The best grill in London
157 places
45 Jermyn St
££££Beef Wellington and lobster spaghetti finished at the table, coupes and floats for pudding - a brasserie doing the theatrical old-school service almost nobody still does.
Open 8am to 10pm through the week, so it covers breakfast and late dinner as well as lunch.
64 Goodge Street
£££A Fitzrovia brasserie from the Woodhead group doing the format straight - steak frites, a long bar, and late service.
Akira at Japan House
£££Inside Japan House, sourcing directly from Japan where it can - the bento and donburi use produce that otherwise never reaches a London menu.
Al Waha
£££The most-cited Lebanese room in London across these sources - white walls, hanging foliage and mezze taken seriously rather than served as filler.
Alhaji Suya
£Suya - beef skewered, spiced with yaji and grilled over charcoal - which almost nowhere in this half of London does properly.
ALTA
£££Basque live-fire cooking in Soho - everything routed through the grill, including the vegetables.
Amaya
££££An open kitchen of tawa, sigri and tandoor in Belgravia, with a Michelin star for grilling rather than saucing.
Andy's Taverna
££An old-school Camden taverna doing meze for large tables at prices that explain its longevity.
Antepliler
££Green Lanes cooking from Gaziantep, with a baklava counter that is the reason half the customers are there.
Appalachia
£££The cooking of the Appalachian mountains - cornbread madeleines, poussin with grits - from a chef who came out of Smoking Goat, at a counter wrapped round an open kitchen.
Ave Mario
££Big Mamma's Covent Garden room, done as an eighties throwback. Neapolitan pizza, all-homemade pasta and T-bone fiorentina.
Vast and deliberately theatrical - the group books out well ahead and the rooms are loud by design.
Bacchanalia
££££A Mayfair room built as a Greco-Roman fantasy, designed by Martin Brudnizki, with marble sculptures by Damien Hirst and hand-painted ceiling murals by Gary Myatt.
The most-cited room in the instagrammable corpus - six of seven sources name it.
Barbarella
££Big Mamma's Canary Wharf room, done out as a 1970s Cinecittà film studio and named after the Jane Fonda film - T-bone steaks and filled pasta under a lot of glitter.
Opened June 2026. Steps from the Canary Wharf DLR and Jubilee platforms, and a few minutes from the Elizabeth line.
Beit El Zaytoun
££Founded in 2016 by Ayman Assi as a small piece of Lebanon in northwest London, with a garden that does most of the work in summer.
Berber & Q
£££A railway arch built around charcoal and smoke - lamb shawarma and cauliflower off the same grill, in a room that gets very loud very quickly.
Berenjak
£££A Tehran hole-in-the-wall kabab house rebuilt in Soho - mahi, jujeh and torshi at a counter, from the JKS group.
Blacklock
££Chops pressed under a vintage Blacklock iron AND a proper dry-aged steak list from £16, at prices that undercut every other chophouse in central London.
Blacklock
££Chops pressed under a vintage Blacklock iron AND a proper dry-aged steak list from £16, at prices that undercut every other chophouse in central London.
Blacklock
££Chops pressed under a vintage Blacklock iron AND a proper dry-aged steak list from £16, at prices that undercut every other chophouse in central London.
Blacklock
££Chops pressed under a vintage Blacklock iron AND a proper dry-aged steak list from £16, at prices that undercut every other chophouse in central London.
Blacklock
££Chops pressed under a vintage Blacklock iron AND a proper dry-aged steak list from £16, at prices that undercut every other chophouse in central London.
Brat
£££Tomos Parry cooking over open fire above a Shoreditch pub, built around whole turbot in a custom grill.
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.
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.
Brutto
££Deliberately unfussy Florentine cooking; the bistecca is the order.
Cafe Helen
££An Edgware Road institution that comes into its own long after everywhere else has shut.
Late-night trading is the point - it is a different place at midnight than at lunch.
Canton Arms
££An old-school South Lambeth boozer that happens to serve one of London's best-regarded roasts.
Cavita
££££Time Out's pick for the best Mexican in London - the tacos get the headlines but the point is the dishes nobody else in London cooks.
Coal Office
££££Assaf Granit's kitchen in a converted coal office at Coal Drops Yard, built around an open grill and a room designed by Tom Dixon.
CUT at 45 Park Lane
££££Wolfgang Puck's first restaurant in Europe, running British native breeds, USDA Prime and Japanese wagyu side by side over a konro grill.
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.
Dorian
££££A Notting Hill butcher's shop turned bistro where the beef and the wine list are doing the talking.
Durak Tantuni
£Tantuni - finely chopped beef griddled and rolled in flatbread - which almost nowhere else in London serves.
