In this guide
Some rooms are booked for the cooking and some are booked for the photograph, and this page is only about the second kind.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. Every venue below is ranked by how many independent guides name it for its interior, not by how it eats. A few are among the better kitchens in London. One is a chain. One is a viewing platform with restaurants inside it. Where a room is better looking than it is good, this page says so.
📌 The short version. Bacchanalia, Mayfair, is named by six of seven sources — more than any other room in London. Sketch and Circolo Popolare follow on five each. The cheapest genuinely striking room is Bar Douro in Borough at ££. The one people get wrong is Sky Garden: the garden is free with a booked slot, the restaurants inside it are not.
📊 The evidence behind this guide. Nothing here rests on one visit. This pass reads 7 sources carrying 148 citations across 105 named venues — three editorial mastheads (DesignMyNight, HELLO!, Country & Town House) and four independent specialists. 23 rooms are named by two or more independent sources. Evidence rebuilt 3 September 2026 · How we rank →
⏱️ How far ahead to book. Months: Sessions Arts Club. Weeks: Bacchanalia, Sketch, Circolo Popolare, Ave Mario, Gloria, Bob Bob Ricard, NoMad London, Spring, Isabel, Joia, Petersham Nurseries, Seabird, Winter Garden. Days: Brasserie of Light, Dalloway Terrace, Bar Douro, Sucre, Tattu, Sticks’n’Sushi, The Ivy Chelsea Garden. Timed slot, book free in advance: Sky Garden.
Where they are
Map of the most Instagrammable restaurants in London
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| If you are near… | Where to go |
|---|---|
| Mayfair | Bacchanalia, Sketch, Brasserie of Light, Isabel |
| Fitzrovia & Tottenham Court Road | Circolo Popolare, Tattu |
| Covent Garden & the Strand | Ave Mario, NoMad London, Spring, Bancone |
| Soho | Bob Bob Ricard, Sucre |
| Shoreditch & Clerkenwell | Gloria, Sessions Arts Club |
| The City | Sky Garden |
| Bloomsbury & Marylebone | Dalloway Terrace, Winter Garden |
| Chelsea & Kensington | The Ivy Chelsea Garden, Jacuzzi |
| South of the river | Bar Douro, Seabird, Joia, Sticks’n’Sushi |
| Further out | Petersham Nurseries, Richmond |
Price guide: ££ £15–£30 · £££ £35–£55 · ££££ £70+.
The most-named rooms
No judged award exists for a restaurant interior, so there is no winner in the sense a food guide would mean. What there is instead is agreement, and on three rooms the agreement is unusually strong.
Bacchanalia, Mayfair
££££ · Mayfair · 7 min from Green Park · Cited by 6 sources · book weeks ahead
The most-cited room in this entire set, and the only one six of seven sources agree on. It is a Greco-Roman fantasy on Mount Street: marble sculptures by Damien Hirst, hand-painted ceiling murals by Gary Myatt, and an interior by Martin Brudnizki, the designer behind a good proportion of the other rooms on this page.
The cooking is Greek and southern Italian — grilled fish, mezze, pasta — and it is expensive in the way Mayfair is expensive. Country & Town House is the only source here that credits the designers by name, which is why its account is the most useful: this is a room built by people whose job is building rooms, rather than a restaurant that happens to look good.
Sketch, Mayfair
££££ · Mayfair · 6 min from Oxford Circus · Cited by 5 sources · book weeks ahead
Not the pink room: this is the bar, painted as a woodland with the bottles on floating shelves. The rooms at Sketch look nothing like each other.
Four restaurants behind one door, and they photograph nothing like each other — which is the thing to sort out before booking. The Gallery is the pink room hung with David Shrigley drawings that everyone means; The Glade is the woodland bar above; The Parlour is the casual one; and the Lecture Room & Library is the three-Michelin-star restaurant at a completely different price.
Book the specific room rather than “Sketch”. The Gallery does afternoon tea and a modern European menu; the Lecture Room does a tasting menu and needs months rather than weeks.
💡 The egg-shaped lavatory pods are free. You do not need a booking, a table or a drink to walk in and photograph them, which makes them the cheapest shot in this guide.
