The best street food in London
107 places
Addie's Thai
££Trading since 1987 and packed for more than three decades - Bangkok street food in a room that never needed to reinvent itself.
Agora
££Oma's ground floor, built around a rotisserie spit, with counter seats facing the grill. Skewers by the piece: pork souvlaki with oregano at £5, lamb adana with garlic yoghurt.
Akara
£££Named after the black-eyed bean fritter it is built around, from the Chishuru team - the casual counterpart to the starred room.
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.
Alhaji Suya
£Suya - beef skewered, spiced with yaji and grilled over charcoal - which almost nowhere in this half of London does properly.
Arcade Food Hall
££Less a food court than a set of proper kitchens under one roof - residents have included Plaza Khao Gaeng and Supa Ya Ramen rather than generic concessions.
Balady
££Hummus treated as a dish rather than a dip - served warm, in a bowl, as the meal itself.
Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall
£London's largest Asian food hall - more than twenty-five kiosks across Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese, built as the successor to the much-missed Oriental City that stood on this site.
Zone 4 on the Northern line, so it is a trip rather than a stop-off, and worth going hungry for. Cash-light but busy at weekends; the kiosks turn over quickly.
Banh Mi Kêu
£Bánh mì made to order rather than pre-wrapped, which is the whole difference.
BaoziInn
££Northern Chinese street food tidied up for London, in a room done out in Communist-era poster kitsch.
Beigel Bake
£Salt beef bagels around the clock on Brick Lane, sold through a hatch to a queue of people at every hour a person can be hungry.
Open 24 hours, every day. The queue at 3am is a genuine London sight.
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.
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.
BoxHall City
££BOXPARK's food-hall format (not containers this time) inside the 1912 Metropolitan Arcade - 14 kitchens and two bars across 800 seats, opened 2024/25.
BOXPARK Camden
£BOXPARK's food operation inside the rebuilt Buck Street Market, opened 2024 on the old Camden Market Hall site by the Tube station.
Three floors and about 60 independent food and retail traders, with two bars and a rooftop terrace. Open 10:00 daily; closes 23:00 Mon-Thu, 23:30 Fri-Sat and 21:00 Sun.
BOXPARK Croydon
£Over eighty independent food and drink traders two minutes from East Croydon station, with a 2,000-capacity events space - the first BOXPARK site south of the river.
BOXPARK Wembley
£Shipping containers stacked around a 20,000 sq ft events space on Wembley Way - built for match days and concerts at the stadium and arena next door.
Bread Ahead
£The creme brulee doughnut is blowtorched in front of you. It started as one Borough stall and is now a bakery school and a small chain.
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.
Bun House
£Steamed buns from a counter rather than a dining room, at a price that undercuts everything around it.
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.
Camden Market
£The largest concentration of cooked street food in London, canalside at Camden Lock - very little of it British, and that is rather the point.
Busiest at weekends. Weekday lunch is the same food without the crush.
Canteen Food Hall & Bar
££Part of Greenwich Peninsula's Design District, with a distinctive tree-canopy roof - close enough to the O2 to be a sensible stop before or after a show.
Chinatown Bakery
£Egg tarts and bolo bao made in the window on Newport Place - the queue is usually visible from the gate.
Club Mexicana
££Tacos, nachos and burritos built on jackfruit and vegan chicken, started as a market stall and now in Kingly Court - the rare vegan restaurant nobody eats at because it is vegan.
Also at Seven Dials Market and on Commercial Street in Spitalfields. Kingly Court is the sit-down one; the market sites are counters.
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.
Corner Corner
££Opened 2025 on the Canada Water regeneration site - a food hall, a working farm shop and a jazz club under one roof, the first real food destination this part of Southwark has had.
CRATE Walthamstow
£Local traders rather than national names - Mexican, Vietnamese, South Asian street food and Perky Blenders coffee - inside the 17&Central centre, with mini golf and a soft play area alongside.
Genuinely built for families: soft play, buggy parking and baby changing, which is rare in a food hall. Two minutes from Walthamstow Central.
Cutty Sark Street Food Market
£Weekend-only stalls in Cutty Sark Gardens, right by the ship and the river - paella, souvlaki, Korean corn dogs and pizza.
Friday to Sunday only. It does not trade midweek.
