeniably delicious dish. “It is labor-intensive and has many steps,” Poon says. “But I thought, ‘If I’m going to do it, I might as well do the best version that I can.’ Hence, the hill I didn’t die on because I didn’t shut it out altogether.”

However, she says, there’s a fine line between placating diners and ensuring the menu reflects what they might want or expect.

“If people don’t know about something, then they don’t know to want it,” she says. “I hate to use the word education, because it makes me sound all preachy and I don’t want to be, but I do think there’s probably some education to be done on dishes and ingredients. But we’ve found people are incredibly receptive to our stories and to finding out about new things.”

One thing the menu lacks is a large selection of desserts. Instead, it features only two options: lychee sorbet and a dish titled “Three bites of Helen Goh.” The latter is a reference to Poon’s friend, chef Helen Goh. The three bites include a piece of seasonal fruit, something chocolatey and a type of biscuit. “We use Western techniques and Western desserts, with a bit of an Asian twist or sensibility,” Poon notes.

Poon’s at Somerset House has attracted both new diners and those who frequented Poon’s parents’ restaurants for many years.

“The idea of legacy is quite a heavy one, and it sometimes feels a bit grandiose,” Poon says. “There hasn’t been a Poon’s restaurant open for so long. And yet we’ve had such an extraordinarily warm reception from people who have shared so many memories and stories. Back then, there were fewer restaurants, and my parents were very present. Nowadays, there are so many restaurants that are chains, so people maybe feel they are missing that personal touch.”

The restaurant has been so popular that people are already asking Poon when she might open her next spot. For now, she’s focused on making Poon’s at Somerset House the best it can be, and on expanding the Poon’s offerings online, which include her parents’ wind-dried meats and absolutely delicious chili oil. She has plans to launch a Chinese knife and hopes to expand their range of home goods, as well. “There are more ways for me to help people bring Chinese food into their homes,” she says. “I want to create a platform to celebrate beautiful Chinese things, because I think ‘Made in China’ still gets a bad rep.”

Poon may have taken an unexpected route to arrive at her current destination, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. Like her own career, she’s happy for Poon’s at Somerset House to find its own way—even if it takes a few years.

“I don’t want to be a fad or an instant classic,” she says. “I’d like to be able to put our heads down and focus on our food and get on with it. Being fashionable is not at the essence of what we’re trying to do. If you don’t have that nice Chinese friend to cook for you, we’re here.”

The tasting menu at Behind, a modern seafood restaurant in London’s hip Hackney neighborhood, changes almost every day. It’s why chef Andy Beynon doesn’t post the 10-course tasting menu online. It’s also why a lot of diners return to the 18-seat restaurant again and again—because you’ll never eat the exact same meal there twice.

“We tweak it all the time,” Beynon says, speaking to Observer in mid-January. “For example, tomorrow we’re doing a Mylor prawn dish because they’ve just come into season. There are certain dishes we can adapt depending on the available seafood, but there are some dishes we completely change and that we develop through the week to put on the menu the next week.”

Beynon opened Behind, his first restaurant, in October 2020. Less than three weeks later, the eatery earned its first Michelin star. It was a transformative moment for the chef and the restaurant’s success.

“I’d never owned a restaurant before, and I was absolutely fucked for money,” he recalls. “I was borrowing and begging left, right and center. But because we won the star, we became absolutely rammed. And then I didn’t have to worry too much. So I don’t really know what it would be like to own a restaurant without one.”

Before Behind, Beynon worked in a slew of high-end British establishments, including Phil Howard’s The Square, Claude Bosi’s Hibiscus and Matt Weedon’s Lords of the Manor. Becoming a chef wasn’t a lifelong dream—he initially imagined himself as a hairdresser—but growing up in Hertfordshire, he always preferred cooking shows like Ready, Steady, Cook to children’s shows. He took a job as a dishwasher at 16 while still in school, and soon became attracted to the creativity behind cooking.

“When I started cooking, I fell in love with it,” Beynon says. “But it wasn’t really seen as a career. A lot of people around me were like, ‘You sure you want to do this?’ They wouldn’t understand that the high-end level of cooking is really serious. That is changing—working in the kitchen is a really good career—but that was the case when I started cooking.”

Beynon has always had big aspirations, and his try-hard attitude translated well to the culinary world. “I love trying to push myself and be the best in sports,” he says. “And I think with cooking, that pushed me as well. So I wanted to work in the best restaurants.”

He started towards the top. Beynon’s first cooking job, at age 17, was at The Ledbury in London, which had just won its first Michelin star. “That was quite a shock to the system, working there when I was so young,” he says. “I didn’t know anything.” He moved on to J. Sheekey, an institution known for its seafood. Later, at Hibiscus, Beynon really began envisioning his first restaurant.

