In this guide
This is the broadest category on the site and the one where the label does the least work. Lebanese mezze, a Turkish charcoal grill in Dalston, Palestinian home cooking in a Notting Hill townhouse, and Kuwaiti machboos in Knightsbridge are four different cuisines, and London does all of them well. Greek food has its own page: The Best Greek Restaurants in London.
Arranged by tradition, because that is what actually determines the meal.
💡 The Short Version: Al Waha is the Lebanese room the guides agree on. The Barbary is the best seat in London if you like watching food cooked. Mangal 2 in Dalston is the most inventive Turkish kitchen in Britain. Akub is the only serious Palestinian restaurant here. And Pilpel does the best £8 lunch in the City.
📊 The evidence behind this guide. Counted separately for each cuisine: Middle Eastern — 14 sources, 177 citations across 104 restaurants, 37 named twice or more; Turkish — 7 sources, 97 citations across 53 restaurants, 27 named twice or more. Built on: The Infatuation, Time Out, Foodism and Luxury London; local guides. Evidence rebuilt 30 August 2026 · How we rank →
Where they are
| If you are near… | Where to eat |
|---|---|
| Marylebone | Fairuz, Ishtar |
| Soho & Covent Garden | The Barbary, Imad’s Syrian Kitchen |
| Fitzrovia | Rovi, Lokal |
| Notting Hill | Akub, Kinz |
| Knightsbridge | Em Sherif, Ishbilia, Freej Swaileh, The Mantl |
| Shoreditch & Dalston | Mangal 2, Sohaila, Berber & Q |
| Borough & London Bridge | Kismet |
| Bayswater & west | Al Waha |
| Islington & Bloomsbury | Ottolenghi, Honey & Co |
Price guide: £ under £15 · ££ £15–£35 · £££ £40–£70 · ££££ £90+.
Levantine
Al Waha, Bayswater
£££ · 7 min from Bayswater · the consensus pick · Cited by 4 sources
The most-cited Lebanese room in London across these sources — white walls, hanging foliage, and mezze taken seriously rather than served as filler while you wait for the grill.
The mezze is the meal: hummus, moutabal, tabbouleh and fattoush, warm flatbread arriving continuously, and makanek — small spiced sausages — among the hot dishes. Charcoal-grilled meats behind them if you want them, but ordering ten cold plates and stopping there is a legitimate dinner here.
£££, book a few days ahead. Seven minutes from Bayswater. Quiet, formal, and run by people who have been doing it a long time.
The Barbary, Covent Garden
£££ · Neal’s Yard · about twenty seats · Cited by 1 source
A horseshoe counter wrapped around an open grill in Neal’s Yard, seating about twenty — you watch every plate being made, and there is nowhere to hide from the smoke.
The cooking follows the old Barbary Coast, from Morocco through to Israel: naan e barbari, the blistered flatbread the place is named for, jerusalem bagel, octopus and lamb cutlets off the coals, and a pata negra neck that regulars order before sitting down.
Walk-in only and there is always a wait — put your name down and drink somewhere in Seven Dials until they call. £££, and worth the queue for a counter seat.
Akub, Notting Hill
££££ · 3 min from Notting Hill Gate · Cited by 4 sources
Fadi Kattan opened Fawda in Bethlehem before bringing Palestinian cooking to a Notting Hill townhouse — the first London kitchen to treat it as a fine-dining cuisine rather than a regional footnote of something else.
The signature is bukjet mousakhan — the sumac-and-onion chicken dish of the West Bank, reworked as a parcel. Around it, dishes built on Palestinian produce and technique that Kattan sources deliberately, and a brunch at weekends of qalayet bandora, zahra fritters and Arabic-coffee French toast.
££££ and it books weeks ahead — a small room on a residential street, three minutes from Notting Hill Gate.
Imad’s Syrian Kitchen, Soho
£££ · Top Floor, Kingly Court · Michelin Bib Gourmand · Cited by 4 sources
Imad Alarnab cooked his way from Damascus to a Kingly Court balcony: he lost his Damascus business to the war, cooked for the people around him in camps along the route, and ran his first London pop-up on Columbia Road in 2017 before moving here in 2023. The Damascene home cooking holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for 2026.
Mezze first: muhammara, the walnut and red pepper paste, fattoush, and freekeh. Then the slow-cooked dishes — lamb with yoghurt, stuffed vine leaves, and the sort of food that comes out of a family kitchen rather than a restaurant one.
£££ and it books weeks ahead. The Kingly Court balcony is the seat to ask for.
Em Sherif at Harrods, Knightsbridge
££££ · a set menu in sequence · Cited by 3 sources
The Beirut group’s London outpost inside Harrods — a set Lebanese menu served in sequence rather than a mezze free-for-all, which is either the appeal or the objection depending on how you like to eat.
