Where to eat in Covent Garden
36 places
Planning a whole day here? Read the Covent Garden area guide.
Arôme
£Laminated croissants taken seriously, and a miso bacon escargot that has no business working as well as it does.
Ave Mario
££Big Mamma's Covent Garden room, done as an eighties throwback. Neapolitan pizza, all-homemade pasta and T-bone fiorentina.
Vast and deliberately theatrical - the group books out well ahead and the rooms are loud by design.
Bad Boy Pizza Society
£Twenty-two-inch New York pies sold by the slice from a counter inside Seven Dials Market - and, unusually for a market stall, a two-time National Pizza of the Year winner.
Trades on Seven Dials Market hours, not its own. The brand also runs residencies at Vinegar Yard and The Railway in Tulse Hill, and opened its first permanent restaurant - Bad Boy Pizzeria - at 419 Bethnal Green Road in August 2025. Began in 2018 as a parody university society in Southampton.
Bancone
££Watch the pasta being rolled at the counter, at prices well below the Michelin Guide average.
Blacklock
££Chops pressed under a vintage Blacklock iron AND a proper dry-aged steak list from £16, at prices that undercut every other chophouse in central London.
Burro
££Named by both The Infatuation and Time Out, and one of the few Italian openings to reach two independent guides quickly.
Café Murano
££Angela Hartnett's everyday counterpart to Murano - the same kitchen thinking at a third of the price.
Sites in Covent Garden and St James's. The pasta is made fresh at least twice a day.
Chin Chin
£Ice cream frozen to order with liquid nitrogen - theatre as much as dessert, and it was doing it long before the format spread.
Darjeeling Express
£££Asma Khan's kitchen, staffed entirely by women, cooking the food of Calcutta and the royal Mughlai tradition she grew up in.
Dim Sum Library
£££Dim sum in a bar-led room rather than a banquet hall, which makes it the one that works for an evening rather than a lunch.
Dishoom
££The Irani cafes of old Bombay recreated in careful detail, and the bacon naan roll that made it a breakfast destination as much as a dinner one.
Any party size can book before 6pm; after 6pm bookings are for groups of six or more only. Most tables are held back for walk-ins either way. Seven London branches; the Branches tab has six named.
Frog by Adam Handling
££££A Michelin-starred tasting menu built around zero waste - trimmings from one course become the next, and it is stated rather than hidden.
Hawksmoor
££££British beef dry-aged and grilled over charcoal, in rooms that were mostly something else first - a brewery, a bank, a ballroom.
Hoa Sen
££The roast duck served in lettuce leaves with mango is the dish to order and the reason to cross Covent Garden for it.
Homeslice
££Twenty-inch pizzas sold whole or by the slice, with toppings split across halves. Built for groups rather than couples.
Multiple central branches; Neal's Yard is the original.
Homeslice
££Twenty-inch pizzas sold whole or by the slice, with toppings split across halves. Built for groups rather than couples.
Multiple central branches; Neal's Yard is the original.
J Sheekey
££££Open since 1896 in a warren of small panelled rooms off St Martin's Court, with a central crustacea bar and a fish pie that has outlasted every fashion London dining has been through.
Kanada-Ya
££The broth recipe was worked out in Fukuoka before the first London site opened, and the queue outside the St Giles branch has become part of the experience.
No bookings. The queue is shortest before noon and after 2pm.
Kolkati
£Kati rolls the Kolkata way - paratha cooked with egg through it, wrapped round spiced chicken or paneer with pickled onion and lime.
Naru
££A Shaftesbury Avenue standby whose dak twigim - crisp fried chicken bites with a choice of sauces - is the order.
NoMad London
££££A three-storey glass atrium filled with plants, inside the former Bow Street Magistrates Court opposite the Royal Opera House.
The building is the draw - a working courthouse until 2006.
One Aldwych
£££A themed tea built around Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - the one that works with children who would be bored by a Mayfair salon.
Oystermen Seafood Bar & Kitchen
£££A small Henrietta Street room that expanded to make space for a raw bar, which is the seat to want. Work through the oyster list, then the Dorset brown crab with aioli.
Parsons
£££Chalkboard only, and the menu changes every day with what came in. Whole roasted turbot, gurnard, potted shrimp croquettes, Inverawe smoked salmon with Guinness bread.
Pick & Cheese
££British cheeses ride past on a conveyor belt, each paired with its own condiment - a gimmick that turns out to be the best way to taste a lot of them in one sitting.
Punjab
££Open since 1946 and claimed as the oldest North Indian restaurant in Britain, still run by the same family.
Rock & Sole Plaice
££Claims a lineage back to 1871, with pavement tables on a Covent Garden side street.
Sagar
£Udupi cooking from coastal Karnataka, and a masala dosa the length of your forearm - one of the cheapest proper sit-down meals in the West End.
Seven Dials Market
££A former banana warehouse off Seven Dials, curated rather than sprawling - the most useful food hall in the centre if you are with people who all want something different.
Simpson's in the Strand
££££Roasts carved from silver trolleys at the table, in a dining room that has been doing exactly that since the 1820s.
Spring
££££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 few rooms on this list where the cooking is cited as often as the setting.
SUSHISAMBA
££££An orange tree growing through an open-air terrace on the 39th floor - the highest outdoor dining in the City, with the lift ride as part of the experience.
The American Bar
££££Trading since the 1890s and the room where the Savoy Cocktail Book was written - a pianist, white jackets, and no concession to fashion.
The Barbary
£££A horseshoe counter wrapped around an open grill in Neal's Yard, seating about twenty - you watch every plate being made.
The Savoy
££££Under the glass cupola of the Thames Foyer, with a pianist, in London's first purpose-built luxury hotel.
If everything else is full
Reliable rather than remarkable. These are chains — worth knowing about when you need somewhere open, not worth a journey.
Din Tai Fung
£££Xiao long bao folded to eighteen pleats behind glass - the Taiwanese chain Ken Hom put in the New York Times' world top ten, and its first London site.