9 Conduit Street, W1S 2XG.
Sketch is not one room, and this is the thing to get right before booking. It is a Georgian townhouse on Conduit Street divided into several rooms that look nothing like each other, and every source on this page calls all of them “Sketch”. Book the room you have seen a photograph of, not the address.
- The Gallery is the pink one — the room people mean. Millennial-pink quilted velvet floor to ceiling, hung with framed David Shrigley drawings, redesigned by artist Yinka Shonibare with India Mahdavi. Afternoon tea is served here, and it is both the easiest booking to get and the cheapest way in.
- The Glade is the bar in the photograph above: a woodland painted across every wall, lit in shafts as though through a canopy, with the bottles on floating wooden shelves. Dark where the Gallery is bright.
- The Lecture Room & Library is the fine-dining room, two Michelin stars, and a different proposition at a different price entirely. Gilded and jewel-coloured rather than pink.
- The East Bar at the back is a small round room under a domed ceiling.
And the lavatories. Up the staircase from the Gallery is an atrium of egg-shaped pods, each a self-contained white capsule under a stained-glass dome, with birdsong playing. They are photographed nearly as often as the dining room and are the single most-recognised thing in the building. You do not need a table to walk up and look.
Circolo Popolare, Fitzrovia
££ · Fitzrovia · 3 min from Tottenham Court Road · Cited by 5 sources · book weeks ahead
The bottles run floor to ceiling on every wall, and the ceiling is a canopy of foliage and fairy lights.
Big Mamma’s Sicilian room, and the most photographed ceiling in Fitzrovia — twenty thousand bottles on the walls under a canopy of foliage and lights.
The food is the reason it is £££ rather than ££££. Order the truffle pasta, finished tableside in a wheel of pecorino, or the giant lemon meringue pie, which arrives about the size of a football and is built to be photographed. Pizza and regional southern Italian otherwise.
It is very loud and it is not a quiet dinner — the room is designed for volume and turnover, which is the trade for the price.
Book weeks ahead. 40–41 Rathbone Place, W1T 1HX, three minutes from Tottenham Court Road.
The cheapest of the three most-cited rooms by a wide margin, and the most photographed per pound in London. Fairy lights hang from a canopy of foliage over a room whose walls are stacked floor to ceiling with bottles — one source counts over 20,000, though that is the restaurant’s own figure repeated.
Big Mamma group Italian, so the portions are enormous and the prices are not Mayfair. It books weeks out and the queue for walk-ins is real. If you want the photograph without the wait, its sibling Ave Mario in Covent Garden is the same idea with a hall of mirrors and duomo-striped walls.
Also strongly backed
Ave Mario, Covent Garden
££ · Covent Garden · 5 min from Embankment · Cited by 4 sources · book weeks ahead
A Studio Kiki room with psychedelic duomo-striped walls, a hall of mirrors and a bar holding 3,500 bottles. Same group as Circolo Popolare and the same trick — maximalism at a price that does not match it. The lavatories are a mirrored infinity room, which is the shot most people come for.
Order the pasta rather than the pizza here. The cacio e pepe, finished in the cheese wheel, and the carbonara are what the kitchen is for; the grill menu is the weaker half.
It is enormous — several rooms over two floors — so where you are seated changes the experience completely. Ask for the main hall rather than the side rooms if the interior is why you are coming.
15 Henrietta Street, WC2E 8QG, five minutes from Embankment. Books weeks ahead.
Brasserie of Light, Mayfair
££££ · Mayfair · 3 min from Bond Street · Cited by 4 sources · book a few days ahead
Built around a 24-foot crystal-encrusted Damien Hirst Pegasus, in Art Deco mirror and brass inside Selfridges. Four sources name it and every one leads on the sculpture, which tells you what the room is for.
The menu is brasserie classics done properly: a seafood counter with oysters and shellfish platters, steak tartare, truffle chicken, and a long list of salads aimed squarely at people who have been shopping. Seasonal and unfussy rather than inventive.