Course after course arrives without you ordering: cold mezze, then hot, then grills, then dessert, in the order a Beirut host would send them. The cooking is precise and the room is opulent to the point of theatre.
££££ and it books weeks ahead. No à la carte — you are agreeing to the whole sequence when you sit down.
Freej Swaileh, Knightsbridge
£££ · Kuwaiti · Cited by 2 sources
One of very few Kuwaiti kitchens in London — Gulf cooking rather than the Levantine mezze that everywhere else on this page does, which makes it the most unusual entry here.
Machboos is the dish to order: spiced rice cooked with meat or fish, closer to a biryani than to anything Lebanese, with loomi — dried lime — giving it the sour note that defines Gulf food. Kabsa alongside it, and Kuwaiti breads that appear nowhere else in the city.
£££, book a few days ahead. Order the machboos and let the table share it.
Turkish
Turkish cooking is its own tradition rather than a branch of Levantine, and London has enough of it to need a separate page — The Best Turkish Restaurants in London — most of them on or near Green Lanes, where nine of the most-cited sit on a single road.
The short version: Mangal II in Dalston is the most-cited and the one that turned an ocakbaşı into a destination kitchen; Antepliler and Gökyüzü are the Green Lanes benchmarks; Kismet in Borough is the meyhane worth a night out; and Ishtar in Marylebone is the reliable central room for a table that does not want to travel.
Greek
Greek and Greek-Cypriot cooking is not Middle Eastern, and London has enough of it for a page of its own: The Best Greek Restaurants in London, cross-referenced across the English and Greek-language sources.
The short version: Oma in Borough Market holds London’s only Greek Michelin star, Agora below it is the walk-in souvla bar, Tsiakkos & Charcoal in Maida Vale tops Time Out’s ranked list, and Palmers Green in north London is where the Cypriot community eats.
Vegetable-led
Mezze is vegetable-led by tradition, which makes this the easiest category on the site to eat well in without meat.
Rovi, Fitzrovia
£££ · Ottolenghi group · Cited by 1 source
The Ottolenghi group’s fermentation-and-fire room, where vegetables go on the grill and get the treatment meat usually gets — the clearest statement of what that kitchen has been arguing for twenty years.
Everything passes through fire or a ferment: charred cabbage, koji-aged vegetables, and a menu where the meat dishes are the afterthought rather than the centre. The pickling programme is visible from the room.
£££ and it books weeks ahead. The one to bring someone who thinks vegetarian cooking is a compromise.
Bubala, Spitalfields
£££ · entirely vegetarian · Cited by 5 sources
Entirely vegetarian and almost never described that way — the point is that nobody at the table notices what is missing, which is why it is named by five independent sources while vegetarian rooms with more evangelism are named by none.
Middle Eastern small plates off charcoal: halloumi with black seed honey, the dish everyone orders and photographs, confit potato latkes, oyster mushroom skewers and hummus with a depth most meat kitchens do not reach. The grill does the work meat would normally do.
£££ and it books weeks ahead. Small, loud, and busy enough that nobody is there as a concession to somebody else’s diet.
Ottolenghi, Islington
£££ · 12 min from Angel
The window display of salads and cakes is the London original — the counter that shaped how a generation of home cooks eat, and still the best of the group’s rooms to see the idea in its first form.
The counters are stacked with salads built on grains, roasted vegetables and herbs by the handful, and the cake display behind them is deliberately excessive. Communal tables to eat at, a deli counter to take from, and a menu that changes with what has been roasted that morning.
£££, counter service and communal seating — it works for one person with a book and less well for four wanting a conversation. Book a few days ahead for a table.
A counter tart at Ottolenghi. Photo: Ewan-M, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Berber & Q, Haggerston
£££ · a railway arch · Cited by 2 sources
A railway arch built around charcoal and smoke — lamb shawarma and cauliflower off the same grill, in a room that gets very loud very quickly and is not apologising for it.
The whole roast cauliflower is the signature and deserves to be: charred whole over coals, dressed and brought to the table intact. Beside it the lamb shawarma carved off the spit, short rib, and mezze that are a good deal more than a holding pattern.
£££ and it books weeks ahead. Go as a group; the format and the volume both assume one.
By country, not “Middle Eastern”
“Middle Eastern” covers a dozen cuisines that share a mezze format and very little else. These kitchens each cook somewhere specific.
Syrian: Imad’s Syrian Kitchen, above.
Berenjak, Soho — Persian
££ · 27 Romilly Street · also Borough Market · Cited by 3 sources
A Tehran hole-in-the-wall kabab house rebuilt in Soho, from Kian Samyani and the JKS group — counter seating, charcoal, and none of the carpeted formality London Persian restaurants usually come with.
Order the mahi (saffron-marinated fish) and jujeh (chicken) kababs off the coals, with torshi — the sharp Persian pickles — and taftoon bread baked in the room. The kashke bademjan, aubergine with whey and fried onion, is the starter to have.