Dionysus
£A souvlaki house that began in the West End in the 1950s, closed there in 2009 and brought its sign to Southgate; the mixed souvlaki comes in Cypriot pitta.
Dishoom
££The Irani cafes of old Bombay recreated in careful detail, and the bacon naan roll that made it a breakfast destination as much as a dinner one.
Any party size can book before 6pm; after 6pm bookings are for groups of six or more only. Most tables are held back for walk-ins either way. Seven London branches; the Branches tab has six named.
Dishoom
££The Irani cafes of old Bombay recreated in careful detail, and the bacon naan roll that made it a breakfast destination as much as a dinner one.
Any party size can book before 6pm; after 6pm bookings are for groups of six or more only. Most tables are held back for walk-ins either way. Seven London branches; the Branches tab has six named.
Dishoom
££The Irani cafes of old Bombay recreated in careful detail, and the bacon naan roll that made it a breakfast destination as much as a dinner one.
Any party size can book before 6pm; after 6pm bookings are for groups of six or more only. Most tables are held back for walk-ins either way. Seven London branches; the Branches tab has six named.
Dishoom
££The Irani cafes of old Bombay recreated in careful detail, and the bacon naan roll that made it a breakfast destination as much as a dinner one.
Any party size can book before 6pm; after 6pm bookings are for groups of six or more only. Most tables are held back for walk-ins either way. Seven London branches; the Branches tab has six named.
Dishoom
££The Irani cafes of old Bombay recreated in careful detail, and the bacon naan roll that made it a breakfast destination as much as a dinner one.
Any party size can book before 6pm; after 6pm bookings are for groups of six or more only. Most tables are held back for walk-ins either way. Seven London branches; the Branches tab has six named.
Dishoom
££The Irani cafes of old Bombay recreated in careful detail, and the bacon naan roll that made it a breakfast destination as much as a dinner one.
Any party size can book before 6pm; after 6pm bookings are for groups of six or more only. Most tables are held back for walk-ins either way. Seven London branches; the Branches tab has six named.
Diwana Bhel Poori House
£Trading on Drummond Street since 1971 and the oldest of the Euston vegetarian Indian restaurants - dosas, bhel poori and an all-you-can-eat lunch thali that is among the cheapest proper meals in central London.
BRING YOUR OWN ALCOHOL - unlicensed, with no corkage. The lunchtime buffet is the value order. Pine benches and no decor to speak of; it has not changed in decades and that is the appeal.
Durak Tantuni
£Tantuni - finely chopped beef griddled and rolled in flatbread - which almost nowhere else in London serves.
Falafel & Shawarma
£Homemade falafel, hummus, chillies and salad in a flatbread, made to order in Camberwell.
Falafel Zaki Zaki
£A Palestinian-run stall doing generously filled wraps for the price of a coffee.
Flat Iron Square
££Seven railway arches between London Bridge and Southwark stations, food-led with live music, film nights and quizzes on top.
Furness Oyster Bar
£A stall rather than a restaurant, and both sources that name it say the same thing: it is the grab-and-go oyster fix at Borough Market.
Good Friend Chicken
£Taiwanese popcorn chicken fried to order in Chinatown - salt, pepper and fried basil, eaten standing up.
Goods Way
££A New Orleans-themed food and live-music hall a few minutes from the station - one of the few King's Cross food halls built around music as much as food.
Gopal's Corner
£Roti canai clapped and folded to order, served with mutton, chicken or dhal curry - from the founder of Soho's Roti King.
Green Valley
££Part supermarket, part counter, part patisserie - the Edgware Road institution people shop in and eat at in the same trip.
Greenwich Market
£A covered Georgian market where the food stalls rotate daily - Ethiopian, Persian, Indian, barbecue and churros within about thirty paces of each other.
Stall line-up changes day to day. Busiest at weekends; some traders are weekend-only.
Gujarati Rasoi
£Mother-and-son Gujarati cooking from family recipes - thalis, bhajia and dhal - at a market where almost everything else is European.
Hackney Bridge
££A canal-side food and drink hub on the edge of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, in Hackney Wick's old industrial buildings - kitchens, bars and studio space together.
Hawley Wharf
£The newer, purpose-built food courts inside Camden Market on the canal side - distinct from the older stalls, and the covered option when the rest of the market is a crush.