It is inside Selfridges, on the first floor, which is the practical fact — it keeps the store’s hours rather than restaurant hours, so it closes earlier than you would expect for somewhere at this price.
Only a few days’ notice needed, unlike most of this page. 400 Oxford Street, W1A 1AB, three minutes from Bond Street.
Dalloway Terrace, Bloomsbury
£££ · Bloomsbury · 2 min from Tottenham Court Road · Cited by 4 sources · book a few days ahead
A covered terrace at The Bloomsbury Hotel whose floral installation is changed with the season — wisteria in spring, something else entirely in November. That is the one thing to check before travelling for a specific photograph, because the room you saw online may not be the room that is there this month.
It is an all-day room rather than a dinner one. Breakfast, then afternoon tea, then a short brasserie menu — and afternoon tea is what it is really for, taken under the flowers with the terrace heated and covered.
It is the best-placed room on this page for a museum day. Two minutes from Tottenham Court Road and about five from the British Museum, so it works as the sit-down after rather than a trip of its own.
A few days’ notice is usually enough, which makes it much the easiest booking here. 16–22 Great Russell Street, WC1B 3NN.
Gloria, Shoreditch
££ · Shoreditch · 8 min from Old Street · Cited by 4 sources · book weeks ahead
Big Mamma’s 1960s Capri pastiche: hand-painted plates, pink neon, and a blossom tree in the middle of the room. Cheaper than it looks and louder than it looks.
The dish to order is the carbonara, made in a hollowed pecorino wheel at the table, and the lemon meringue for pudding — both are the group’s signatures and both are what the room is photographed with.
It is a basement and it is dark, which matters if the photograph is the point: the pink neon does the lighting, so shots come out warmer than they look to the eye.
Books weeks ahead like the rest of the group. 54–56 Great Eastern Street, EC2A 3QR, eight minutes from Old Street.
Jacuzzi, Kensington
£££ · Kensington · 1 min from High Street Kensington · Cited by 3 sources · book weeks ahead
Multi-level Sicilian under a retractable glass roof, with a disco-ball stairway that is the reason it is on every one of these lists.
The roof is the thing to plan around. It opens in warm weather and the room becomes a different place; on a wet January evening you are in a covered atrium instead. Worth asking when you book if the open roof is what you came for.
Order the seafood — the raw bar and the fritto misto are what the kitchen does best — or the pasta, which is the group’s usual strength.
Also Big Mamma, and four of the rooms on this page belong to that one group. Worth knowing when every list agrees: they are agreeing about one company’s design department. High Street Kensington, one minute from the station.
Sessions Arts Club, Clerkenwell
££££ · Clerkenwell · 3 min from Farringdon · Cited by 3 sources · book months ahead
A restored eighteenth-century courthouse, on the top floor of the old Clerkenwell Sessions House, with peeling plaster left deliberately unrestored and battered armchairs scattered through it. The rarest room on this page and the hardest to book — months rather than weeks.
It is also one of the few here where the kitchen is cited as often as the interior. If you want one room that answers both questions, this is it.
The cooking is short, seasonal and small-plates — whatever is good that week rather than a fixed list — so there is no dish to name in advance, and the menu changes often enough that regulars come back for it rather than the room.
Book months ahead, and note it is on the top floor of the old Sessions House with the entrance easy to miss from Clerkenwell Green. 24 Clerkenwell Green, EC1R 0NA, three minutes from Farringdon.
The Big Mamma rooms
Four of the twenty-three rooms named by two or more sources belong to one group, which is worth saying plainly: when every guide agrees, some of that agreement is one company’s design department.
Big Mamma builds maximalist Italian rooms at prices that do not match them, and it now has six London sites. Ranked by how many of this page’s sources name each:
| Room | Where | Named by |
|---|---|---|
| Circolo Popolare | Fitzrovia | 5 sources |
| Ave Mario | Covent Garden | 4 sources |
| Gloria | Shoreditch | 4 sources |
| Jacuzzi | Kensington | 3 sources |
| Carlotta | Marylebone | 1 source |
| Barbarella | Canary Wharf | no source in this corpus |
The bottom two are the interesting ones, and they are why this table exists.