£££ and it books weeks ahead. 27 Romilly Street, with a second counter at Borough Market that is easier to get into.
Nandine, Camberwell — Kurdish
££ · 82 Vestry Road · also Camberwell Church Street · Cited by 3 sources
The only Kurdish kitchen of any profile in London. Pary Baban came to the UK as a refugee from Kurdistan and cooks the food she grew up with — a cuisine that gets folded into Turkish or Persian on most menus and is neither.
Expect kubba — bulgur dumplings stuffed with spiced meat — flatbreads baked to order, slow-cooked stews with dried lime and pomegranate, and vegetable dishes that carry the meal rather than accompany it. Breakfast and brunch are the busiest services.
££, walk-in. Two sites: 82 Vestry Road and Camberwell Church Street. Go for brunch at the weekend.
The Palomar, Soho — Jerusalem
£££ · 34 Rupert Street · Bib Gourmand since 2014 · Cited by 3 sources
The Soho counter that made modern Jerusalem cooking mainstream in London, and has held a Bib Gourmand since 2014. The zinc counter, not the tables — sit at it and the cooking happens a foot from your plate, with the room loud enough to make it a night out rather than a dinner.
The kubaneh — a pull-apart Yemeni bread served with tahini and grated tomato — is the dish to order first and the one people describe afterwards. Behind it, polenta Jerusalem-style, octopus, and a short menu that changes often.
£££. Counter seats are held back for walk-ins, tables book weeks ahead. 34 Rupert Street.
Palmyra’s Kitchen, Finsbury Park — Syrian and Lebanese
££ · 5–7 Wells Terrace · open to midnight · Cited by 2 sources
Tucked round the back of Finsbury Park station next to the bus stands — hidden in plain sight, and named for Palmyra deliberately, to put Syrian cooking in the foreground rather than filing it under Lebanese.
Mezze platters are the format: hummus, moutabal, fattoush and warm bread, with shawarma and charcoal grills behind them. Portions are large and the pricing is a fraction of central London for the same cooking.
££, open to midnight, which makes it one of the better late options in north London. Walk-in; 5–7 Wells Terrace.
Maramia Cafe, Golborne Road — Palestinian
££ · 48 Golborne Road · closed Mondays · Cited by 2 sources
Palestinian and Arabic home cooking on Golborne Road since 2005 — long before anyone was writing guides to it, and still run the same way.
All-day cooking rather than a fixed menu: maqluba, the upside-down rice and vegetable dish, musakhan, mezze, and grills, with set-menu nights and live music that are why regulars book rather than drop in.
££, closed Mondays. 48 Golborne Road, a few minutes from Portobello. Ask what is on before you order from the menu.
Meza, Tooting — Lebanese
££ · 34 Trinity Road · Cited by 3 sources
A tiny Tooting room where the mezze arrives faster than the table can clear it, at prices that explain the permanent queue — the sort of place that survives entirely on regulars.
The mezze is the whole proposition: hummus, moutabal, halloumi, sujuk, kibbeh and warm flatbread, ordered by the handful and replaced as fast as you finish. Grills exist and are beside the point.
££, tiny, and no bookings — put your name down and wait on Trinity Road. Cash-friendly, and among the cheapest proper meals in this guide.
Bakeries and counters
The cheapest and often the best Middle Eastern food in London is sold across a counter, not at a table.
Al-Jabal Bakery, Park Royal
£ · manakeesh £2–£3 · 8am–4pm
A Lebanese bakery of more than twenty years in an Acton business centre, with no dining room at all — you order at the counter and eat standing or take it away.
Mana’eesh from about £2, made to order: spinach, cheese, or lahem beajin — the minced-lamb flatbread — baked while you wait, plus trays of baklawa sold by weight. That is essentially the menu and it does not need to be longer.
The weekend queue is drawn from across west London, which is the clearest recommendation available. Walk-in, cash-friendly, and worth the industrial-estate location.
Ta’mini Lebanese Bakery, Fulham, Bloomsbury and Kensington
£ · ka’ak £3.00 · za’atar manakish £3.95
Husband-and-wife Lebanese bakers — Ali from north Lebanon and Nermin from Beirut — who opened in the first lockdown and have been expanding since. Three London counters now.
Za’atar manakish £3.95, ka’ak with za’atar or sumac £3.00, falafel wrap £8.95, and fatayer — the folded spinach or cheese pastries — through the day. Everything is baked to order and handed over hot.
Counter service, walk-in, all day. The cheapest good lunch in three separate postcodes, and one of the few bakeries in this guide cited by more sources than most restaurants.
Common Breads, Belgravia
£ · ka’ak from £2.50 · manouche from £4.50 · 8am–6pm
A Beirut bakery counter opposite Victoria station, from three childhood friends from Lebanon — a bakery rather than a restaurant, and cited by more guides than most of the restaurants on this page.
