The best small plates in London
154 places
40 Maltby Street
££A natural-wine importer's arch serving food off a blackboard - the original of the Bermondsey arch format everyone else copied.
Small, largely no-bookings, and closed more days than it opens. Check before travelling.
Akara
£££Named after the black-eyed bean fritter it is built around, from the Chishuru team - the casual counterpart to the starred room.
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.
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.
All Roads
£££A Brixton residency that took a permanent site in May 2026, with a menu drawn from the founders' own heritage and travels.
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.
Angelina
£££A £74 kondate set menu that runs Japanese ingredients through Italian dishes - shokupan with robiola and umeboshi, wild boar cappellacci with kabocha and furikake.
AUN
£££A small independent in Stoke Newington working to wakon yosai - Japanese spirit, Western technique - as a tasting menu rather than a sushi counter.
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.
Bar Crispin
£££A low-intervention list with food good enough that people book it as dinner rather than as drinks.
Bar Douro
££A narrow Portuguese counter lined in hand-painted azulejo tiles, under a slatted, shack-like ceiling.
The cheapest room on this list by some distance, and the only one whose look comes from tilework rather than money.
Bar Kroketa
££Built around the croqueta and not much else - a single-dish bar, done properly.
Barrafina Dean Street
£££Counter only and a Michelin star - no tables, you sit where you are put, and the plancha is a foot away. Bookable, despite the reputation for queues.
Walk-in only. The queue is shortest at opening and after 2pm.
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.
Belly Bistro
£££Part French bistro, part Filipino kitchen - the fish sauce profiteroles with salted caramel are the dish that explains the whole place.
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.
Bertie Blossoms
££Ed Sheeran's pub, opened with his manager Stuart Camp. Small plates, wine and cocktails rather than anything themed - the ownership is the only way you would know.
Refurbished and reopened March 2025. Deliberately low-key: no memorabilia, and no reason to expect a sighting.
Berut Bistro
££A small comfortable Lebanese room on Paddington Street - the neighbourhood version rather than the Edgware Road spectacle.
Bocca di Lupo
£££Regional cooking from across the whole of Italy, served trattoria-style in a buzzy Soho room. Counter seats face the kitchen.
Dishes labelled by region; small and large plate sizes of everything.
Bon Vino
££Neighbourhood Italian near London Bridge, picked out by TOPJAW alongside Flour & Grape.
Bonoo Indian Tapas
££Indian small plates built on street food but cooked with British seasonal produce, and the one Hampstead room the local guides consistently put first.
Bottarga
£££The Pachamama group's second Greek restaurant, a small, dark room on the King's Road with a covered, heated terrace: raw yellowtail, a whole grilled sea bass, crisp lamb belly.
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.
Bubala
£££Entirely vegetarian and almost never described that way - the point is that nobody at the table notices what is missing.
Burro
££Named by both The Infatuation and Time Out, and one of the few Italian openings to reach two independent guides quickly.
Café Deco
££A short daily-changing menu on Store Street, out of the Rochelle Canteen and Quality Chop House lineage.
Café Murano
££Angela Hartnett's everyday counterpart to Murano - the same kitchen thinking at a third of the price.
Sites in Covent Garden and St James's. The pasta is made fresh at least twice a day.
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.
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.
Champagne + Fromage
£££French cheese, charcuterie and grower champagne by the glass - a small chain, but the Greenwich site sits right by the market.
Chinese Tapas House
££Northern Chinese cooking served as small plates, which is a rarer format here than the Cantonese banquet.
Chisou
£££Open since 2002 and seconds from Oxford Circus - the most central serious Japanese room in London, which is most of the point of it.
Chuku's
££Nigerian food served as tapas by a brother-and-sister team - the format is the idea, and it makes an unfamiliar menu easy to order from.
Clio
£££A 2026 opening on Chiltern Street, and the newest of the Marylebone Greek rooms.
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.
Como Garden
£££Interiors modelled on the gardens of Lake Como, with handmade pasta and small sharing plates.
Copita
£££A narrow Soho bar built for standing, small plates and sherry by the copita it is named after.
Dalla
££One of the Hackney rooms driving the current wave of London Italian cooking away from the centre.
Dehesa
£££A corner site off Carnaby Street running Spanish and Italian small plates side by side, which is rarer than it sounds.
Dinings SW3
££££The most-cited Japanese room in London across these sources - izakaya-scale plates done at sushi-counter precision, with a courtyard.
