The best seasonal in London
86 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.
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.
Akub
££££Fadi Kattan opened Fawda in Bethlehem before bringing Palestinian cooking to a Notting Hill townhouse - the first London kitchen to treat it as a fine-dining cuisine.
Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester
££££Classical French haute cuisine at three stars, including the Table Lumiere - a private table for six ringed by a curtain of fibre optics, and the single most requested seat in Mayfair.
Inside The Dorchester on Park Lane. Ask about the Table Lumiere specifically when booking; it is not offered by default.
All Roads
£££A Brixton residency that took a permanent site in May 2026, with a menu drawn from the founders' own heritage and travels.
Anchor & Hope
££On The Cut by the Young Vic, long-running, and rarely bookable - it holds most of the room back for walk-ins, which is why the queue starts early.
AngloThai
££££Thai cooking built on British seasonal produce rather than imported substitutes - the idea is in the name and it earned a Michelin star.
Aqua Shard
££££Floor-to-ceiling glass on the 31st floor of the Shard, with the atrium running up three storeys above the dining room.
Barge East
£££A 1985 Dutch barge sailed over and permanently moored on the River Lea, with a garden alongside it and the Olympic Park skyline behind.
Berners Tavern
££££A vast Edwardian ballroom with every inch of wall covered in framed pictures - probably the most photographed dining room in London.
Bob Bob Ricard
££££Booth-only, art deco throughout, and a Press for Champagne button at every table - the gimmick that launched a thousand photographs.
Bonheur by Matt Abé
££££Matt Abé left Restaurant Gordon Ramsay to open his first solo room, and it took two Michelin stars within three months - about as fast as that has happened in London.
Bouchon Racine
££££Henry Harris cooking unapologetic French bourgeois food above a Farringdon pub - and named the best restaurant in the UK at the 2026 National Restaurant Awards.
Brasserie of Light
££££A crystal-encrusted Damien Hirst pegasus hangs over the room inside Selfridges - subtlety is not the objective.
Brawn
£££One of the rooms that brought natural wine to London, on Columbia Road, and back in the Top 100 after more than a decade.
Brooklands
££££Claude Bosi cooking on the roof of the Peninsula, in a room themed on British motor racing and aviation, looking over Hyde Park Corner.
Calong
£££Chef-owner Joo Won runs a blackboard menu that puts subtle Korean seasoning through European cooking - a bistro rather than a small-plates repeat.
Camille
£££A small Borough bistro doing offal, terrines and the unfashionable half of the French repertoire properly.
Casse-Croûte
£££Three dishes per course chalked on a board, a room the size of a front parlour, and no concession to anything but France.
Chez Bruce
££££A Michelin star overlooking Wandsworth Common rather than a west end street - the definitive London argument that fine dining does not need a postcode.
Clio
£££A 2026 opening on Chiltern Street, and the newest of the Marylebone Greek rooms.
Da Terra
££££Two stars inside a converted Bethnal Green town hall - Brazilian and Italian threads running through a fixed menu.
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.
Dorian
££££A Notting Hill butcher's shop turned bistro where the beef and the wine list are doing the talking.
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.
Frog by Adam Handling
££££A Michelin-starred tasting menu built around zero waste - trimmings from one course become the next, and it is stated rather than hidden.
Gauthier Soho
££££Alexis Gauthier turned a classical French restaurant entirely vegan in 2021 - the same townhouse dining room, the same technique, no animal products at all. Very few kitchens at this level have made that switch.
Across several floors of a Soho townhouse, which makes it feel like eating in a private house. Tasting menus are the format.
Hélène Darroze at The Connaught
££££Three stars for cooking rooted in Darroze's native Landes, in south-west France - a regional French kitchen at the very top end, which London has almost none of.
Third star awarded in 2021. Inside The Connaught, so the room is the hotel's rather than a restaurant's own.
Holy Carrot
£££Plant-based cooking that also drops refined sugar and gluten, and eats like none of those are missing.
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.
Ikoyi
££££Two Michelin stars and a menu that uses West African pantry ingredients - grains, peppers, fermentation - without presenting itself as a heritage restaurant.
Julie's
££££A warren of small rooms and alcoves in Holland Park, named by Prix Versailles among the most beautiful restaurants in the world after its relaunch.
Kitchen Table
££££Two Michelin stars cooked at a horseshoe counter with no menu given out in advance - you are told each course as it is put in front of you.
Kol
££££Santiago Lastra cooks Mexican technique using British ingredients - no imported produce, which is the constraint the whole menu is built on.
La Poule au Pot
££££Trading since the 1960s on coq au vin, beef bourguignon and candlelight - the most reliably romantic dining room in London by some distance.
Les 2 Garçons
£££A Crouch End neighbourhood bistro that would pass without comment in Lyon and stands out considerably in north London.
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.
Mazi
£££Notting Hill Greek that treats the classics as a starting point rather than a checklist, with a garden at the back.
Mour
£££All-day Mediterranean in Marylebone with a martini bar and a courtyard most people walking past would never know is there.
Naïfs
£££A seasonal vegan set menu on a quiet Peckham street, listed in the Michelin Guide - rare for an entirely vegan kitchen.
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.
One Club Row
£££Hidden up a staircase above a busy Shoreditch pub - pork schnitzel with gorgonzola and mustard, and a rice pudding creme brulee to finish.
OPSO
£££Greek small plates reworked with restaurant technique - the room most responsible for London taking modern Greek cooking seriously.
Ornella
£££Milanese cooking on Wilton Way from the team behind Roman-influenced Lupa in Highbury - a butter-yellow corner site done simply.
Otto's
££££Canard à la presse carved and pressed at the table - one of the last places in London performing classical French service as theatre.