Em Sherif at Harrods
££££The Beirut group's London outpost inside Harrods - a set Lebanese menu served in sequence rather than a mezze free-for-all.
Ember Yard
£££Charcoal and smoke run through the whole menu, from the meat to the ice cream.
Enfes Ocakbaşı
££A brightly lit Green Lanes canteen with nothing to look at but the grill, which is the entire point - adana, shish, liver and chops, all cooked properly.
Engawa
££££Built around certified Kobe beef, which very few London kitchens are licensed to serve - the sushi is good but the beef is the reason to book.
Etles Uyghur Restaurant
££Uyghur cooking from Xinjiang - hand-pulled laghman, cumin lamb skewers, a tradition almost nowhere else in London represents.
Fairuz
£££A long-running Marylebone Lebanese where the mezze arrives in waves and nobody is rushed out.
Fallow
£££Whole-animal and root-to-stem cooking pushed further than anywhere else in London - offcuts, byproducts and discarded species treated as the menu rather than a footnote.
Runs a Sunday roast and a breakfast service as well, which is why it surfaced on both of those passes rather than on a best-British listicle.
Flat Iron
£One cut, one price, no bookings - a 200g flat iron steak for £15, which is still the cheapest good steak in central London.
FM Mangal
££South London's answer to Green Lanes - charcoal, lahmacun and no ceremony whatsoever.
Four Seasons
££Roast duck hanging in the window and a queue outside for it - the most-cited Chinese restaurant in London across every guide read.
Freej Swaileh
£££One of the very few Kuwaiti kitchens in London - machboos and kabsa rather than the Levantine mezze everywhere else does.
Gökyüzü
££An enormous Green Lanes grill house where the mixed kebab arrives on a platter built for four and feeds six.
Goodman
££££A New York steakhouse done straight - leather booths, a specials chalkboard, and both USDA and British dry-aged beef on the same menu.
Green Valley
££Part supermarket, part counter, part patisserie - the Edgware Road institution people shop in and eat at in the same trip.
Gymkhana
££££Modelled on the colonial-era gymkhana clubs of India, and the highest-decorated Indian kitchen in the city.
Hawksmoor
££££British beef dry-aged and grilled over charcoal, in rooms that were mostly something else first - a brewery, a bank, a ballroom.
Hawksmoor
££££British beef dry-aged and grilled over charcoal, in rooms that were mostly something else first - a brewery, a bank, a ballroom.
Hawksmoor
££££British beef dry-aged and grilled over charcoal, in rooms that were mostly something else first - a brewery, a bank, a ballroom.
Hawksmoor
££££British beef dry-aged and grilled over charcoal, in rooms that were mostly something else first - a brewery, a bank, a ballroom.
Hawksmoor
££££British beef dry-aged and grilled over charcoal, in rooms that were mostly something else first - a brewery, a bank, a ballroom.
Hawksmoor
££££British beef dry-aged and grilled over charcoal, in rooms that were mostly something else first - a brewery, a bank, a ballroom.
Hiba Express
£Family-run, generous and cheap - the lunch counter people in Holborn actually queue at rather than the one guidebooks send them to.
Hoa Sen
££The roast duck served in lettuce leaves with mango is the dish to order and the reason to cross Covent Garden for it.
Hon's BBQ
£££Man Hon Luk smokes Texan barbecue through Chinese and Asian seasoning, canalside in Hackney Wick in the room Silo used to occupy.
Ibai
££££Fire-led Basque cooking and some of the best beef in the country, from the team behind Donostia - a tribute to the original Ibai in San Sebastián.
Imad's Syrian Kitchen
£££Imad Alarnab cooked his way from Damascus to a Kingly Court balcony - the Syrian home cooking is the draw and the story is not decoration.
Impala
£££Meedu Saad left the top job at Kiln to cook his own history - Egyptian heritage crossed with the Cypriot kebab houses of north London he grew up around.
Isabel
££££A Beaux-Arts dining room off Albemarle Street, with a bar downstairs that runs late.
Named by two sources for the look rather than the cooking.
Ishbilia
£££A Knightsbridge Lebanese that has held its regulars for decades - the mezze list runs long enough that ordering is the hard part.
Ishtar
£££A long-running Marylebone Turkish room with a mezze list built for a table that wants to stay put.
Jin Go Gae
£££Real charcoal rather than gas, which is why it is the purist's choice in a town full of Korean grills.
Jin Kichi
£££A small family-run izakaya on Heath Street doing charcoal yakitori at prices that have never caught up with the postcode.
