Where to eat in South Bank
39 places
Planning a whole day here? Read the South Bank area guide.
Agora
££Oma's ground floor, built around a rotisserie spit, with counter seats facing the grill. Skewers by the piece: pork souvlaki with oregano at £5, lamb adana with garlic yoghurt.
Akara
£££Named after the black-eyed bean fritter it is built around, from the Chishuru team - the casual counterpart to the starred room.
Anchor & Hope
££On The Cut by the Young Vic, long-running, and rarely bookable - it holds most of the room back for walk-ins, which is why the queue starts early.
Applebee's
£££A family-run Borough Market fixture since 1999 that started as a fishmonger and turned into a restaurant, with the counter still at the front and live-fire cooking behind it.
Aqua Shard
££££Floor-to-ceiling glass on the 31st floor of the Shard, with the atrium running up three storeys above the dining room.
Bancone
££Watch the pasta being rolled at the counter, at prices well below the Michelin Guide average.
Bar Douro
££A narrow Portuguese counter lined in hand-painted azulejo tiles, under a slatted, shack-like ceiling.
The cheapest room on this list by some distance, and the only one whose look comes from tilework rather than money.
Borough Market
££Traders have sold food on this site since the thirteenth century, and the mix still leans hard on British and European produce - cheese, charcuterie, bread, oysters - alongside cooked stalls from a dozen countries.
Busiest between 11am and 2pm on Saturdays. Friday mid-morning is the quietest window with everything still stocked.
Bread Ahead
£The creme brulee doughnut is blowtorched in front of you. It started as one Borough stall and is now a bakery school and a small chain.
Camille
£££A small Borough bistro doing offal, terrines and the unfashionable half of the French repertoire properly.
El Pastor
££Al pastor carved off the trompo, in a railway-arch room that has been the default London taqueria for years.
Fishcotheque
££On Waterloo Road since 1972, and the counter two separate London chip shop video channels went out of their way to film.
Flat Iron Square
££Seven railway arches between London Bridge and Southwark stations, food-led with live music, film nights and quizzes on top.
Forza Wine
£££A terrace on top of the National Theatre looking straight up the Thames - the best free view attached to a wine list in London.
Furness Oyster Bar
£A stall rather than a restaurant, and both sources that name it say the same thing: it is the grab-and-go oyster fix at Borough Market.
Gujarati Rasoi
£Mother-and-son Gujarati cooking from family recipes - thalis, bhajia and dhal - at a market where almost everything else is European.
Hawksmoor
££££British beef dry-aged and grilled over charcoal, in rooms that were mostly something else first - a brewery, a bank, a ballroom.
Hobbs Roast
£Roast pork with stuffing and apple sauce in a baguette, plus turkey and salt beef versions - a Sunday lunch reduced to something you can eat walking.
Horn OK Please
£Samosa chaat built to order - the samosas crushed under chickpea curry, yoghurt and tamarind while still hot - from an all-vegetarian Borough Market stall.
Kappacasein
£Bill Oglethorpe scrapes melted raclette straight off the wheel onto new potatoes, with cornichons and pickled onions. The queue is the landmark.
Market trading hours only. The queue is longest at Saturday lunch.
Kismet
£££A meyhane in the style of Istanbul and north Cyprus, upstairs at The Globe - in the building used as Bridget Jones's flat in the films.
Kolae
£££Southern Thai grilling from the Kiln team - a different regional tradition again, built around charcoal and coconut.
La Tua Pasta
£Fresh pasta cooked to order at a Borough Market stand, with sauces that change with the season.
Market trading hours only - closed when Borough Market is closed.
Lyaness
££££Ryan Chetiyawardana builds the menu around a handful of house-made ingredients and rewrites it wholesale - a river view attached.
Masters Superfish
££A south London institution five minutes from Waterloo, buying from Billingsgate daily and frying several kinds of fish rather than just cod and haddock. The mushy peas are the ones people write about.
Prawns and bread and butter arrive unasked while you wait, which is the house tradition. Portions are large enough that the small is usually the right order.
Monmouth Coffee Company
£Roasting since 1978 and still the default answer to where to get coffee in London - the Borough Market shop has a queue out of the door most mornings.
The Borough queue is longest at weekend market hours. Covent Garden is quieter.
Oma
££££Upstairs from its own more casual sibling at Borough Market, cooking Greek food over fire at serious prices and justifying them.
Oudh 1722
££££Two-Michelin-star chef Aktar Islam cooking the Awadhi food of Lucknow - biryanis and kebabs - across three floors of a Victorian townhouse near London Bridge.
OXO Tower Restaurant
££££A long terrace on the eighth floor looking straight across the Thames at St Paul's - the classic London river view, and it has been that for thirty years.
Padella
£A short menu of hand-rolled pasta at low prices, which is why the queue exists.
Original site opened in Borough Market 2016; now also Shoreditch and Soho, where limited bookings are taken.
Padella
£A short menu of hand-rolled pasta at low prices, which is why the queue exists.
Original site opened in Borough Market 2016; now also Shoreditch and Soho, where limited bookings are taken.
Parrillan
£££You get your own small charcoal grill at the table and cook the skewers yourself - a format nothing else in London offers.
Pyro
£££Yiannis Mexis' first restaurant, built around an open fire - potato pittas with smoked aubergine and spiced feta before anything else.
Richard Haward's Oysters
££Mersea oysters shucked in front of you by a family that has been farming them since the 1700s, with a few pavement tables and a glass of wine.
Seabird
£££Fourteen floors up on Blackfriars Road from the team behind Brooklyn's Maison Premiere, with an oyster happy hour daily from 3pm to 6pm - the cheapest way into the view.
Spring Street Pizza
££A Michelin-starred chef leaving fine dining to make eighteen-inch New York slices under a railway arch. The dough is a biga fermented past forty-eight hours, which is where the thin, foldable, properly charred base comes from.
Tom Kemble, previously of Bonhams, opened this in 2025 in the arches off O'Meara Street - a few minutes from Borough Market, London Bridge and the Shard.
Tacos Padre
££Corn nixtamalised on site and tortillas pressed to order at a Borough Market counter - the detail most taquerias skip.
The George Inn
££The last galleried coaching inn left in London, owned by the National Trust and mentioned by Dickens.
National Trust owned. The courtyard is the point - the surviving gallery runs along one side.
Vinegar Yard
££A rotating street food lineup around a covered outdoor yard steps from London Bridge station - Flat Iron Square's sister site, with a weekend vintage market (Flea London) on top.
Largely outdoor and covered rather than heated - better in summer. Sits inside the same At London Bridge development as Flat Iron Square, a two-minute walk apart.