“I was thinking about my restaurant forever, but I didn’t have the skills of actually understanding how a restaurant ran,” he says. “I always knew I wanted to do it. But I think a big part of the chef’s table concept [came from] when I worked with Claude Bosi, and he had a chef’s table in Hibiscus. It was very chef and customer-led.”

He quickly realized how much he loved talking to customers and cooking in front of them. “You get more of an adrenaline kick, instead of being in a basement or a dingy kitchen where you’re told by some French waiter if table four loved it or not,” Beynon says. “You can actually be honest and speak to people.”

Beynon knew he wanted to open his restaurant in Hackney, an area he loves. The actual design emerged from the space he found near London Fields. He knew it should be an open concept with the kitchen in full view of all the guests, and he wanted a curved countertop for the seating. Behind serves lunch and dinner with only one seating per meal—all guests sit and receive their courses at the same time. It helps to create both camaraderie and an opportunity for everyone to see what the chefs are doing as they do it.

The dining experience at Behind is buzzy and convivial. When I went in December, dinner felt both like a meal and a show. Everything the chefs do is visible to diners, who are seated around a semicircular counter. There’s an island in the center so that the dish preparation is on display. Diners chat among themselves and with the chefs, something that doesn’t always happen in fine dining. It also affords Beynon and his team the opportunity to understand how people feel about the ever-changing menu items.

“It helps so much because I have so many regulars who are honest and upfront about what’s happening,” Beynon says. “I’ll talk about new dishes I put on quite openly with some of my customers. You can really gauge from people’s reactions what they think about the food.”

Behind is devoted to seafood, though Beynon is open to including other ingredients on the menu. He’s always preferred creating dishes with seafood, particularly at restaurants that are tasting menu-led. “It’s really light, really fresh, and it’s something people don’t always get at home or know how to cook,” he says. “Fish is fresh every day, and you can be so creative with seafood. You can be playful, like the prawns on toast dish I do, and really experiment.”

Beynon is constantly swapping out his dishes, but a few have stuck around, including his unusual take on Chinese restaurant classic prawn toast. It’s so popular that he has kept it on the menu for the past six months. “That dish just keeps evolving and evolving,” he says. “We use a really good prawn, so we just serve a prawn and the head meat, and that’s it. We used to serve it in the shell. So a lot of dishes I’ve kept on, but adapt so you don’t actually know what the original dish was at the start.”

The plates have impressive range. Some draw inspiration from flavors and cultures around the world—Beynon recently visited Malaysia and brought back many ingredients and spices—and others focus more on highlighting the fish.

Beynon is not interested in following trends. For him, what makes food exciting is thinking outside the box and doing something unusual. “It’s also about trying to keep things exciting for me,” he says. “And with seafood, you can be creative in different ways. You can be creative with the way you cut fish. But it’s also about adding interesting spice flavors. We’re going to do a curry-style butter sauce with the Mylor prawns. That’s where the next level with Michelin and trying to get two stars really comes into play.”

Most of the fish served at Behind comes from U.K. waters, although some seafood is imported from Morocco and Sicily. Beynon loves to highlight gray mullet, an underrated fish that lives on seafood. He incorporates smoked kippers, another British favorite, and he has considered trying out a jellied eel dish. “We go through five kilos of smoked kippers a week,” Beynon says. “So if you add it up since we’ve been open, I must be one of the lead buyers of kippers in London. I like the idea of keeping traditions alive.”

As a younger chef, Beynon remembers thinking it would be best to keep adding ingredients to a dish. But he now realizes that it’s more skillful to pare things down and allow the main ingredient to shine. He currently incorporates the smoked kippers into a scallop dish, allowing the kippers to augment the Cornwall-caught scallop.

“We don’t season the scallop,” he says. “We serve it where the scallop is quite opaque, quite undercooked, and it’s really sweet and creamy. So when you put that sauce on, you get so much salt and smoky flavor, and you can still taste the scallop. The combination is incredible. But if you put a normal amount of salt on a scallop, it could ruin the dish because you wouldn’t be able to taste the scallop. We try to be really clever about it.”

Beynon isn’t shy about admitting that Behind is currently working towards a second Michelin star. He’s as ambitious as ever (so much so, in fact, that he’s boxing his former boss Jason Atherton for charity in March). He’s in the process of opening a cocktail bar in the back of Behind, which he plans to call Behind Behind, and he has lots of ideas for new dishes. That second star may not come as quickly as the first, but Beynon knows it takes time to develop a restaurant, particularly one with a vision like his.

“I feel like we’re there,” he says. “For me, two-star level is giving something different to your diners. I’m doing what I think is best, and keeping things creative, and keeping a good team around me. I’m someone who is in, all or nothing. If I’m not interested in something, I don’t waste my energy on it. I’ve learned with getting older that it’s best to reserve your energy so you can be ambitious with the things that matter most, like the restaurant.” It’s clear he’s putting that energy in the right direction.