Carlotta on Marylebone High Street is the group’s Italian-American room — plush, retro, red leather booths, pasta alla vodka and whole roasted fish. One source names it. Barbarella in Canary Wharf is a 1970s Italian fantasy and is named by none of the seven guides read for this page.
That absence is not evidence they are less good-looking. It is evidence that these lists lag: a room has to be open long enough to be written up, and the guides that rank interiors are refreshed less often than the restaurants open. Both are on the group’s own site and both are unmistakably built to be photographed. They are listed here, and deliberately not ranked, because no source in this corpus reaches them.
If you want the Big Mamma look without the wait, those two are the ones nobody is queueing for yet.
By setting
Rooms group by what makes them photograph well, and the axis is more useful than price.
Inside a building that was something else first. Sessions Arts Club, an eighteenth-century courthouse. NoMad London, a three-storey glass atrium in the former Bow Street Magistrates Court, opposite the Royal Opera House and a working court until 2006. ££££ · Covent Garden · 3 min from Covent Garden · Cited by 2 sources.
Under glass. Petersham Nurseries in Richmond serves lunch inside a working plant nursery, surrounded by what is for sale. ££££ · Richmond · 29 min from Richmond · Cited by 2 sources. Winter Garden at The Landmark sits under an eight-storey glass atrium with full-height palms — named by one source here, and better known for its afternoon tea. ££££ · Marylebone · 3 min from Marylebone.
Eight storeys of glass roof over full-grown palms, in what was a Victorian railway hotel.
Rooms with a view. Seabird on the South Bank is a rooftop with a long London panorama. £££ · South Bank · 2 min from Southwark · Cited by 2 sources. Sky Garden is not really a restaurant at all — it is a planted dome on top of 20 Fenchurch Street with restaurants inside it. Entry to the garden is free with a booked timed slot; the restaurants are separate and are not. £££ · City of London · 3 min from Monument · Cited by 2 sources.
Gardens at street level. The Ivy Chelsea Garden has a walled garden behind the King’s Road, dressed seasonally, with a conservatory for the months it is too cold to sit out. £££ · Chelsea · 14 min from South Kensington · Cited by 2 sources.
Basements. Sucre in Soho is lit by cut-glass chandeliers over an open fire kitchen; one source calls it impressive but just subdued enough not to feel gimmicky, which is the line the whole category walks. £££ · Soho · 5 min from Oxford Circus · Cited by 2 sources.
The cheapest striking rooms
Most of this list is expensive. Four rooms are not.
- Bar Douro — ££, Borough. Hand-painted azulejo tiles under a slatted ceiling. The only room here whose look comes from tilework rather than budget. Cited by 2 sources.
- Circolo Popolare — ££, Fitzrovia. Covered above; the best value on the page. Cited by 5 sources.
- Ave Mario — ££, Covent Garden. Cited by 4 sources.
- Gloria — ££, Shoreditch. Cited by 4 sources.
Bar Douro, Borough
££ · Borough · 5 min from Borough · Cited by 2 sources · book a few days ahead
A narrow Portuguese counter, tiled floor to ceiling in hand-painted azulejos, under a slatted shack-like ceiling. The cheapest room on this page and one of the very few where the look costs nothing extra.
Order the petiscos: the presunto, the bacalhau, the pastéis de nata made on site, and a glass of something from the Douro — the list is heavily Portuguese and priced to be drunk rather than admired.
You eat sitting at the counter, which is the format rather than a shortage of tables, so this is a two-person meal rather than a group one.
A few days’ notice is enough, unlike almost everything else here. It is in a railway arch off Southwark Bridge Road, five minutes from Borough.
All look, ordinary plate
The honest section, and the one no competing list prints.
A room can be worth photographing and unremarkable to eat in, and three here are cited almost entirely for the interior:
- Sky Garden is a viewing platform. The restaurants inside it are convenient rather than good, and the garden — the actual reason to go — is free.
- The Ivy Chelsea Garden is part of a chain. The garden is genuinely lovely; the menu is the same brasserie list served across the group.
