Goodbye Horses
The story of the London food scene is one that includes dim sum, Sunday roasts, curries, pizza, sinasir, rarebits, banh mi, udon, pepper pot, sweetbread suya, and natural wine. Across cuisines, neighborhoods, and price points, all these dishes and drinks place London among the very best and most diverse places to eat in the world.
This guide, which I’ve been compiling and iterating on for the better part of the last decade, aims to reflect the best food and most important restaurants in the capital. As of summer 2025, London’s wine bars are coming into their own and old cafes are installing new chefs to make the most of abundant produce. In the west of the city, big money means big protein, big wines, and power lunches. In London, as ever, you can mostly have it all.
I want this map to help you navigate a city in which it is all too easy to eat poorly, but in which it is increasingly inexcusable to do so. It will showcase a mix of over three dozen restaurants, which have all done outstanding things in extraordinary times: emerging, surviving, thriving, and continuing to enrich the city and its food culture through more than half a decade of unprecedented change and tumult.
In this latest refresh, we’ve revamped our write-ups to include even more relevant info for diners, including a rough range of pricing for each destination — ranging from $ for quick, inexpensive meals with dishes largely under $10 USD (or the equivalent in pounds), to $$$$ for places where entrees exceed $30.
New to the map in June 2025: Leila’s, a long-time neighborhood cafe and deli in Shoreditch that has lately featured an accomplished new kitchen staff; Cafe Cecilia, a modern lunch classic with substance to match its style; and Dorian, the restaurant of the moment, melding classic French and modern British cuisines in west London.
Adam Coghlan is a writer and editor based in London. In 2017, he launched Eater London and ran the site until it ceased daily publication in 2023.
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