It’s a particularly chilly December night in London, but Caractère, a one-Michelin-starred restaurant in Notting Hill, is slowly filling with guests. It’s a sought-after reservation, not just due to Caractère’s popularity, but because chef and owner Emily Roux is collaborating on a special holiday menu with her father, Michel Roux Jr., one of London’s most famed culinary figures. 

“We often get asked around Christmastime, ‘How does the Roux family do Christmas?’” Emily, 35, tells Observer, a few weeks into January. “So many people were interested, so we created our own little Christmas menu. The first year we did it, it was over four nights, and the demand was humongous. The next year, it was even more successful. This year, we extended it into January.” 

The lure of the Roux family itself surely contributes to guests’ curiosity. Michel closed the influential Le Gavroche in 2024, which he had helmed since 1991 after taking it over from his equally renowned father, Albert Roux, and uncle, Michel Roux. Emily grew up with the restaurant and spent many hours peeling potatoes and chopping vegetables in its kitchen from an early age. She and her dad now collaborate a few times each year, often doing a special menu for Father’s Day at Caractère. The Christmas event is an opportunity for regulars and newcomers to get a peek at the Roux family legacy. 

“Opening Caractère was very much a decision of [creating] my own thing,” Emily says. “But we both get on extremely well.” She adds, “I’m an only child, so we were always a tight little family.”

Emily was immersed in food and cooking from an early age. She grew up primarily in London, although her family also spent time in France. Both her father and grandfather were well-known in the culinary world; Michel Jr. was one of the U.K.’s first real celebrity chefs. When he became a judge on the BBC’s MasterChef: The Professionals in 2008, he started being noticed on the street. “Things have changed so much, but at the time, there wasn’t really anyone that recognizable besides Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay,” Emily says. “It was quite a pivotal moment.”

Although there was no pressure from her family, Emily knew by age 12 or 13 that she also wanted to pursue a career in the culinary world. “I started to feel at home in a kitchen around that age, and school was getting more and more difficult, sitting down behind a desk and concentrating on something that I didn’t think was going to be useful to me,” she says. “The whole school thing and academics and writing were not for me. But I felt so at home in a team and in a brigade and in a kitchen. They became my brothers and sisters.”

Instead of continuing her training in London, Emily decided to enroll in culinary school in France. Her French last name, Roux, is commonplace there, despite holding such prestige in London’s food scene. She attended Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon for three years, where she lived her best life as “a total nobody.”

“I wanted to do it all for myself,” she says. “I didn’t want to have any judgment or to have anyone saying, ‘Oh, that’s Michel Roux’s daughter.’ I was lucky because I spoke French, so the opportunity was there.” 

Instead of returning to London, Emily went to Monaco at the age of 20, accepting a job at Alain Ducasse’s three-Michelin-starred Le Louis XV. It was in the kitchen there that she met Diego Ferrari, her now-husband and the co-owner and chef at Caractère. The couple later moved to Paris, where Emily spent time at Le 39V and Akrame. After three years in Paris, the couple decided they wanted to return to London. Ferrari took an opportunity to become head chef at Le Gavroche, and during his time there, the couple began planning for their own restaurant. 

“I didn’t think I had any real vision of it physically, although we didn’t want something too big or too small,” Emily says. “It was more about the vibe. We didn’t want something too fanciful. I wanted guests to feel comfortable and at home, so they would come on a more frequent basis than once a year for an occasion. Having staff that were friendly and not obtrusive. And, actually, that’s something I feel we’ve achieved.”

Caractère opened its doors in a light-filled corner site in Notting Hill in 2018. Since then, tons of buzzy new restaurants have debuted on the nearby streets. “We chose the right place,” Emily notes. “There’s everything that you could want in here now. As a tourist who wants to enjoy food, you could stay in Notting Hill for three days and live your best life.”

Each year, Caractère itself has evolved. Both Emily, who currently handles pastry, and Ferrari, who handles savory, want to continue finessing the dishes and their overall service. Covid-19 was a hurdle, but it also helped to streamline their approach. Instead of serving lunch and dinner every day, they now focus primarily on dinner. 

“Because there were so many less covers, we could pay more attention to detail and up our game when it came to the kitchen,” Emily says. “We’re also a smaller amount of staff, so we’re a tighter unit. A lot of positives later on emerged from that.” While the financial situation during Covid was “horrific” and stressful, Emily acknowledges that “it probably did help us for the best.”

One thing that doesn’t change is how Caractère presents its menu. Instead of being divided by categories like “starters” and “mains,” the à la carte menu showcases its offerings with more whimsical descriptions: “subtle,” “delicate,” “robust.” Guests can order individually or build a five-course tasting menu with a dish from each description (the latter runs £150 per person). 

“That idea goes with the name of the restaurant and who we are,” Emily says. “We have character. We like being bold and different. Starter, main course, dessert is great, but food has character. Could our characters be intertwined into these specific foods? So it is fun, but there’s also meaning behind it and a reasoning behind it. We have them in mind as we create dishes.” 