11:30am-11pm daily. Effectively part of Camden Market, but the food-hall element deserves its own row - it is a different experience from the outdoor stalls.
Hiba Express
£Family-run, generous and cheap - the lunch counter people in Holborn actually queue at rather than the one guidebooks send them to.
Hobbs Roast
£Roast pork with stuffing and apple sauce in a baguette, plus turkey and salt beef versions - a Sunday lunch reduced to something you can eat walking.
Hoppers
£££Hoppers, kothu and sambols from the JKS group - Sri Lankan and Tamil cooking that London had been filing under Indian for years.
Horn OK Please
£Samosa chaat built to order - the samosas crushed under chickpea curry, yoghurt and tamarind while still hot - from an all-vegetarian Borough Market stall.
Hoxton Beach Falafel
£A market stall that has been frying falafel to order for years, and is on more London falafel lists than most sit-down restaurants.
Hullabaloo
£A permanent fixture in Greenwich Market rather than a rotating stall, doing vegetarian and vegan Indian street food.
Jixiang Baozi
£A counter turning out baozi from bamboo steamers, sold to eat standing up rather than sat down.
Jurkish
££A Jamaican-Turkish kitchen inside the Effra Social pub - curry goat manti, oxtail pide, plantain hummus, and £10 lunch boxes on weekdays.
Kappacasein
£Bill Oglethorpe scrapes melted raclette straight off the wheel onto new potatoes, with cornichons and pickled onions. The queue is the landmark.
Market trading hours only. The queue is longest at Saturday lunch.
Kiez Kebab
££Berlin döner rather than London kebab - three options only, served in pide bread rather than wrapped, on Golborne Road.
Kolkati
£Kati rolls the Kolkata way - paratha cooked with egg through it, wrapped round spiced chicken or paneer with pickled onion and lime.
Kung Fu Burger
£Everything is built on a sourdough Chinese-style bun, drawing on street food from across East and South East Asia rather than one region.
Kung Fu Noodle
£Noodles pulled to order in the window - the cheapest proper cooked meal in Chinatown.
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.
Magic Falafel
£Entirely vegan, fried fresh to order from 100 per cent ground chickpeas - trading in Camden Market since 2013.
Maltby Street Market
££A run of railway arches off Bermondsey that started in 2009 as the scrappy alternative to Borough, and is now the main contender to it.
Weekends only - it is not a weekday destination.
Market Halls Canary Wharf
££Eight kitchens and two bars over two levels beside the water, with outdoor seating on the dock - a rare Canary Wharf option that is neither a chain nor an expense account.
Market Halls Oxford Street
££The largest of the four, in a former shopping centre off Oxford Street, with a games hall upstairs - the most useful non-chain lunch on the worst street in London to find one.
Market Halls Paddington
££The newest of the four, inside Paddington station - which makes it the one genuinely good option for a meal before a train to the west or the Heathrow Express.
Market Halls Victoria
££A converted ticket hall beside Victoria station - the most useful eating option in an area that is otherwise chains and commuters.
Market Place Food Hall Vauxhall
£Vauxhall's other new food hall alongside Metropolis - a different brand, a different building, and worth distinguishing between the two rather than treating Vauxhall as having just one.
Masala Zone
££Thalis and street-food plates at prices well below the Mayfair rooms, from the group behind Amaya and Chutney Mary.
Master Wei
££Hand-pulled biang biang noodles and Xi'an street food near Russell Square, from the team behind Xi'an Impression.
Mealtime Malatang
£Sliced lamb and beef, Chinese spam, tofu skin, potato, oyster mushrooms, kelp and greens, on a mala base that a Gansu food writer says is the only base worth having.
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.
Metropolis Vauxhall
££Independent kitchens and what is billed as the longest bar in south London, opened 2024 on Albert Embankment - live entertainment most nights on top of the food.
Mr Bao
££Gua bao and Taiwanese small plates in Peckham, at a price that makes it a regular rather than a trip.
Mr Falafel
£Palestinian falafel from a market stall in Shepherd's Bush, and the one name that appears on every falafel list in London.
Mr Wang Hot Pot
£Malatang rather than shared hot pot: take a basket from a chilled counter, load it with beef rolls, tripe, lotus root, fish balls and frozen tofu, and it is weighed, priced and cooked into one bowl for you.
