The best deli in London
33 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.
Algerian Coffee Stores
£Trading on Old Compton Street since 1887, selling beans over the counter with an espresso hatch and nowhere at all to sit.
Bar Italia
£Open since 1949 and still on Frith Street. Coffee, a cannoli and a place to stand at the counter rather than a meal.
Long hours - the traditional Soho late stop. Counter service, minimal seating.
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.
Brick Lane Market
£Vintage clothing, records and street food down the lane and through the Truman Brewery yards - the busiest and least curated of the east London Sunday markets.
Sundays are the main event. The Truman Brewery yards run smaller markets on Saturdays too.
Broadway Market
££A Saturday street market running down towards the canal, weighted towards British producers, and the reason half of Hackney is outdoors on a Saturday morning.
Saturday is the main market. Much quieter and largely shut the rest of the week.
Champagne + Fromage
£££French cheese, charcuterie and grower champagne by the glass - a small chain, but the Greenwich site sits right by the market.
Chinatown Bakery
£Egg tarts and bolo bao made in the window on Newport Place - the queue is usually visible from the gate.
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.
Crunch
££Everything is built on a golden brioche loaf rather than bread, which is the whole proposition and the reason it divides people. The chicken katsu is the one to order.
Eataly
££Three restaurants, a market of Italian ingredients, a cafe, a takeaway counter and a cookery school, all in one building beside Liverpool Street. Terra has a two-metre wood-fired grill.
A venue rather than a single restaurant - the format varies by which counter or dining room you use. Useful as a wet-weather or with-children option in the City.
Green Valley
££Part supermarket, part counter, part patisserie - the Edgware Road institution people shop in and eat at in the same trip.
Half Cut Market
££Buy a bottle off the shelf and drink it there for a small corkage - the format that makes a serious list affordable.
Kinz
£££A 1930s Lloyds Bank on Notting Hill Gate turned Lebanese brasserie - triple-height ground floor, a deli at the front and the wine room inside the old vault.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
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.
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.
Porte Noire
£££Idris Elba's wine bar with co-founder David Farber, at the foot of the Gasholders building by the canal - around 800 wine bins and one of the larger fine wine rooms in London.
Bar, shop and tasting room in one, so you can drink in or take a bottle away. Charcuterie and small sharing plates rather than a full menu.
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 Cheese Barge
££A 96-foot double-decker barge moored on the canal at Paddington Basin, serving British cheese in small plates and a set menu - genuinely eating on the water rather than beside it.
Named in a YouTube travel-guide review of Paddington's hidden spots. Book ahead - a moored barge has fixed, limited covers.
The Life Goddess
££Part deli, part taverna - you can buy the cheese you just ate, which is most of the appeal.
Tongue & Brisket
£Home-cured salt beef carved to order into an £8 sandwich, from a deli that does almost nothing else.
Zeit & Za'atar
££Za'atar manakish and vegetarian Levantine plates in Ealing, a long way from where the guides usually look.