New dishes come and go based on seasonality, and both chefs tend to collaborate alongside the team. Some never see the light of day, but others emerge in only hours. The Balfegó bluefin tuna dish on the current menu, served with radish, yuzu and chili, was an immediate yes from everyone in the kitchen. “It looked stunning and it tasted amazing,” Emily recalls. “That does happen, but more often we have to change something or tweak things.” A few dishes have established themselves as signatures, particularly a take on cacio e pepe made with celeriac instead of pasta noodles. It pays homage to Ferrari’s Italian heritage, as well as Emily’s personal love of pasta. 

“My mother-in-law makes an amazing, traditional cacio e pepe with homemade pasta, and I love it,” she says. “I said to Diego, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be amazing to have my favorite dish, but also your family, intertwined in this restaurant?’” Ferrari worried it wouldn’t be sophisticated enough for Caractère. They trialed a few options, including one with potato noodles, but couldn’t come up with something that seemed suitably elegant and indulgent. 

“Then we tried it with the celeriac,” Emily says. “Not only is it kind of the same color as a pasta, [but] cooking it al dente is actually quite nice. The celeriac taste goes incredibly well with the cheese and the pepper. We focused on how to plate it well and using the best possible ingredients. If you love cheese, you’ll order it every time. It was never meant to stay, but we kept it in the end because it speaks about us and the family.”

She adds, of keeping the menu in flux, “To be honest, our regulars can ask us for anything, and we’ll get it for them. But I’d like to think that we change things up in the best way and get people to discover new things.” 

Ultimately, Caractère showcases what Emily and Ferrari enjoy cooking, eating and drinking. They don’t serve oysters, for example, because neither of them eats oysters and wouldn’t know how to best showcase the ingredient. “All of the menu and all of everything that is at Caractère is very much us, and something that we’ve approved and agreed upon and loved,” she says. “That’s the beauty of owning your own restaurant. That’s what any young chef who aspires to have a restaurant is like: ‘I want to do me. I want to do what I want.’” 

Caractère earned its first Michelin star in early 2025. It was a milestone moment for the restaurant, and it has helped draw a more international crowd into its doors. The goal is to earn a second star, although Emily doesn’t expect that to come right away. 

“We definitely have the team in place for that to happen, and we both have the knowledge to make that happen,” she says. “But I think these things also do take time. Diego and I are both ambitious people, and we’ve got a team who wants to follow us on that journey.” 

Building a reputation and a restaurant outside of her family has been important for Emily, but she also wants to remain connected to the legacy her grandfather, great-uncle and father have built. 

“My family will always be mentioned and intertwined simply because they’ve been so incredibly game-changing for this country and the food scene in this country,” she says. “As I’ve gotten older, I have shoulders to better support what can come with that. Growing up, thank God I was in France, and I was doing my own thing. I think I will always get remarks because my family, like, how did I actually get here? Was it simply because of my name, and my father, and grandfather? Can I actually cook? You need broad shoulders to take that in. And as I’ve grown up and become a mom myself, I’m okay with it.” 

She acknowledges that she pushes herself not because it will add to the family legacy, but because she has her own goals. “I don’t think my parents would be any less proud of me if I didn’t have any accolades,” Emily says. “Do I want them? Yes. I want them for myself and for my team and for my restaurant.”

Classics like Clos Maggiore and Andrew Edmunds draw crowds of two for good reason, thanks in part to their amorously inclined atmospheres. New London restaurants, like Noisy Oyster and One Club Row, are more contemporary and hip, but no less suited to a night out with your partner. Some places are best for first or second dates, while others are ideal for long-time lovers. And it doesn’t have to be Valentine’s Day or an anniversary to make these meals worthwhile—many are perfect for any random evening you happen to have free. Wherever you go, be sure to make plans in advance, as Londoners tend to book early and frantically. 

Sessions Art Club

• 24 Clerkenwell Grn, London EC1R 0NA

Farringdon might not be London’s most romantic neighborhood, but it is home to Sessions Art Club, an effortlessly hip restaurant that debuted in 2021. Situated in a Grade II-listed building, it functions as a studio as well as a restaurant, with rotating art and performances. The shabby-chic walls of the dining room have become almost iconic, adding a stylish flair to the space. The menu features British sharing small plates that are as much about flavor as about creativity. It’s hard to put in a bad order, and the desserts stand up well to the savory dishes. Put in the effort to book a romantic dinner 30 days in advance to ensure a good table at a reasonable time.

The Fuji Grill

• Beaverbrook Town House, Sloane St, London SW1X 9PJ

Tucked inside Chelsea’s Beaverbrook Townhouse, The Fuji Grill is everything you want from a date night. The contemporary Japanese restaurant is situated in a chic, intimate dining room, and there’s an emphasis on ingredient quality in every dish. At £100 per person, the 12-course omakase is a reasonable splurge, or you can opt for the tasting menu, which includes some of the kitchen’s signatures. The à la carte is broad but discerning, and the charcoal-grilled robata options allow you to sear your own meat, fish and vegetables on the table—a fun addition to any evening out. 