Aim for 400 to 500 grams of ingredients per person - the rule of thumb published by Broadsheet. The milky beef bone broth is the one to have.
Murger Han
££Named after the murger - slow-cooked meat packed into a flatbread bun - and one of the cheapest serious lunches in the City if you know to order it.
Old Spitalfields Market
££A Victorian covered market on the City fringe where the food traders sit alongside the stalls, so lunch and browsing are the same trip.
Paneri Taverna
£Charcoal smoke, wicker chairs outside and regulars at the counter; the mix is a giant Cypriot pitta of salted pork souvlaki and sheftalia, with a dining room at the back for meze.
Pergola on the Wharf
££A greenhouse-like rooftop food hall on top of Crossrail Place, wrapped in plants - one of the more distinctive rooms among the Wharf's food halls rather than another basement.
Pilpel
£The City lunch falafel - fast, consistent and vegetarian by default across a handful of sites.
Pittagoras
£A gyros counter in Tooting Broadway Market run by the third generation of a Kefalonian restaurant family; the chicken gyros wrap comes with chips inside.
Polo Bar
££So committed to trading around the clock that it has no front door to close - a fry-up at any hour, beside Liverpool Street.
Open 24 hours. There is literally no front door.
Pot Pot Malatang
£A basket, a chilled counter and a set of scales, on the Newport Court side of Chinatown - the cheapest way into the format for one person.
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.
Rasa Sayang
££Hainanese chicken rice and char kway teow in Chinatown, at the volume and price of a hawker centre.
Richard Haward's Oysters
££Mersea oysters shucked in front of you by a family that has been farming them since the 1700s, with a few pavement tables and a glass of wine.
Seoul Matjib
££Tteokbokki with exactly the right chew, served without ceremony - the New Malden room people go to when they want feeding rather than impressing.
Seven Dials Market
££A former banana warehouse off Seven Dials, curated rather than sprawling - the most useful food hall in the centre if you are with people who all want something different.
Shree Krishna Vada Pav
£Vada pav - the Mumbai potato-fritter roll - done properly and cheaply, from a counter rather than a dining room.
Suvlaki
£Skewers threaded on site every day and cooked over charcoal on a robata grill, by two founders from Athens; wraps are £9.50 to £10.
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.
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.
The Eight
££A cha chaan teng - the Hong Kong cafe format, where condensed-milk toast and macaroni soup sit on the same menu as rice plates.
The Souvlaki
£Started on a stall in Kingston market by Valentinos Varelas and Sandy Tsagdi, who moved from Greece in 2014, and Just Eat's 2023 Greater London Takeaway of the Year.
Tongue & Brisket
£Home-cured salt beef carved to order into an £8 sandwich, from a deli that does almost nothing else.
Tony's Pita
£Opened in Swiss Cottage in 2018 by Tony Shyti, who learned to cook in Greek restaurants as a teenager, and named Best Greek Restaurant at the British Kebab Awards three years running.
Tower Bridge Collective
£Thirteen independent kitchens over two floors a minute from Tower Bridge, opened October 2025 - Korean, Thai, Palestinian, Ethiopian and Neapolitan pizza, with a play area and sandpit almost no other food hall bothers with.
Vinegar Yard
££A rotating street food lineup around a covered outdoor yard steps from London Bridge station - Flat Iron Square's sister site, with a weekend vintage market (Flea London) on top.
Largely outdoor and covered rather than heated - better in summer. Sits inside the same At London Bridge development as Flat Iron Square, a two-minute walk apart.
Xi'an Impression
££A small room opposite the Emirates doing the chewy, chilli-oil-heavy cooking of Shaanxi - the liangpi cold noodles are the reason people cross London for it.
No bookings, and the room is tiny - go off-peak or expect to wait.
Yangguofu Malatang
£Over a hundred things to put in the basket - sliced meat, fish, tofu, ramen noodles, mini youtiao - then a broth, condiments and a dipping sauce. The herbal beef bone broth is creamy, lightly spiced and not oily.
Opened in the old Wing Wing site in summer 2025. Part of a group with over 7,000 restaurants worldwide; the only other UK branch is in Hammersmith.
Zeit & Za'atar
££Za'atar manakish and vegetarian Levantine plates in Ealing, a long way from where the guides usually look.