The best brunch in London
34 places
130 Primrose Hill
£££A charity-led restaurant that recruits people with experience of homelessness and pays them through accredited training - with Monica Galetti as executive chef.
Open all day, every day. 50 covers, with salads and sandwiches at lunch.
Antipodea
££All-day Australian cooking that runs from brunch through laksa and Thai squid, which is a far broader range than Richmond's pub-and-Italian default.
Beany Green Little Venice
££Australian brunch on the towpath with a big canal-side terrace, and the easiest good breakfast within walking distance of Paddington station.
Belly Bistro
£££Part French bistro, part Filipino kitchen - the fish sauce profiteroles with salted caramel are the dish that explains the whole place.
Bread Street Kitchen Stratford
£££The most serious kitchen at the gateway to Westfield, and the one place here that works for a proper dinner rather than a shopping break.
Caravan
£An all-day kitchen with its own roastery attached - the room most responsible for London's brunch-and-flat-white format.
Carbon Kopi
£Moved from New Zealand to Hammersmith in 2019 and has been on the national best-of lists ever since.
Cecconi's
£££Soho House group's all-day Mayfair room behind the Royal Academy - wraparound windows, striped marble, white-jacketed service.
Serves through the day, from egg-white omelette to lobster spaghetti.
Chet's
£££Thai flavours through an American diner - an LA-inspired hotel room where the bar snacks and the drinks are doing as much work as the kitchen.
Chucs Mayfair
£££Eight tables of 1950s Riviera glamour on Dover Street, from the clothing brand of the same name.
Very small - eight tables - so booking matters more than the walk-in-friendly rooms elsewhere on this list.
Climpson & Sons
£On Broadway Market since before the street became what it is now, roasting its own and still busiest on Saturdays.
Dalloway Terrace
£££A covered terrace at The Bloomsbury Hotel whose floral installation is changed with the season, so the room looks different in February and in July.
Named by four sources. The seasonal changeover is worth checking before travelling for a particular look.
Ginger & White
£A small Perrins Court cafe doing serious coffee and a proper British breakfast, and the default Hampstead meeting place for anyone who lives there.
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.
Honey & Co
£££Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich cook the food they write about, in rooms small enough that the kitchen is effectively at your table.
Jikoni
£££Ravinder Bhogal cooks across her Kenyan, Indian and British background without picking one - Ottolenghi called it the restaurant he wished he had opened.
Kaffeine
£Australian-run and one of the shops that brought antipodean coffee culture to London - the food counter is as good as the espresso.
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.
Maramia Cafe
££Serving Palestinian and Arabic home cooking in west London since 2005, long before anyone was writing guides to it.
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.
Ottolenghi
£££The window display of salads and cakes is the London original - communal tables behind it, and a deli counter that shaped how a generation of home cooks eat.
Ozone Coffee Roasters
£A working roastery in the basement with a full kitchen above it - closer to an all-day restaurant than a coffee shop.
Pophams
£Pastries at the counter and a small kitchen behind it, so it works as breakfast and as lunch.
Sky Garden
£££A planted glass dome on top of 20 Fenchurch Street. Entry to the garden is free with a booked slot; the restaurants inside it are not.
The free-entry distinction is the thing readers get wrong. Free slots are released on a rolling window and go first.
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.
T by Tamara
££London's only fatteh bar, from Tamara Al Saadi - Palestinian and Jordanian cooking served as brunch, with the cakes doing serious work.
Taverna Ermou
££The London branch of a taverna from Ergon, the Athens food group: wooden beams, vintage ornaments, food on metal trays, and bougatsa custard pie with a freddo espresso for breakfast.
The Attendant
£Built inside a restored Victorian public lavatory, with the original porcelain urinals turned into the counter you sit at.
The Café at Clifton Nurseries
££A café inside a glasshouse in the grounds of Clifton Nurseries, a working garden centre on the same Maida Vale site since 1851. Brunch and lunch dishes, bakes and cakes, with a terrace outside.
Daytime only: Monday to Saturday 9:00-17:30, Sunday 10:30-16:30. Typically £10-20 a head.
The Ivy Chelsea Garden
£££A walled garden behind the King's Road, dressed seasonally, with a conservatory for the months it is too cold to sit outside.
A chain, and the article says so - the garden is the reason it is here, not the kitchen.
The Laundry
£££A former Edwardian laundry off Coldharbour Lane, running from breakfast through to dinner with a wine shop attached - the kitchen genuinely does not stop.
Food served all day and into the evening, so it works at the awkward hours most neighbourhood restaurants do not cover.
The Waterway
£££One of the largest canal-side terraces in London, right on the water at Little Venice, and the first thing in the area to fill up on a warm weekend.
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.