Noble Rot

• 51 Lamb’s Conduit St, London WC1N 3NB

Since its inception, Noble Rot has expanded to three London locations in Bloomsbury, Soho and Mayfair. The original, a modern classic on a busy street in Bloomsbury, is especially romantic, with a dimly lit dining room and buzzy vibe. The wine list is memorably expansive, but the food is equally notable. The menu shifts daily, and everything is shareable, so go in with an open mind and try as much as possible. This is one restaurant where you do, actually, want to fill up on the bread—it’s that good. 

Andrew Edmunds

• 46 Lexington St, London W1F 0LP

Open since 1985, Andrew Edmunds is a long-standing, old-school favorite in Soho, often attracting the same guests over and over. And it’s not too late to make this restaurant on Lexington Street your new local spot. The menu is charmingly handwritten, celebrating British dishes that shift with the seasons. The wine list is notoriously affordable, featuring a great selection of bottles primarily from France. The candle-lit restaurant is narrow and slightly worn, but in a good way. It’s the type of place that’s filled with character—and actual characters—and it has a well-deserved reputation as a romantic destination. 

Restaurant Story

• 199 Tooley St, London SE1 2JX

London is home to many Michelin-starred fine dining spots, but Restaurant Story still stands out. It balances upscale experience with a sense of casual affability—there’s no need to feel intimidated here. The eight-course tasting menu isn’t cheap at £275, but it’s worth the splurge, especially if you’re trying to impress someone. The room is beautiful, with views of a small garden, and guests often get to visit the kitchen during their meal. It’s ideal for a special occasion to create a lasting memory.

Café Deco

• 43 Store St, London WC1E 7D

Those who enjoy trying new dishes and exploring the range of British cuisine should plan a romantic evening out at Bloomsbury spot Café Deco. Led by chef Anna Tobias, the restaurant and wine bar is charming and intimate, with several cozy corners for dining. The menu often shifts based on what is available and in season, but there are always a few really delicious fish dishes worth ordering. The wine list comes courtesy of 40 Maltby Street, with an emphasis on low-intervention producers, and the wine-by-the-glass selection changes daily alongside the food. It’s a nice space to spend time in, which is exactly what you want on a date.

One Club Row

• 1 Club Row, London E1 6JX

London’s hottest opening of 2025 is also a good place to wow a date. First of all, it’s a tough reservation, especially on a weekend evening, making it all the more impressive when you do score a table. Second, who doesn’t want to enjoy pickled jalapeno gougères followed by a burger that is accompanied by a dish of au poivre sauce for dipping? You may want to order something else off the New York-inspired menu if it’s a first date, but the martinis are strong, the wine list is thoughtful, and the atmosphere is akin to a members’ club, but one that isn’t elitist. 

The Cocochine

• 27 Bruton Pl, London W1J 6NQ

Nestled amongst Mayfair’s showier dining establishments, The Cocochine is an elegant, seasonal restaurant that showcases the best of British ingredients. Much of the produce and meat comes from the restaurant’s own farm, while the fish is carefully sourced from Scotland. Chef Larry Jayasekara incorporates elements of his Sri Lankan heritage, as well as his time at Pétrus, creating a menu that is impressively precise. Guests can enjoy a tasting menu at the chef’s counter upstairs or book a table in the main dining room, which is purposefully designed to give diners privacy. 

Noisy Oyster 

• 2, Nicholls Clarke Yard, London E1 6SH

Another hot 2025 opening, Noisy Oyster is an achingly hip seafood spot in a new-build industrial space in Shoreditch. The food is Mediterranean-led, but with a focus on British fish and oysters. The raw dishes, especially the crudo trio, are a highlight, although the larger plates, like the octopus risotto, are just as delicious. It’s the sort of place where you’ll want to try everything, especially if you order a few of the mini martinis to go along for the ride. The zero-proof cocktails are also good, including one that mimics the texture and flavor of a martini.

Da Terra

• 8 Patriot Square, London E2 9NF

Instead of booking one of Mayfair’s white tablecloth eateries, head east to Da Terra, a two Michelin-starred restaurant from chef Rafael Cagali. Located in the Town Hall Hotel, the restaurant is set over two well-designed, modern spaces: the first, where guests enjoy snacks and a drink, and the second, where the main tasting menu is served alongside the open kitchen. Cagali’s menu is globally inspired, including his home country of Brazil, and each dish is precise and complex. It’s relaxed but elegant, and all of the tables are well-positioned throughout the room. A good choice for a splurge. 