OXO Tower Restaurant
££££A long terrace on the eighth floor looking straight across the Thames at St Paul's - the classic London river view, and it has been that for thirty years.
Paulette
£££A Maida Vale bistro doing short, seasonal French menus for a neighbourhood not overrun with them.
Peninsula Restaurant
££££Floor-to-ceiling glass looking straight across the river at the Canary Wharf towers - the best dining-room view in southeast London and Michelin-recognised.
Perilla
£££A Newington Green room that has quietly been one of the best neighbourhood restaurants in London for years, and is back in the Top 100.
Petersham Nurseries
££££Lunch inside a working plant nursery, under glass and surrounded by what is for sale - the setting is the entire proposition and nothing in London repeats it.
Lunch-led. The Richmond site and the Covent Garden one are different propositions - check which you are booking.
Pique-Nique
£££The Casse-Croûte team in a former park pavilion in Bermondsey, built around rotisserie chicken and a short set menu.
Planque
£££Built around a members' wine cellar you can drink from - the food follows the bottle rather than the other way round.
Plates
££££The first fully vegan restaurant in Britain to win a Michelin star, awarded in 2025. Kirk Haworth cooks a tasting menu that treats vegetables with fine-dining technique rather than as a substitution exercise.
Run by Kirk Haworth with his sister Keeley. One open kitchen, floor-to-ceiling windows, polished concrete. Tables are released in batches and go quickly - this is the hardest vegan booking in the country.
Restaurant Gordon Ramsay
££££Three Michelin stars held continuously since 2001, which makes it the longest-running three-star restaurant in London. A small Chelsea dining room rather than a grand one - the reputation is entirely the cooking.
Opened 1998, third star in 2001, and it has never lost it. Bookings open well ahead and go; the lunch menu is the cheapest way in. A quiet room rather than a scene.
Roe
£££Roe by Fallow at Wood Wharf, and the roast here is creator-backed rather than critic-backed - two video reviewers, no masthead.
Rosina
££££Adam Byatt spent two decades building a modern British reputation and then opened an Italian restaurant on the corner of Wandsworth Common.
Row on 5
££££Jason Atherton's flagship, named for the 'refinement of work' - Spencer Metzger cooks British produce with a French hand, down to turbot with its own liver in the sauce.
Sessions Arts Club
££££A crumbling former courthouse left deliberately unrestored - peeling plaster, enormous windows, and no attempt to make it look finished.
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.
Spring
££££Skye Gyngell's dining room in the New Wing of Somerset House - a nineteenth-century drawing room in blonde wood and blush, under a porcelain petal installation by Valeria Nascimento.
One of the few rooms on this list where the cooking is cited as often as the setting.
Tavern
£££The Restaurant St Barts team took over the old Nest site and brought part of their own kitchen brigade with them.
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.
Tendril
£££Vegetable-led cooking a minute off Regent Street that behaves like a neighbourhood restaurant, with real technical skill on texture.
The Baring
££Seventeenth in the country in the 2026 Estrella Damm Top 50, and in The Infatuation's description more sit-down restaurant than pub you can drink in.
The Clarence Tavern
££A Stoke Newington gastropub that The Infatuation rates equally for a slap-up meal and for a few pints and a nibble, which is rarer than it sounds.
The Cocochine
££££Larry Jayasekara cooking inside a Mayfair townhouse owned by the gallerist behind Hamiltons - the art on the walls is the collection, not decoration.
The Cow
££The sit-down alternative to the Westfield food court, with a terrace - which in Stratford is a genuinely short list.
The Drapers Arms
££A Barnsbury pub carried by both the extended gastropub ranking and The Infatuation, and the easiest table in Islington on a Sunday.
The Dysart
££££A Michelin star at the gates of Richmond Park, in an Arts and Crafts building, on a menu that changes with what Kenneth Culhane can actually get.
The French House
£££The Soho pub that was the Free French headquarters in the war, with a small dining room above it and beer served only in halves downstairs.
The Gate
£££Opened in 1989 in a former artists' studio and still the most serious vegetarian cooking in west London - Indo-Iraqi-Jewish influences from the founding brothers rather than a generic meat-free menu.
Hammersmith is the flagship, in a high-ceilinged studio space. Also in Islington (370 St John Street) and Marylebone. Long-standing enough that it predates almost everything else on this list.
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 Hero of Maida
££Twenty-fourth in the country in the 2026 Estrella Damm Top 50, and named by no London roast list at all - a ranked pub the guides have missed.
The Holly Bush
££A 1807 pub up an alley off Heath Street with panelled rooms, open fires and no through traffic - the most convincing surviving village pub in London.
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 Kerfield Arms
££Twenty-fifth in the country in the 2026 Estrella Damm Top 50 - the higher-ranked Camberwell pub, and the less famous one.
The Turk's Head
££A neighbourhood bistro running French classics at prices that have not followed the postcode.
The Victory
£££Franklins on Lordship Lane relaunched under its original name, with British ingredient-led cooking pushed through a modern French bistro lens.
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 Wells Tavern
£££The village's proper sit-down dinner pub, halfway between Hampstead and the Heath, and the one locals book for a occasion rather than a pint.
Tokyo Sukiyaki-Tei
£££A wagyu specialist doing sukiyaki and shabu-shabu - hotpot cooked at the table, which almost nowhere else in London offers properly.
Trinity
££££Clapham Old Town's Michelin star, with a more relaxed room upstairs - the same kitchen at two different prices.
Umu
££££Kaiseki in the Kyoto tradition - a fixed seasonal progression rather than a sushi counter, which makes it the odd one out among Mayfair's Japanese rooms.
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.
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.