Indian restaurants in London
55 places
Amaya
££££An open kitchen of tawa, sigri and tandoor in Belgravia, with a Michelin star for grilling rather than saucing.
Babur
£££A Brockley dining room that has been quietly outcooking most of central London for over thirty years.
Benares
££££Named Best Fine Dining Restaurant in London at the Asian Curry Awards, and a Berkeley Square fixture for two decades.
BiBi
££££Chet Sharma's Mayfair room, cooking regional Indian dishes through a fine-dining lens with a drinks list built to match.
Bombay Chow
££Indo-Chinese Hakka cooking a few minutes from Wembley Stadium, from the people behind Fatt Pundit - Kolkata chilly paneer, Tai Pai chicken, chicken lollipops. All meat halal.
Bonoo Indian Tapas
££Indian small plates built on street food but cooked with British seasonal produce, and the one Hampstead room the local guides consistently put first.
Brigadiers
£££Built on the Indian army mess-bar idea - big rooms, sport on the screens, whisky, and barbecue over coals. The loudest Indian restaurant in the City, by design.
City Spice
££The Brick Lane curry house that gets named most often when people argue about which of them is still worth eating at.
Colonel Saab
£££Inside the old Holborn Town Hall, filled with the owner's family collection of Indian antiques. Named Asian Restaurant of the Year for London.
Dalchini
££Hakka Indo-Chinese by Wimbledon Park station since 2000 - Hakka chilli chicken, gobi Manchurian, Mahim fish koliwada.
Darjeeling Express
£££Asma Khan's kitchen, staffed entirely by women, cooking the food of Calcutta and the royal Mughlai tradition she grew up in.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Diwana Bhel Poori House
£Trading on Drummond Street since 1971 and the oldest of the Euston vegetarian Indian restaurants - dosas, bhel poori and an all-you-can-eat lunch thali that is among the cheapest proper meals in central London.
BRING YOUR OWN ALCOHOL - unlicensed, with no corkage. The lunchtime buffet is the value order. Pine benches and no decor to speak of; it has not changed in decades and that is the appeal.
Empire Empire
£££A love letter to 1970s Bombay dining rooms, from the JKS group - velvet, brass and disco-era styling.
Fatt Pundit
££Kolkata's Hakka Chinese cooking - kid goat momos, crackling spinach, Kolkata chilli duck and lamb chops in black bean dust. A second site on Maiden Lane in Covent Garden.
Gujarati Rasoi
£Mother-and-son Gujarati cooking from family recipes - thalis, bhajia and dhal - at a market where almost everything else is European.
Gymkhana
££££Modelled on the colonial-era gymkhana clubs of India, and the highest-decorated Indian kitchen in the city.
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.
Hullabaloo
£A permanent fixture in Greenwich Market rather than a rotating stall, doing vegetarian and vegan Indian street food.
Hyderabadi Spice
££Hyderabadi biryani done as its own tradition rather than as a side dish on a north Indian menu.
Jamavar
££££Named for the handwoven Kashmiri shawl, cooking across the whole subcontinent rather than one region of it.
Jikoni
£££Ravinder Bhogal cooks across her Kenyan, Indian and British background without picking one - Ottolenghi called it the restaurant he wished he had opened.
Kanishka
£££Atul Kochhar cooking the north-eastern states - Assam, Nagaland, Sikkim - which almost nowhere else in London attempts.
Kokum
£££Named for the sour coastal fruit, cooking the seafood traditions of India's western shore.
Kolkati
£Kati rolls the Kolkata way - paratha cooked with egg through it, wrapped round spiced chicken or paneer with pickled onion and lime.
Kricket
££Started in a Brixton shipping container and grew into several sites, doing Indian cooking as small plates rather than curries.
Kutir
£££A Chelsea townhouse done as an Indian hunting lodge, with a menu built around game and the outdoors.
Madhu's
££Punjabi cooking by way of Kenya - the East African Asian tradition that Southall does better than anywhere else in Britain.
Masala Zone
££Thalis and street-food plates at prices well below the Mayfair rooms, from the group behind Amaya and Chutney Mary.
Namaaste Highgate
££Named Asian Restaurant of the Year for London at the 2025 Asian Curry Awards - a neighbourhood restaurant that beat the Mayfair field.
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.
Pahli Hill Bandra Bhai
£££Named for the Bandra hill district of Bombay, with a basement bar that runs later than the dining room above it.
Punjab
££Open since 1946 and claimed as the oldest North Indian restaurant in Britain, still run by the same family.
Quilon
££££Michelin-starred cooking from Kerala and the Malabar coast - the one starred kitchen in London doing south-western seafood rather than northern grills.
Rasa
£An all-vegetarian Keralan kitchen behind a shocking pink shopfront, cooking with coconut and curry leaf rather than cream.
Saravanaa Bhavan
£The London outpost of the Chennai vegetarian chain, and the cheapest way in the West End to eat a properly made masala dosa.
Shankeys
££Named by both The Infatuation and Time Out, which is a narrow overlap to land in.
Sheba
££A long-standing Brick Lane room, picked out on a TOPJAW run through the street.
Shree Krishna Vada Pav
£Vada pav - the Mumbai potato-fritter roll - done properly and cheaply, from a counter rather than a dining room.
Tamarind
££££The first Indian restaurant in the world to win a Michelin star, and still a Mayfair basement doing tandoor cooking at that level.
Tamila
££Tamil home cooking in Clapham, picked up by both the Good Food Guide and Time Out.
Tangra
££All-vegetarian Indo-Chinese from the Kolkata tradition - Hakka noodles, gobi 65, Manchurian kofta - open until midnight Thursday to Saturday.
The Bombay Restaurant
££Named by three independent sources including Currylife, which covers the curry-house trade rather than the restaurant press.
The Cinnamon Club
££££Inside the Grade II listed old Westminster Library, bookshelves still in place - the most unusual dining room of any Indian restaurant in London.
The Regency Club
££A members' club turned bar and grill, open since 1991 and themed on the community clubs of Kenya - Indian spice with Kenyan cooking, garlic mogo to mixed grills.
The Tamil Crown
££The second pub from the Tamil Prince team, doing the same Tamil-kitchen-in-a-Victorian-boozer format that London does better than anywhere.
Sibling to The Tamil Prince, also in Islington - two separate pubs, not two names for one.
Trishna
£££Michelin-starred cooking from India's south-west coast, and the most-cited Indian restaurant in London across every guide we read.
Udaya Kerala Restaurant
££Keralan cooking - appam, coastal fish, coconut - rather than the northern menu most London curry houses run.
Vatavaran
£££Cooking from the Himalayan foothills - a region almost nowhere else in London represents.
Veeraswamy
££££Open since 1926 and the oldest surviving Indian restaurant in Britain, above Regent Street, with a Michelin star to go with the history.