Diogenes the Dog
£££A small Elephant and Castle wine bar run by a master sommelier, which is not a sentence you get to write often.
Donia
£££Filipino sharing plates in Kingly Court with a European wine list behind them - the first Filipino room in London to take a Bib Gourmand.
Elliot's
£££A Borough Market wine bar that is not trying to be a pizzeria and still turns out one of the pizzas people cross London for.
Filed under pizza because that is what the pizza lists name it for; the menu is a small-plates and wine list first. Do not send someone here expecting a pizzeria.
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.
Escocesa
£££Scottish seafood cooked the Spanish way in Stoke Newington - the name is the whole idea.
Fairuz
£££A long-running Marylebone Lebanese where the mezze arrives in waves and nobody is rushed out.
Farang
£££A north London room doing modern Thai with none of the timidity that usually comes with a neighbourhood address.
Fatt Pundit
££Kolkata's Hakka Chinese cooking - kid goat momos, crackling spinach, Kolkata chilli duck and lamb chops in black bean dust. A second site on Maiden Lane in Covent Garden.
Fenix
£££The London branch of a Manchester restaurant, opened in March 2026 under chandeliers on Piccadilly: Athenian tartare, langoustine orzo, wagyu stifado.
Forza Wine
£££A terrace on top of the National Theatre looking straight up the Thames - the best free view attached to a wine list in London.
Hakata Ramen + Bar
££Named for the Fukuoka district the style comes from, doing Kyushu tonkotsu on Bermondsey Street with enough room to actually sit down.
Hera
£££A big room of chandeliers, greenery and plush booths on the far side of Stratford Cross, where chef Mario Salimis cooks Greek classics with modern twists.
Himi
£££The first solo restaurant from the team behind Roji, opened in January 2025 on Newburgh Street.
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.
Hummus Bar
££Modelled on the hummus places of Tel Aviv, where a bowl of hummus is lunch rather than a side - the toppings list runs from oriental beef to sloppy joe.
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.
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.
Italian Greyhound
£££From the Open House Group founders; local-trattoria spirit in a more polished contemporary room.
Ixchel
£££A Chelsea room that leans as hard on mezcal and the bar as on the kitchen.
Joia
££££Portuguese cooking fourteen floors up beside the Power Station, and one of very few serious Portuguese kitchens in London.
José
£££José Pizarro's standing-room sherry bar on Bermondsey Street - a handful of stools, a lot of jamón, and no way to book.
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.
Kima
££££Whole fish and Greek seafood cooking treated at fine-dining level, which almost nothing else in London does.
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.
Kricket
££Started in a Brixton shipping container and grew into several sites, doing Indian cooking as small plates rather than curries.
Krokodilos
£££A large bronze, peach and gold room from the group behind Wild Tavern, cooked by Angelos Togias, formerly of The Connaught; the wild goat is cooked for 14 hours and served for two.
Lagana
££Paper tablecloths, crayons on every table and flatbreads coming out of the oven non-stop, on the old Pachamama East site.
Legado
££££Nieves Barragán Mohacho's second restaurant after Sabor, cooking regional Spanish food rarely seen this side of the Pyrenees - and it took a Michelin star within two years.
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.
Los Mochis Notting Hill
££££Sashimi and maki on the same menu as ceviche, tiradito and tacos - the pairing sounds like a gimmick and is served like neither cuisine is being humoured.
Luca
£££Italian cooking through British produce, from the Clove Club team.
Mallow
££The Mildreds kitchen given a lighter, more seasonal brief, in a restored townhouse covered in floral murals at the edge of Borough Market.
Mambow
£££Abby Lee named it for her mother's bowls and cooks Malaysian food through an open kitchen, against low-intervention wine.
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.
Maramia Cafe
££Serving Palestinian and Arabic home cooking in west London since 2005, long before anyone was writing guides to it.
Maresco
£££Spanish technique applied to Scottish seafood, on a daily specials board that changes with what lands.
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.
Maza
££££Greek mezze at Mayfair scale, from the OPSO team.
Mazi
£££Notting Hill Greek that treats the classics as a starting point rather than a checklist, with a garden at the back.
Meraki
£££A large Fitzrovia room from the Roka and Zuma group, doing Greek at that group's usual volume.
Mercato Metropolitano
£Italian-founded food hall with more than forty traders, heavy on pizza, fresh pasta, arancini and fritto misto.