- Brasserie of Light sits inside a department store and is named by four sources, every one of which leads on the Pegasus sculpture rather than anything on the plate.
Where the cooking does match the room: Spring at Somerset House, Sessions Arts Club, and Bar Douro.
Spring, Covent Garden
££££ · Somerset House · 4 min from Temple · Cited by 2 sources · book weeks ahead
Skye Gyngell’s dining room in the New Wing of Somerset House — a nineteenth-century drawing room in blonde wood and blush, under a porcelain petal installation by Valeria Nascimento. One of the very few rooms on this list that would still be worth the table with the lights off.
The cooking is seasonal and Italian-influenced, built around produce from a single Sussex farm, so the menu changes constantly and there is no signature dish to name — which is itself the point of it.
💡 The Scratch menu is the way in. An early-evening set menu made from the day’s trimmings and surplus, at a fraction of the à la carte, served before the main service starts. It is the cheapest three-figure-standard cooking in central London.
Somerset House, Lancaster Place, WC2R 1LA, four minutes from Temple — and the courtyard outside is free, with fountains in summer and a rink in winter.
Also named
Rooms carried by two sources each, listed once rather than written up twice:
- Bob Bob Ricard, Soho — booth-only Golden Age of Travel interior with a press-for-champagne button at every table. ££££ · 5 min from Piccadilly Circus.
- Isabel, Mayfair — a Beaux-Arts dining room off Albemarle Street, with a bar downstairs that runs late. ££££ · 4 min from Green Park.
- Tattu, Fitzrovia — a Joyce Wang Studio room built as a Chinese courtyard around a full-size cherry blossom tree. The only venue here named by two editorial sources and no blog. £££ · 3 min from Tottenham Court Road.
- Joia, Battersea — Portuguese cooking high in the Art’otel with floor-to-ceiling glass. ££££ · 2 min from Battersea Power Station.
- Bancone, Covent Garden — golden light over curved marble pasta counters. ££ · 3 min from Charing Cross.
- Sticks’n’Sushi, Battersea — Danish-Japanese, and the most restrained room on this page. £££ · 2 min from Battersea Power Station.
If the room matters more than the plate
That is a legitimate way to choose and this guide is built for it. But two others are worth reading alongside: unusual restaurants for rooms that are strange rather than pretty, and special occasion restaurants for the ones where the cooking justifies the room. The full eating guide has everything else.
What to know
Seasonal rooms change. Dalloway Terrace and The Ivy Chelsea Garden are both dressed to the season. The photograph that brought you here may be six months old.
One room, several rooms. Sketch is the clearest case: the pink Gallery, the Lecture Room and the lavatory pods are all “Sketch” to a source and all different to a diner.
Common questions
What is the most Instagrammable restaurant in London?
Bacchanalia in Mayfair is named by six of the seven guides read for this page, more than any other room. It is a Greco-Roman fantasy designed by Martin Brudnizki, with marble sculptures by Damien Hirst and hand-painted ceiling murals. Sketch and Circolo Popolare follow on five each.
Which Instagrammable restaurant in London is cheapest?
Bar Douro in Borough, at ££. It is a narrow Portuguese counter lined in hand-painted azulejo tiles, and the only room on this list whose look comes from tilework rather than money. Circolo Popolare, Ave Mario, Gloria and Bancone are also ££.
Is Sky Garden free?
Entry to the garden itself is free with a booked time slot, released on a rolling window and taken quickly. The restaurants inside it are not free and are booked separately. This is the detail people most often get wrong.
Do these restaurants serve good food?
Some do and some do not, and this page ranks the room rather than the kitchen. Spring at Somerset House and Sessions Arts Club are cited as often for the cooking as the setting. The Ivy Chelsea Garden is a chain, and Sky Garden is a viewing platform with restaurants in it.
How far ahead do I need to book?
Sessions Arts Club runs months out. Bacchanalia, Sketch, Bob Bob Ricard, NoMad London, Spring and Isabel are weeks. Bar Douro, Sucre, Tattu, Dalloway Terrace and The Ivy Chelsea Garden are usually days. Sky Garden needs a free timed slot booked in advance even if you are not eating.
