8 Great London Restaurants to Try Now
By Travel + Leisure Staff
Eight singular neighborhoods, eight great “New British” haunts.
Islington: Smokehouse is a modern-day boozer that happens to serve charred leeks with duck eggs and a pork rib eye with pancetta and lardo—and blimey, what treasures on tap!
Shoreditch: Inside the Shoreditch town hall, the Clove Club (pictured; from rising star Isaac McHale) goes Noma-esque with small bites of locavore esoterica, such as gull’s eggs with lovage.
Fitzrovia: At his urban-rustic Newman Street Tavern, Peter Weeden dry-ages Galloway beef, butchers whole Scottish Blackface sheep, and bakes super-voluptuous onion tarts.
Soho: Watch street life from a window seat at Damson & Co., a homey deli-café devoted to strictly-British deliciousness: farmhouse cheeses, goose salami, and daily “soused fish” (ceviche to you).
Bermondsey: Tom Sellers’s Restaurant Story snagged a Michelin star just months after opening. Prepare yourself for candles that melt into beef drippings and smoked eel sandwiched within squid-ink “Storeo” cookies.
Notting Hill: With only 14 seats, tiny Marianne packs outsize flavors into Anglo-Mediterranean dishes such as sweet Cornish scallops with artichoke and dusky jamón.
Brixton: The three-course lunch at Salon—a minimalist gem in the happening Brixton market—is London’s best bargain at the moment, at just $26.
Hackney: Affordable, soulful, and quietly inventive (anyone for duck with pickled carrot and hazelnut purée?), the blond-wood-paneled Mayfields has quickly become a neighborhood favorite.
More from Travel + Leisure:
Best Places to Eat Like a Local
London’s Coolest New Attractions
London’s Best Restaurants