AngloThai 

• 22-24 Seymour Pl, London W1H 7NL

AngloThai, set on a side street of Marylebone, earned its first Michelin star within months of opening—and for good reason. Chef John Chantarasak’s tasting menu draws equally from British and Thai inspiration, resulting in dishes that are usually surprising, sometimes spicy, and always pleasing. His wife, Desiree, curates the wine list, which is just as unexpected. The music is turned up, the room is warm and convivial, and there’s a certain cache that comes with scoring a table. It’s relatively well-priced for the quality, at £125 per person.

Café Cecilia

• 32 Andrews Rd, London E8 4FX

Hackney’s Café Cecilia is a modern, cool and completely unstuffy option for date night. The sparsely decorated restaurant, set alongside the canal, sets a lovely ambiance without overdoing it. The menu is British with an Irish-inspired flourish—the Guinness bread is a must-order—and the seasonal menu is all about showcasing a particular ingredient, rather than making it pretty for Instagram. If your significant other is impressed by genuinely good food and friendly service, this is a great bet, particularly if you order the deep-fried bread and butter pudding for dessert. 

Although London doesn’t exactly need more Italian restaurants or additional fancy sushi spots moonlighting as nightclubs, it’s all in the approach. After a memorable debut like Sino, showcasing modern Ukrainian dishes, the arrival of DakaDaka, a Georgian restaurant, has a lot of promise. As does the revamped Simpson’s in the Strand, which tragically closed during the pandemic. Certainly, many more restaurants are set to be announced—and to be delayed—in the coming months, but we’re curious to see how the culinary scene here will evolve this year. From casual to high-end, here are some of the best restaurants set to open in London in 2026.

DakaDaka

• 10 Heddon St, London W1B 4BX
• Opening: January 17

Georgian cuisine comes to London courtesy of chef Mitz Vora. The restaurant, situated in Mayfair, promises wood-fired dishes cooked on a hearth and charcoal grill alongside Georgian wines. It will span two floors, with a dedicated wine and cocktail bar in the basement. Expect traditional offerings, like khinkali dumplings and khachapuri (cheese-filled bread), and a modern, upbeat atmosphere, including a DJ. It’s a great addition to a well-established street, and an exciting approach to a cuisine that doesn’t have much of a foothold in London yet.

Brasserie Angelica

• 49 Newman St, London W1T 3EB
• Opening: February 1

Part of the long-awaited Newman hotel, which is set to open its doors early this year in Fitzrovia, Brasserie Angelica is an all-day European bistro. Led by chef Christian Turner, the restaurant will offer comforting classics with Northern European influences. Gambit Bar will open alongside Brasserie Angelica, showcasing crafted cocktails, including low- and no-alcohol options, as well as bar snacks from Turner. Gambit will also host special events, like DJs and chess nights. The Newman has teased the opening of both the hotel and its restaurant and bar for what feels like years (and has changed the name of Brasserie Angelica three times), so anticipation is both high and wary.

Hoppers Shoreditch

• Tea Building, 56 Shoreditch High St, London E1 6JJ
• Opening: February 4

Beloved Sri Lankan restaurant Hoppers will debut its fourth London outpost in Shoreditch. Founded 10 years ago by Karan Gokani, Hoppers is known for its traditional cuisine, presented in a modern, casual way. The new spot, designed in a “tropical modernist” style, will also look to several different regions in India for inspiration, including Chettinad, Madurai, Bangalore, Kochi and Chennai. The existing locations are already very popular for a relaxed evening out, and the Shoreditch edition looks to be slightly more vibrant and exciting. Expect a crowd when it opens.  

Simpson’s in the Strand

• 100 Strand, London WC2R 0EZ
• Opening: February 28

Simpson’s in the Strand is one of London’s oldest restaurants, showcasing a classic British vibe and traditional dishes with sophisticated service since 1828. The restaurant closed in March 2020, but will finally reopen thanks to restaurateur Jeremy King. King has confirmed that diners can expect the return of the carvery trolleys—a quintessential London dining experience—and two dining rooms, two bars and a private ballroom. It’s taken a while for this one to return, but it should be worth the wait.

Forza Wine Soho

• Manette St, London W1D 4AL
• Opening: February 2026

Forza Wine will open its third location in Soho in February, following its successful outposts in Peckham and at the National Theatre. Like the previous restaurants, this one will focus on “unfussy” natural wines and snacks, ideal for spending time with friends. Expect returning favorites on the snack menu, like Forza’s signature cauliflower fritti with aioli, as well as a seasonal cocktail list. Forza is taking over the former Daroco site—a restaurant that didn’t last very long—and it has a great terrace, making it the perfect place to go as the weather warms up. 