A venue, not a restaurant - the traders inside change. Six minutes from both Elephant & Castle and Borough.
Mercato Metropolitano
£Italian-founded food hall with more than forty traders, heavy on pizza, fresh pasta, arancini and fritto misto.
A venue, not a restaurant - the traders inside change. Six minutes from both Elephant & Castle and Borough.
Mercato Metropolitano
£Italian-founded food hall with more than forty traders, heavy on pizza, fresh pasta, arancini and fritto misto.
A venue, not a restaurant - the traders inside change. Six minutes from both Elephant & Castle and Borough.
Meza
££A tiny Tooting room where the mezze arrives faster than the table can clear it, at prices that explain the permanent queue.
Miga
£££A family-run kitchen that moved from New Malden to Hackney in 2024 and was named Time Out's best restaurant in London - the yughwe beef tartare with crisp Asian pear is the dish everyone writes about.
Mildreds
££Open on Lexington Street since 1988, which makes it the restaurant that made vegetarian food in London normal rather than worthy. Globally drawn menu, and it went fully vegan without losing the crowd.
Sites in Soho, Camden, Covent Garden, King's Cross and Victoria. Soho is the original and the one worth going out of your way for. It does not take bookings at every site - check before travelling.
Morito
££The small, loud offshoot of Moro next door - a dozen seats at the counter and a menu that changes constantly.
Motorino
£££Luke Ahearne and Stevie Parle call it London-Italian rather than Italian - the distinction is the point, and the cooking earns it.
Mour
£££All-day Mediterranean in Marylebone with a martini bar and a courtyard most people walking past would never know is there.
Mr Bao
££Gua bao and Taiwanese small plates in Peckham, at a price that makes it a regular rather than a trip.
Mucci's
££Every starter is £10 and every main £20 - one of the first London restaurants to build its whole menu around fixed pricing by course, rather than a time-limited offer.
Owner Giuseppe Mucci introduced the 10/20 pricing so regulars could order without watching the bill. Menu runs from cicchetti through pasta and pizza to steak and fish. Terrace seats around 50. At the World's End end of King's Road, a long walk from any tube - the King's Road buses are the practical way in.
Myrtos
£££Asimakis Chaniotis left Pied à Terre after 13 years to open this bright room built around an olive tree, with a fish counter. Lunch is two courses for £25.
Nobu Old Park Lane
££££The original London Nobu, and the room that put miso black cod on menus worldwide. Co-founded by Nobu Matsuhisa with Robert De Niro, which makes it the celebrity-owned restaurant in London that is actually about the food.
Nobu Portman Square
££££The newer of the two London Nobus and the calmer one - a hotel dining room rather than the Old Park Lane scene.
Norma
£££Sicilian cooking with the Moorish influence kept in, across four floors of a Fitzrovia townhouse.
Oma
££££Upstairs from its own more casual sibling at Borough Market, cooking Greek food over fire at serious prices and justifying them.
OPSO
£££Greek small plates reworked with restaurant technique - the room most responsible for London taking modern Greek cooking seriously.
Osteria Angelina
£££Itameshi - Italian cooking through a Japanese lens - with eight fresh pastas made in a glass-walled corner of the dining room.
Sister to Angelina in Dalston, but a different format: Dalston runs a set kaiseki tasting menu, Spitalfields is a la carte and faster. Executive chef Usman Haider oversees both.
Osteria Vibrato
£££A compact Soho osteria from Charlie Mellor with a 300-bin list of natural and biodynamic wine - Italian at its backbone, French alongside it.
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.
Pahli Hill Bandra Bhai
£££Named for the Bandra hill district of Bombay, with a basement bar that runs later than the dining room above it.
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.
Parrillan
£££You get your own small charcoal grill at the table and cook the skewers yourself - a format nothing else in London offers.
Peckham Bazaar
£££Chef John Gionleka cooks across the Balkans over charcoal, Greek dishes to the fore; the courgette fritters and grilled octopus have been on the menu since day one.
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.
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.
Pizarro
£££The sit-down sibling to José a few doors up - same chef, tables instead of stools, and you can book.
Planque
£££Built around a members' wine cellar you can drink from - the food follows the bottle rather than the other way round.
Popolo
££A narrow Rivington Street room doing Italian and North African small plates from an open counter.
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.
