The best breakfast in London
44 places
Al-Jabal Bakery
£Twenty years of made-to-order mana'eesh in Acton - spinach and cheese, or lahem beajin - and a weekend queue drawn from across west London.
Arôme
£Laminated croissants taken seriously, and a miso bacon escargot that has no business working as well as it does.
Berners Tavern
££££A vast Edwardian ballroom with every inch of wall covered in framed pictures - probably the most photographed dining room in London.
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.
Common Breads
£Flatbreads and manakish straight out of the oven - a bakery counter rather than a restaurant, and cited by more guides than most restaurants here.
Darwin Brasserie
£££Inside the Sky Garden's glass dome at the top of the Walkie Talkie, surrounded by planting rather than just glass.
Sky Garden entry is free but ticketed; a restaurant booking gets you in without one.
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.
Doma
££Spasia Dinkovski reopened after Mystic Burek closed, and Doma - 'at home' in Macedonian - trades one day a week with a different proposition each Saturday.
Saturdays only, and the format changes week to week - check before travelling.
Duck & Waffle
££££Forty floors up and open around the clock - the only place in London where you can watch the sun come up over the City with a plate in front of you.
Open 24 hours. Sunrise and late-night slots are the ones worth planning for.
E Pellicci
£A Bethnal Green caff run by the same family since 1900, with a Grade II listed marquetry interior and a full English that draws queues.
E5 Bakehouse
£Sourdough milled and baked under the London Fields arches, with a cafe attached and flour sold by the bag.
Fortitude Bakehouse
£A small Bloomsbury bakehouse a couple of minutes from Russell Square, which is a short list.
Granger & Co
£££Bill Granger brought Sydney brunch to London and the ricotta hotcakes have been on the menu ever since - the reason half of London eats avocado on toast.
No bookings at weekend brunch at most sites.
Hamilton Hall
£The former ballroom of the Great Eastern Hotel, off the Liverpool Street concourse - gilded plasterwork, chandeliers and cornicing kept intact, which is not what anyone expects from a station pub.
Grade II listed, and reopened after a long refurbishment. On the station concourse, so it is the most useful of these if you are killing time before a train rather than making a trip.
Kaffeine
£Australian-run and one of the shops that brought antipodean coffee culture to London - the food counter is as good as the espresso.
Koya
££Udon made by hand at their own noodle workshop, served from breakfast onwards - the Frith Street counter has been doing it since 2010.
Opens for a Japanese breakfast service that almost nothing else in Soho offers.
Layla
£A Portobello Road bakery doing wood-fired bread and pastries, and one of the few reasons to be at that end of the street on a weekday.
Mae + Harvey
££A corner cafe on Roman Road with a menu that changes weekly - Turkish eggs, house-cured salmon, roast plum pancakes - rather than a fixed brunch list repeated all year.
Milk
££A Balham cafe that has topped London brunch lists for years without ever opening a second site.
No. Forty Nine
£££Morning pastries through to late European wine on St John's Wood High Street - the Cinder team running a bakery, a bistro and a wine bar out of one corner site.
Parliament Hill Cafe
£At the foot of the hill by the athletics track, and the obvious place to start or finish the climb to the Parliament Hill view.
Pembroke Lodge
££A Georgian mansion inside Richmond Park with terraced gardens and, from King Henry's Mound just behind it, the protected ten-mile sightline to St Paul's.
Polo Bar
££So committed to trading around the clock that it has no front door to close - a fry-up at any hour, beside Liverpool Street.
Open 24 hours. There is literally no front door.
Prufrock Coffee
£The Leather Lane shop that trained a generation of London baristas - it runs its own training centre, and most serious coffee people in the city passed through it.
Regency Cafe
£A 1946 black-tiled caff behind Westminster where your name is shouted across the room when the food is up. Cash-friendly, queue out the door, no concessions to anyone.
Closes in the afternoon and all day Sunday. The queue moves fast but forms early at weekends.
Sunday
££A tiny Barnsbury room that built its name on brunch queues rather than dinner service.
No bookings at weekends. The queue is the experience and it starts early.
Ta'mini Lebanese Bakery
£All-day manakish and fatayer from a husband-and-wife team, Ali from north Lebanon and Nermin from Beirut - opened in the first lockdown and has been expanding since.
The Crosse Keys
£The former headquarters of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, opened 1913 - marble columns, a glass-domed ceiling and a banking hall the length of the room, at Wetherspoon prices.
Opens at 08:00 on weekdays for breakfast. Order at the bar or through the app; there is no table service by default and no music, which is the house style rather than an off day.
The Dusty Knuckle
£Bread and sandwiches from a bakery that runs a training programme for young people facing barriers to work - the sandwich is famous on its own merits.
The Kitchen at Kenwood
££In Kenwood's old brew house and service wing, with a terrace over the estate - the only proper stop on the northern half of the Heath.
The Ledger Building
£An 1800 dock building on West India Quay that once held the West India Docks ledgers, with a colonnaded front and a quayside terrace - and by some distance the cheapest place to eat or drink at Canary Wharf.
On West India Quay, a footbridge from the Canary Wharf towers and next to the Museum of London Docklands, which is free - the two make an easy pairing. Order at the bar or by app.
The Montagu Pyke
£Pyke's Cambridge Circus Cinematograph Theatre, built 1911 as the last of Montagu Pyke's sixteen cinemas - and the cheapest round anywhere near Soho or the West End theatres.
A Wetherspoon since December 1996. Two minutes from Cambridge Circus, which makes it a realistic pre-theatre option at a fraction of Soho prices.
The Wolseley
£££A 1920s car showroom turned Viennese-style grand café, and the London power breakfast - as well as the best-value serious afternoon tea.
Does both ends of the day well: breakfast from early, afternoon tea later. The room is the draw either way.
The Yurt Café
£A working cafe inside an actual Mongolian yurt, in the grounds of a Limehouse charity that has been on the site since 1950. Full English, focaccias and Mission Coffee Works espresso, served under a felt roof.
A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE, not a restaurant group - profits go to the Royal Foundation of St Katharine's community work in Limehouse. Daytime 9:00-17:00; evening service runs 17:00-20:00 Monday to Saturday with themed nights and live music on Thursdays.
Toad Bakery
£A Camberwell bakery that has been on every best-of list two years running, doing sandwiches and pastries out of a small shopfront.
TOKii
£££The dining room of a Japanese-run Marylebone hotel, which shows in the detail - and it serves a proper Japanese breakfast, which almost no London hotel does.
WatchHouse
£Started in a nineteenth-century watchman's hut on Bermondsey Street and has become the most polished coffee group in London.
Winter Garden
££££Afternoon tea taken on the floor of an eight-storey glass atrium among full-grown palm trees, with a pianist and a harpist playing - the most theatrical tea room in London that is not a palace.
The atrium is the reason to come. Reviews of the food itself are genuinely mixed for something over 70 pounds a head, so go for the room and judge it on that.
If everything else is full
Reliable rather than remarkable. These are chains — worth knowing about when you need somewhere open, not worth a journey.
Bread Street Kitchen
£££Gordon Ramsay's all-day format - a steak, a burger and a long opening span. The reliable option rather than the interesting one, and it turns up wherever a new development does.