London has felt unusually temporary to me this month. My best friend from the US is visiting while, at the very same time, one of my closest friends is preparing to leave London for The Big Apple. One has me seeing the city through fresh eyes, the other through slightly mistier ones.
Of course, arrivals and departures are both excellent excuses to eat. When someone visits, you want to prove London is every bit as brilliant as you keep insisting. When someone leaves, every dinner starts to feel like part of a farewell tour.
Truth be told, I’ve lived here long enough to be occasionally furious with London (its prices, its commutes, et al), but I’ve been appreciating it more over the last few weeks. Not in the abstract, and certainly not in a “greatest city in the world” tote-bag way, but in the very specific way food and drink shared with loved ones does.
So, yes, this month’s guide to the best restaurants in London is a little more sentimental than usual, but I promise I remain professionally committed to both ordering too much and judging every detail.
Where to eat in London right now
InterStellar BBQ x la Barbecue at The Ned, City of London
InterStellar BBQ x la Barbecue at The Ned
The Ned
There are restaurant collaborations, and then there are two Michelin-starred Texas barbecue restaurants putting five smoked meats onto one tray in the middle of the City. The latter is why calendar alerts exist.
For one month only, InterStellar’s John Bates has returned to The Ned with Ali Clem of la Barbecue – currently the world’s only female Michelin-starred barbecue chef – for a sharing menu of pulled lamb shoulder, chimichurri beef short rib, pork ribs, chopped-cheese sausage and peach tea-glazed pork belly (over which I almost shed a tear of joy). Texas toast, queso shells and cheese, beans and beetroot salad perform supporting duties, though “supporting” may be stretching the physical reality of how much food arrives.
At £75 per person before drinks – and another £50 per pair if you consider brisket non-negotiable, as I do – this is not a cheap tribute to smoked meat, but it is also far more than a cynical logo swap. Both restaurants have retained the Michelin stars they first earned in 2024, and each signature remains distinct on the tray. The residency runs only until 4 October. Act accordingly.
Eve Bar, Covent Garden
Eve Bar, Covent Garden
Justin De Souza
Hear ye, hear ye: I’ve discovered a London dining loophole worth exploiting. Eve Bar sits directly beneath Adam Handling’s Michelin-starred Frog, and its food comes from the very same kitchen. You get the produce, technique and mildly unhinged luxury of a Michelin restaurant, only downstairs, in a cocktail bar, whenever you damn well please.
Following a ground-up redesign earlier this year, Eve has reorganised itself around three Cs: caviar, Champagne and cocktails. This could be unbearable. It is actually enormous fun, helped by a food menu that treats caviar delightfully casually. Caviar hash browns (£22) alone make the case, while the OG cheese doughnut (£10) and lobster croquettes with kimchi (£28) are less showy but no less delicious.
Pair it all with the £12 Pickletini and enjoy the fact that, by Covent Garden standards, £10 to £30 for food from a Michelin-starred kitchen is one of the more defensible acts of financial recklessness I’ve ever recommended.
Fenix, Mayfair
Fenix is a jaw-dropper. There are sculpted arches, vast fringed lights and enough warm beige to make you forget Piccadilly is outside. Which could come across a bit ‘fur coat and no knickers’. Yet, annoyingly for the cynics, the food is excellent.
The best way into it right now is the £65 five-course Summer Edit, an island-hop through the Cyclades. Amorgos begins with warm pita, tzatziki and walnut-spiked spicy feta; Delos brings tuna, truffle and caviar tartare; and Mykonos turns halloumi into tempura, complete with yuzu hollandaise and shiso vinaigrette. Milos follows with sea bass, broccolini, grilled kale and smoked pepper cream, before Santorini lands the whole thing with frozen Greek yoghurt, berries, candied walnuts and loukoumades.
That journey tells you more about Fenix than any brand manifesto could: Greek at its centre, happily unserious about borders when a little yuzu or shiso improves things, and entirely unafraid of luxury, with phenomenal wine pairings to match.
Science Afternoon Tea at The Ampersand, South Kensington
The Ampersand Hotel’s Science Afternoon Tea, London
The Ampersand Hotel
Afternoon tea is one of London’s greatest ideas and most frequent disappointments. Too many hotels glue a theme to a scone and hope for the best. The Ampersand’s Science Afternoon Tea, however, inspired by its neighbour the Science Museum, understands a crucial point: if you are going to theme something, you have to commit.
And commit it does. There are jellies in petri dishes, a honey-chocolate spaceman, biscuit fossils hidden in edible “soil”, a DIY lemonade experiment, et al. It is objectively silly. And, yes, children will lose their minds. But, no, you do not need to source a child to enjoy it. We certainly did.
Importantly, the £64.50 adult menu has substance and salaciousness: smoked-salmon blinis, roast-beef brioche, a basil-chicken bun, seasonal quiche (all of which are refillable) and very good scones, served with a choice of Jing tea and the option to add Champagne and specialty cocktails.
Nammos, Mayfair
I went in expecting scene first, dinner second. Yet, before the Champagne, helipad, designer village and global expansion turned it into shorthand for a very particular kind of Mykonos excess, Nammos did start its life as a phenomenal beachside restaurant. And, even as its first metropolitan outpost, London reminds us why.
Quelle surprise: the sushi is amazing. Not “good considering this is ostensibly a Greek restaurant” good. Good enough to make you go for Japanese food alone. Thankfully, the Mediterranean half holds its own, too. Aubergine mille-feuille with feta mousse has become a signature for good reason and the Greek lobster linguine delivers exactly the kind of celebratory excess you came for.
Nammos is still expensive, glossy and extremely aware of itself, but there is real hospitality here and, crucially, a proper restaurant beneath the brand. I got my scene (so much of one, in fact, I almost cancelled all my morning meetings to enjoy it properly), and a whole lot more.
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