Pyro
£££Yiannis Mexis' first restaurant, built around an open fire - potato pittas with smoked aubergine and spiced feta before anything else.
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.
Sager + Wilde
£££One of the rooms that made Hackney Road a wine destination, with a list that runs from cheap and interesting to seriously old.
Sagye
£££Korean cooking on the Isle of Dogs rather than in the Wharf itself - kimchi jjigae portioned out between bowls for a big table, a mile south of the office towers and all the better for it.
Salt Yard
£££One of the rooms that started London's small-plates habit, still doing courgette flowers stuffed with goat's cheese and honey.
Santo Remedio
£££Edson and Natalie Diaz-Fuentes cook the dishes most London Mexicans skip - mole negro, soft shell crab tacos, and guacamole topped with grasshopper.
Sessions Arts Club
££££A crumbling former courthouse left deliberately unrestored - peeling plaster, enormous windows, and no attempt to make it look finished.
Shan Shui Social
£££Cantonese and Sichuan cooking in a room styled on 1920s Shanghai, a minute from Victoria station - from Ellen Chew's Chew on This group.
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.
Sohaila
£££Lebanese sharing plates against a hundred-plus natural wine list - and it is run by Fat Macy's, a social enterprise that helps Londoners move out of hostels into their own homes.
Speedboat Bar
£££Built to feel like a late-night Bangkok Chinatown canteen, with pool tables, and curries good enough that it was ranked the fourth best restaurant in London.
SUSHISAMBA
££££An orange tree growing through an open-air terrace on the 39th floor - the highest outdoor dining in the City, with the lift ride as part of the experience.
SUSHISAMBA
££££An orange tree growing through an open-air terrace on the 39th floor - the highest outdoor dining in the City, with the lift ride as part of the experience.
Suzi Tros
£££Mazi's sister two doors along, opened in 2019, with a menu that looks to Thessaloniki and northern Greece: smoked aubergine with red pepper cream, Grandmama's meatballs.
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.
Tangra
££All-vegetarian Indo-Chinese from the Kolkata tradition - Hakka noodles, gobi 65, Manchurian kofta - open until midnight Thursday to Saturday.
Tattu London
££££Contemporary Cantonese served under a cherry blossom canopy on the sixth floor of the Outernet, laid out as four rooms around an inner courtyard.
The Cherry Blossom dessert - a handmade chocolate tree that fogs when water is poured around it - is what most people book for. Sharing menu around 125 pounds a head.
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 Aubrey
££££A maximalist take on a Ginza night out inside the Mandarin Oriental - closer to a bar with exceptional food than a hotel dining room.
The Barbary
£££A horseshoe counter wrapped around an open grill in Neal's Yard, seating about twenty - you watch every plate being made.
The Begging Bowl
£££Jane Alty trained under David Thompson and cooks northern Thai in Peckham - small plates meant to be ordered across the table.
The Camberwell Arms
££Time Out's top-ranked London gastropub, with roast portions generous enough to be the point.
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 Knave of Clubs
££A Bethnal Green Road pub that reached 43rd in the UK gastropub rankings soon after opening.
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 Life Goddess
££Part deli, part taverna - you can buy the cheese you just ate, which is most of the appeal.
The Mantl
££££Turkish cooking taken to Knightsbridge prices, themed around a family hearth - tradition and innovation on the same plate.
The Palomar
£££The zinc counter, not the tables - sit at it and the cooking happens a foot from your plate, with the room loud enough to make it a night out.
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.
Tollington's
£££Ed McIlroy of Four Legs took over an old Finsbury Park chip shop and put a 25-dish Iberian small-plates menu in it, smoked eel omelette included.
Tsiakkos & Charcoal
££A Maida Vale back-street Cypriot grill that has not changed in decades and has no intention of doing so.
Vori
£££The only wine list in London built entirely on indigenous Greek varieties, in a Holland Park Avenue taverna with tables on the pavement.
Zephyr
£££From the Pachamama group, on Portobello Road - one of the most photographed rooms in west London, and the cooking holds up.
Zuma
££££Opened in 2002 and effectively invented the London template for informal, izakaya-inspired Japanese dining - since exported to 27 sites across four continents.
Zylia
£££A Greek-Cypriot taverna beside the Arcade food hall, opened in 2026 by Nick Molyviatis, who ran the kitchen at Kiln, and Barry Karacostas: whitewashed walls, framed lace doilies and an open charcoal grill.