K-Town BBQ
££London's first all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue - industrial room, fixed price, and built for a table that intends to stay a while.
Buffet format at a fixed price. Service charge is added on top.
Kateh
££A Michelin Bib Gourmand Persian kitchen in a small townhouse off Warwick Avenue, hung with Persian art and run more like a home than a restaurant.
Kiez Kebab
££Berlin döner rather than London kebab - three options only, served in pide bread rather than wrapped, on Golborne Road.
Kiln
£££Everything comes off wood and charcoal along a single counter - sit at the bar and the short rib curry is cooked in front of you.
Counter seats are walk-in only and the wait is real. Tables can be booked.
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.
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.
Köfteci Metin
£Köfte and very little else, which is exactly why it is worth the trip up Green Lanes.
Kolae
£££Southern Thai grilling from the Kiln team - a different regional tradition again, built around charcoal and coconut.
Korean Grill Kensington
£££Tabletop grills at every table on the corner of Courtfield Road - it sits under the Millennium Gloucester but has its own entrance and none of the hotel-restaurant feel.
Le Bab
££Kebabs rebuilt with restaurant technique - the format is familiar and almost nothing else about it is.
Lebo Lebanese Grill
£Cash only, mostly takeaway, and a late-night queue for the chicken that tells you everything about how good it is.
Cash only. The queue builds late rather than at dinner time.
Lemonia
££A Primrose Hill taverna that has been feeding the same families for decades - big, noisy and entirely unbothered by fashion.
Lokal
£££Modern Turkish cooking from the Fred Bakery and Faros team, with counter dining and a cocktail bar alongside 110 covers.
Lore of the Land
£££Guy Ritchie's Fitzrovia pub, pouring beer from his own Gritchie Brewing Company - barley grown on his Wiltshire estate - with a more serious dining room upstairs than the bar downstairs suggests.
Two floors: a proper pub at street level, a restaurant above. The beer is the real tie-in rather than the decor.
Lurra
££££Aged Galician beef and whole turbot over coals, from the Donostia team - the Basque asador format done properly.
Lutyens Grill
££££The old bank manager's office at The Ned, serving rare-breed Longhorn and Hereford off a carving trolley wheeled to the table.
Macellaio RC
£££A butcher's counter that became a restaurant - Piedmontese Fassona beef hung in the window and cut to order.
Mangal 2
£££The Dirik brothers took over their father's Dalston ocakbaşı and turned it into one of the most inventive kitchens in London without moving the grill.
Manteca
£££Chris Leach and David Carter's nose-to-tail Italian with hand-rolled pasta and a salumeria on site.
Whole-animal butchery feeding a menu of house-cured salumi and hand-rolled pasta.
Maroush
££Opened on Edgware Road in 1981 and effectively established the street as London's Lebanese quarter - still the reference point for everything that followed.
Med Salleh Viet
££Grilled Vietnamese street food and phở, run halal by the couple behind Med Salleh Kopitiam - a combination almost nothing else in London offers.
Min Jiang
££££Wood-fired Peking duck carved tableside on the tenth floor, looking over Kensington Gardens - the only Chinese room in London with that view.
Mount St. Restaurant
££££Over 200 works of art hang in the room - Warhol, Freud, Picasso - above a Mayfair pub, with a menu drawn from the cooking history of London itself.
Namak Mandi
££Peshawari cooking rather than Punjabi - namkeen karahi seasoned with salt and little else, which is a different tradition from everything else on this list.
NoMad London
££££A three-storey glass atrium filled with plants, inside the former Bow Street Magistrates Court opposite the Royal Opera House.
The building is the draw - a working courthouse until 2006.
Olle
£££Table grills in the middle of Soho, so the New Malden format without the forty-minute train.
Original Lahore Kebab House
££Trading since 1972 on lamb chops, dry lamb curry and chicken karahi, in a room that has never pretended to be anything but a canteen.
BYOB. Open late, which is half the reason it is busy.
Palmyra's Kitchen
££Tucked round the back of Finsbury Park station, cooking across Lebanon and Syria - hidden in plain sight next to the bus stands.
Paradise Cove
££Jerk cooked over pimento wood in northwest London, on a stretch that has been the centre of Caribbean London for decades.
Parrillan
£££You get your own small charcoal grill at the table and cook the skewers yourself - a format nothing else in London offers.
Patogh
££A tiny room off Edgware Road where the flatbread comes out roughly the size of a sombrero and the kebabs are cooked over coals.
Pizarro
£££The sit-down sibling to José a few doors up - same chef, tables instead of stools, and you can book.
Pochawa Grill
£££A neon-pink Korean pub format dropped into Chinatown - you grill at the table and the room is built for a night rather than a meal.