Flatbreads and manakish straight out of the oven, and purse-shaped ka’ak from £2.50 — the sesame-crusted bread sold from carts across Beirut, filled here with cheese or za’atar. Manouche flatbreads baked to order behind them.
Walk-in, quick, and cheap for the postcode — one of very few things near Victoria worth eating that costs under a fiver.
Mr Falafel, Shepherd’s Bush Market
£ · Palestinian · market stall
Twenty-four years of Palestinian falafel from a Shepherd’s Bush Market stall, and one of the few entries in this guide where the whole menu fits on a board above the hatch.
Falafel wraps in two sizes, wholemeal available, fried to order so they arrive hot with a crisp shell and a green centre — the test any falafel stand passes or fails on. Pickles, tahini and chilli sauce added at the counter.
Walk-in, cash-friendly, market hours — closed by late afternoon, and gone if you turn up expecting dinner. Among the cheapest meals in the guide.
Green Valley, Edgware Road
£ · grocery and hot counter · 8am to midnight
A Lebanese supermarket with a food counter attached on Edgware Road, and one of the few places in London where the shopping and the eating are the same trip.
The counter runs shawarma carved off the spit, mana’eesh from the oven, and trays of mezze sold by weight, with a patisserie counter of baklawa and knafeh at the front that is worth the visit alone. The supermarket behind it stocks what the restaurants on this page cook with.
Open late, walk-in, and cheap. Buy the food to take away and the ingredients to repeat it at home.
Best value
Falafel is where this cuisine is cheapest and best, and all of these are entirely vegetarian.
- Pilpel, Spitalfields — the best £8 lunch in the City, and several sites.
- Hoxton Beach Falafel, Shoreditch — market-stall origins, still under £10.
- Magic Falafel, Camden Town — under £10 and entirely vegetarian.
- Hiba Express, Holborn — the lunch counter people who work in Holborn actually queue at.
- Zeit & Za’atar, Ealing — wood-fired manakish, and the cheapest proper Levantine bakery food in west London.
The two streets
Edgware Road is the Arab Middle Eastern quarter — Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian and Iraqi — running north from Marble Arch. Green Valley is the anchor grocer, and Ranoush Juice (shawarma to 3am) and the tiny Persian grill Patogh are the other names locals give. People come to this street for late-night food.
Green Lanes in Harringay is a different thing entirely: Turkish and Turkish-Kurdish, not Arab. Gökyüzü, Antepliler for Gaziantep kebabs and baklava, and Yaşar Halim for the bakery-supermarket. Do not go looking for Lebanese mezze there.
What to know
- Mezze is ordered across the table in waves, not as a starter. Over-ordering is the standard mistake and most kitchens will steer you.
- Ocakbaşı grills in Dalston and on Green Lanes run very late and are cheap for the quality.
- Turkish, Greek and Persian are separate cuisines and we file them that way; most published lists do not, which is why their “best Middle Eastern” lists read oddly. Greek has its own guide.
- Vegetarians do unusually well here without anything being adapted for them.
- Service charge of 12.5% is discretionary and standard.
Continue planning your London trip
- 🍽️ Eat in London: Restaurants, Food Markets & Quick Food Hub
- 🌿 Best Vegetarian and Vegan Restaurants
- 💷 Cheap Eats in London
- 🍛 The Best Indian Restaurants in London
- 🎨 Shoreditch Area Guide
- 🛍️ Notting Hill Area Guide
Common questions
What is the best Middle Eastern restaurant in London?
Al Waha in Bayswater is the most-cited Lebanese room across independent guides and has been excellent for years. For something more modern, The Barbary in Neal's Yard seats about twenty around an open grill, and Akub in Notting Hill is the only serious Palestinian restaurant in the city.
Where do I find the best Turkish food in London?
Dalston and Green Lanes. Mangal II in Dalston is an ocakbaşı the Dirik brothers took over from their father and turned into one of the most inventive Turkish kitchens in Britain.
What is an ocakbaşı?
A Turkish charcoal grill where you sit around the fire and the cooking happens in front of you. Dalston and Green Lanes have the highest concentration in London, and they are typically open very late and cheap for what you get.
Where can I eat Middle Eastern food in London cheaply?
Falafel. Pilpel at Spitalfields, Hoxton Beach in Shoreditch and Magic Falafel in Camden all come in under £10 and are entirely vegetarian. Hiba Express in Holborn is the lunch counter people who work there actually queue at.
Which of these are vegetarian-friendly?
Almost all of them, and more so than most cuisines — mezze is vegetable-led by tradition rather than by adaptation. Bubala in Spitalfields is entirely vegetarian, and Rovi in Fitzrovia puts vegetables on the grill and gives them the treatment meat usually gets.