MA/NA

• 30 Upper Grosvenor St, London W1K 7PH
• Opening: March 2026

The team behind Los Mochis and Juno Omakase is preparing to open another sleek, Japanese-inspired restaurant, this time in the heart of Mayfair. It’s been described as “modern Mayfair meets late-night Tokyo,” with an emphasis on the craft of Japanese cuisine. Not much has been revealed about the menu, but the address suggests it will be high-end and expensive. It will feature 156 seats along with a bar, which will showcase custom cocktails, wine and sake. In the past year, London has seen the openings of multiple club-like restaurants serving pricy sushi and wagyu, so it remains to be seen what will set this one apart. Still, Juno is highly rated, and we’ll never say no to well-prepared raw fish. 

Langosteria London

• 57 Whitehall, London SW1A 2BX
• Opening: Spring 2026

Raffles at the OWO already has plenty of dining options, including Mauro Colagreco, but there’s still space for more. This spring, the hotel will open a new iteration of Langosteria London, a favorite in Milan’s Design District. The plan is to import many of the favorite dishes from the original restaurant, which is known for its stylish approach and contemporary versions of traditional classics. The menu will feature the oyster bar with the plateau royale, robata dishes like the black grouper chateaubriand and, of course, a dedicated selection of pasta. The wine list will feature prominent and niche labels, and incorporate rare vintages. This is for those who like a fancy night out. 

Oudh 1722

• 66 Union Street, London SE1 1TD, UK
• Opening: Spring 2026

This is one of the best buzzy arrivals of the year: Aktar Islam, the chef behind Birmingham’s two Michelin-starred Opheem, is bringing his refined Indian cuisine to London. Oudh 1722 will be a sister restaurant to Opheem and will be set across three floors in a Victorian building in Borough. Not much is known yet, but Islam has teased a menu that explores the defining dishes of different regions of India, including kebabs, biryani and curry. It marks Islam’s first restaurant in London and should bring the same sorts of accolades as his formative spot. 

Padella Soho

• 2 Kingly St, London W1B 5PB
• Opening: Spring 2026

If you haven’t stood in a queue waiting for a table at Padella in Borough Market, you haven’t lived. The low-key restaurant is beloved for its pasta, so it’s not a surprise it’s coming to Soho’s Kingly Street. The new outpost will feature two floors with plenty of seating (thankfully). Guests can anticipate classic Padella dishes, like pici cacio e pepe and pappardelle with beef shin ragu, as well as new offerings. The announcement of the restaurant’s third site follows the release of founder Tim Siadatan’s cookbook, Padella, which allows you to bring the dishes home.

Tourists don’t often venture to Chiswick, a west London neighborhood with a charming communal feel, because it seems too off the beaten path. The area is even avoided by some Londoners, who are also under the misconception that it’s too far removed from the center of town. But those who do visit can be enticed by The Silver Birch, a seasonal fine dining restaurant helmed by chef Nathan Cornwell. 

The restaurant, located on Chiswick’s high street, initially opened in October 2020 under chef Kimberley Hernandez. Cornwell took over the restaurant, founded by Tim Price, in 2024, and has since focused on creating a refined, compelling tasting menu that showcases the best of British ingredients. While the culinary offering and the service have come more easily, the seemingly remote neighborhood has proved tricky. 

“Location is huge for a restaurant,” Cornwell says, speaking to Observer in early December. “Not just in terms of accolades, but in terms of footfall. I’m not saying it’s the end-all be-all; it has to also be down to the concept and the food.”

He adds that there is something underrated about a restaurant outside the center of town being good value for its guests. The eight-course tasting menu costs £120, while the shorter set five-course menu is £90. Several snacks and a generous serving of house-made bread and butter accompany both options. “If we were in central London, you’d be paying more of a premium,” Cornwell notes.  

The experience at The Silver Birch certainly stands up well against any of London’s buzzy Michelin-starred restaurants, particularly those focused on similar cuisine, like Aulis and Cycene. Both tasting menus highlight British products, including Devon crab, South Down Sika deer and Norfolk squash. At the beginning of the meal, Cornwell appears tableside with a tray of all the ingredients. It’s something other restaurants, like Moor Hall, do around the U.K., but it’s not typical in London. 

“People never see what a kohlrabi looks like,” Cornwell says. “It’s nice to explain it when you serve the dish, but it’s better to show the customers what you’re doing and the effort that goes into it.” 

Cornwell has felt a connection to ingredients since before he became a professional chef. He grew up in the countryside of Cambridgeshire, in a town called Ely. His dad grew vegetables and took Cornwell fishing, and his mom was a cooking instructor at a local high school. “The best of what food could be, I had seen at such a young age,” he recalls. “It wasn’t anything fancy. We would pick fresh tomatoes in the morning, grill them and put them on some toast. But it was something people don’t get to do as adults, let alone as a five-year-old. I think that really kicked off my love of food.”

The chef started working in a nearby restaurant while still in school, but it was earning a scholarship to the Academy of Culinary Arts that was game-changing for Cornwell. He left home at 16 to enroll in the course, which consisted of three months of school in Bournemouth, followed by a placement at a restaurant. By happenstance, he landed at luxury hotel Lucknam Park under the tutelage of chef Hywel Jones. He spent three years there as part of the course, and ended up remaining for two more years. 