Pyro
£££Yiannis Mexis' first restaurant, built around an open fire - potato pittas with smoked aubergine and spiced feta before anything else.
Ranoush Juice
£Rough, quick and mostly takeaway - the shawarma queue out of the door late on a weekend is an Edgware Road fixture in its own right.
River Café
££££Michelin-starred simplicity on the Thames, where Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall both trained. The terrace tables are the ones everyone wants.
Informal in atmosphere, upmarket in cooking; the riverside seats book furthest ahead.
Roka
££££The robata grill sits in the middle of the room and everything comes off it - open since 2003 and still the reference point for the format in London.
Rovi
£££The Ottolenghi group's fermentation-and-fire room, where vegetables go on the grill and get the treatment meat usually gets.
Sabor
££££Nieves Barragán Mohacho cooks her mother's Basque and Galician repertoire downstairs and roasts suckling pig in a wood oven upstairs.
Sagardi
£££The third proper asador in London and the easiest to get into - txuleton from old free-range cows over a charcoal grill in the middle of the room.
Salloos
£££A long-running family-run Knightsbridge room doing Pakistani cooking with tablecloths - almost the only one of its kind in London.
Smoking Goat
£££Thai drinking food and live-fire cooking in a room that behaves like a bar - the sibling to Kiln and just as loud.
Sorabol
£££Twenty years on New Malden high street, where the owner will still tell you the right ratio of lettuce, garlic, leek and kimchi to build a wrap.
Spice Village
££A large, bright Tooting room built for families and big tables rather than for atmosphere.
St John
£££Fergus Henderson's whole-animal cooking, open since 1994 and still the argument that longevity is a restaurant's best credential.
Sticks'n'Sushi
£££A Danish-Japanese format that puts sushi and skewers on the same menu - reliable rather than remarkable, and useful when a table cannot agree.
Sucre
£££A Soho basement lit by cut-glass chandeliers, over an open fire kitchen.
One source calls it impressive but just subdued enough not to feel gimmicky, which is the distinction this whole list turns on.
Tamarind
££££The first Indian restaurant in the world to win a Michelin star, and still a Mayfair basement doing tandoor cooking at that level.
Tasty Jerk
£Four steel drums behind the counter smoking jerk chicken and pork belly - takeaway only, and worth the journey south for it.
Takeaway only. There is nowhere to sit.
Tattu
£££A Joyce Wang Studio room built as a Chinese courtyard, around a full-size cherry blossom tree.
The only venue here named by two editorial sources and no blog, which is unusual in this corpus.
Tavern
£££The Restaurant St Barts team took over the old Nest site and brought part of their own kitchen brigade with them.
Tayyabs
££The sizzling lamb chops arrive still spitting and are the reason the queue forms - a Whitechapel institution since the 1970s that has never needed to change.
BYOB, no bookings for small groups at peak, and loud. The queue is the system.
Teal by Sally Abé
££££Sally Abé's first solo restaurant, named after the game bird rather than the colour - British ingredients, British food history, and a stated commitment to the people who supply it.
The Barbary
£££A horseshoe counter wrapped around an open grill in Neal's Yard, seating about twenty - you watch every plate being made.
The Bull
££A Highgate pub with its own brewery attached.
The Bull & Last
££A Highgate Road pub on the edge of Hampstead Heath, 39th in the UK gastropub rankings.
NOT the same pub as The Bull, which is also in Highgate and also on this list. Different sites, different owners - keep the two rows distinct.
The Camberwell Arms
££Time Out's top-ranked London gastropub, with roast portions generous enough to be the point.
The Cow
££The sit-down alternative to the Westfield food court, with a terrace - which in Stratford is a genuinely short list.
The Devonshire
££Crowned the UK's number one gastropub in the 2026 Top 50, barely two years after opening. The Guinness pour is the reason half the queue is there.
Charlie Carroll, Ashley Palmer-Watts and Oisin Rogers - the same team behind the Crisp relaunch at The Marlborough. Expect to queue.
The Dickens Inn
££An early-1700s warehouse moved bodily across the dock and re-erected as a pub, opened in 1976 by Charles Dickens's great-grandson. The three-storey timber balconies over the marina are the reason to come rather than the food.
Sit outside on the lower deck for the marina view - the upper balconies are pretty from below but further from the water.
The Dover
£££Italian-American cooking on Dover Street, in the mould of a New York supper club.
AMBIGUOUS SOURCE: clustered from a heading that may belong to a neighbouring Dover Street venue. Confirm the identity before publishing.
The Eagle
££The pub that invented the gastropub in 1991 - an open kitchen behind the bar and a menu chalked up daily, which every pub in Britain then copied.
The Fox & Pheasant
££An 1846 back-street Chelsea pub bought by James Blunt and his wife Sofia in 2017 and restored rather than reinvented - two small bars, a garden, and pub cooking done properly.
Hidden on a residential street behind the Fulham Road, which is most of the appeal. The Sunday roast is the meal to come for.
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.
The Golden Tooth
££A Newington Green pub kitchen that both Time Out and The Infatuation put on their roast lists.
The Guinea Grill
££££Grilling dry-aged grass-fed English beef in a Mayfair mews since 1952, and still doing the steak and kidney pie that wins pie awards.
The Gun
£££A Grade II listed early nineteenth-century pub on the Thames at Coldharbour, looking across at the O2 - a genuine old building in an area that has almost none left.
The Harwood Arms
£££London's only Michelin-starred pub, and the venison comes from the owners' own stalking.
The Knave of Clubs
££A Bethnal Green Road pub that reached 43rd in the UK gastropub rankings soon after opening.
The Ledbury
££££Brett Graham reopened in 2022 with a tighter focus on British sourcing, and took a third Michelin star.
The Mantl
££££Turkish cooking taken to Knightsbridge prices, themed around a family hearth - tradition and innovation on the same plate.
The Marksman
££Downstairs is a proper pub; upstairs is the dining room that won Michelin's Pub of the Year.
The Parakeet
££A Kentish Town pub rebuilt around an open fire, and one of the most talked-about openings of recent years.
The Pelican
££Named London's best pub by the Good Food Guide and seventh in the UK - the highest-ranked London entry on that list.
The Prospect of Whitby
££London's oldest riverside pub, trading since around 1520 - first as The Pelican, then the Devil's Tavern. The 400-year-old stone floor is still there.
Come for the building and the river, not the cooking. The Thames-facing terrace is the reason to time a visit for daylight.
The Quality Chop House
£££The 1869 room is Grade II listed and the wooden booths are deliberately uncomfortable - it was built as a working man's dining hall and never refitted.
The Red Lion & Sun
££20th in Time Out's 2026 UK gastropub ranking, and the roast Oisin Rogers of The Devonshire sends people to.
The Spaniards Inn
££Serving since 1585, on the edge of Hampstead Heath by the old toll house. Grade II listed, low beams, and a garden that fills the moment the sun appears.
Pairs naturally with a Heath walk. The toll house makes the lane a single-track pinch point - walk rather than drive.
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.
The Tamil Prince
££A Victorian pub with a Tamil kitchen behind it - the format London does better than anywhere.
The Trafalgar Tavern
££A Regency riverside tavern beside the Old Royal Naval College, historically famous for its whitebait dinners.
Sits directly on the Thames path between the Cutty Sark and the Naval College, so it fits into a Greenwich walk without a detour.
The Waterman's Arms
££A Barnes riverside pub, picked out for the setting as much as the roast.
Tokyo Sukiyaki-Tei
£££A wagyu specialist doing sukiyaki and shabu-shabu - hotpot cooked at the table, which almost nowhere else in London offers properly.
Trullo
£££Tim Siadatan (ex St John, Moro) cooking a frequently changing seasonal menu of hand-made pasta and charcoal-grilled meats.
Highbury trattoria, long regarded as one of London's best neighbourhood Italians.
Tsiakkos & Charcoal
££A Maida Vale back-street Cypriot grill that has not changed in decades and has no intention of doing so.
Vesper
£££Jackson Boxer on Exmouth Market with cold martinis and British comfort food - the 240g beef burger is limited and has been known to sell out in seconds.
The burger is capped daily and goes almost immediately after service opens.
Viet Grill
££The smarter end of Kingsland Road, from the Cây Tre group, with a wine list someone has actually thought about.
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
££Rebuilt in 1667 immediately after the Great Fire, down a Fleet Street alley, across warrens of dark panelled rooms and cellars.
Easy to walk past - the entrance is an unmarked alley off Fleet Street. Multiple floors including cellar bars.
Zelman Meats
£££Sliced picanha and sharing cuts at prices well below the Mayfair steakhouses, from the Goodman group.
Zuma
££££Opened in 2002 and effectively invented the London template for informal, izakaya-inspired Japanese dining - since exported to 27 sites across four continents.
If everything else is full
Reliable rather than remarkable. These are chains — worth knowing about when you need somewhere open, not worth a journey.
All Star Lanes
££Fried chicken and mac and cheese inside a bowling alley - not a food destination, but the answer when the table includes teenagers.
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.