“It was pretty surreal leaving home at that age,” Cornwell says. “But it was pivotal in terms of showing you what you needed to do and how dedicated you had to be and how consistent you had to be. The course was tough, and a lot of people dropped out. I remember calling my dad a few times being like, ‘Can I come home?’ He always said, ‘No, you’re going to see it through.’”

After Lucknam Park, Cornwell spent time at Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham before stints at restaurants in Denmark and Sweden. He eventually moved to The Barn at Moor Hall, where he was the chef for four years. Cornwell earned the restaurant its first Michelin star. 

“It was a rough period, especially with Covid,” he says. “We had lots of different challenges. When I took it over, The Barn was more of a neighborhood restaurant, very classical. After those four years, it had a booming business for lunch and dinner, and we had a star. It was incredible and crazy—something I’d dreamed about for a very long time. I always said I wanted a star before I turned 30, and I did it about two weeks before my birthday.”

Cornwell was aware of the inherent challenges when he agreed to move to London and take over The Silver Birch after departing Moor Hall. The restaurant “didn’t have much in terms of personality or direction,” so it was up to Cornwell to channel his vision into the space. There was more competition than he’d had at The Barn, which is located in a tiny village outside of Liverpool. It was also harder to forage or garden in the city. 

“My plan was to make it very seasonal and very British, and to use as much produce as I could from the U.K.,” Cornwell says. “I wanted to focus on making it delicious, simple and unfussy. I tried to create a menu I would love to eat on my day off—a few snacks, an aperitif, a few starters, a main course. We tried doing à la carte, and we ended up with a lot of waste. Now we have a much simpler menu, and it works nicely for us.”

Although the dishes change with the seasons, a few have become signatures. The Devon crab is presented in a caviar tin with a dollop of caviar and served alongside buttery crumpets—a truly Instagram-ready moment. Cornwell initially offered his crab dish in a crab shell, but has revised it over the past two years. “It wasn’t like it went viral, but it’s been a real hit,” he says. “So we’ve always done a crab dish in some form.” Other constants are a variety of tartare (I had one with beef) and pasta. Cornwell also likes to nod to fish and chips, another thing he enjoys eating on a day off. 

“That’s where some of my ideas actually come about,” he says. “So maybe I could do a tempura cod cheek on the side. The classic phrase is, ‘If you wouldn’t eat it, why would you serve it?’ I like to think that I’m cooking my style, and at the same time, I’m cooking food that people want to enjoy. I obviously want it to look aesthetically pleasing, but that’s never my main intention.”

Although Cornwell doesn’t have the space for his own garden at The Silver Birch, he does grow herbs like oxalis and nasturtium in planters out back. He forages as much as possible around London. He and his team gather ingredients like elderflower, blackberries and meadowsweet from along the Thames, and make as much use of them as possible. Whatever elderflower isn’t used in summer dishes is distilled into vinegar. “We use it as a finish in a lot of the sauces and even pickles, as well,” Cornwell says. “Every time you open it up, the smell reminds you of summer.”

That emphasis on reducing waste is evident throughout the kitchen. Stocks are used more than once, and the peelings from root vegetables are transformed into sauces. When I dined in November, the squash pasta was served with a delicious umami broth created from that vegetable waste. “I wanted to make something really intense with the leftovers, but make something also really interesting at the same time,” Cornwell notes. “I think that’s a lovely thing to do.”

Cornwell thrives on presenting himself with new challenges. He’s developed a better work-life balance at The Silver Birch, thanks in part to his strong team. But he knows that you can always continue to evolve a plate of food. “I like to look back at my pictures from when I started out creating dishes, and it wasn’t very refined,” he says. “It wasn’t sharp. And as I look over the years, I see it becoming sharper, more interesting and more refined. I’m finding my style more and more.”

The same is true for The Silver Birch. A Michelin star is one of Cornwell’s goals, but not just for the bragging rights. He knows that the accolade would encourage diners and tourists to venture west into Chiswick. It’s a lot of pressure to maintain the quality, the attention and the joy. 

“As a chef, you’re either chasing a star, or you’re trying to maintain it, or you’re trying to get to the next level,” Cornwell says. “Either way, you’re losing sleep, you’re stressed, you’re taking it out on other people. You’re wondering, ‘Is the toilet paper good enough? Is the hand soap worth three stars?’ I can’t say I’m banking on a star or that I deserve it, but it would help. It shows the standard of a restaurant, and that brings people in.”

He adds, “I think we’ve got something really special here in Chiswick, which doesn’t exist in other parts of London. I believe it will all come together, but it’s a long journey. Everyone always wants to say they have this undiscovered secret restaurant. We feel like we’re that, but no one wants to tell the secret.”

That is, until now—because it’s time to share that secret.