Log in to My Time Out for your personalised guide to what's on in London. It's fast, easy and FREE!
Find the best places for brunch and breakfast in the capital.
Read more
Bargain bites can still be had in London - here's our critics' picks.
Read more
Our guide to the best Sunday lunches in London.
Read more
Voted for by over 100 experts including Simon Pegg and Roger Corman
The hip-hop impro duo work 2012 comedy highlights into a freestyle rap.
The Shakespeare Olympics begin April 22 at the Globe
Scroll down to see the winners in all categories or navigate using the tabs above.
This year's judges were: Jessica Cargill Thompson, Simon Coppock, Guy Dimond, Alexi Duggins, Richard Ehrlich, Euan Ferguson, Sarah Guy, Caroline Hire, Charmaine Mok, Cath Phillips.
The Espresso Room raises the bar high for London’s growing artisanal coffee scene, and this is the place we’d recommend to get a consistently terrific cup.
This is the kind of coffee shop that has reminded many an Aussie of home: cheerful, personable service from owner Peter Dore-Smith and his team of baristas ensures that each coffee fiend relaxes over their drink.
No-one should pass through Shoreditch without dropping into Prufrock, the winner of our best cup of coffee award earlier this year. Our most recent visit offered surprisingly disappointing coffee, but we’ve had enough great coffees here to know what they’re capable of.
While espresso culture rampaged through London, this Fitzrovia café branched out to offer filtered brews (though they do espresso-based drinks as well). They even do four different brewing methods for filter coffee, including specialist methods such as siphon and Aeropress.
At the vibrant heart of the artists’ enclave of Hackney Wick, Hackney Pearl is a café-bar that’s very sure of itself and perfectly fits the brief for a friendly neighbourhood hangout.
It’s very hard to find fault with this polished all-day eatery. It claims to be a restaurant, but evidence points towards a much more casual offering – breakfast, brunch, light lunch dishes and a superb afternoon tea.
There’s one huge, unimpeachable reason for visiting this prim and proper Primrose Hill café: the delectable cakes, pastries, tarts, confections, macarons and desserts.
Towpath is a whimsical one-off and as idyllic as it’s possible to be this close to the Kingsland Road. It is also committed to serving simple, seasonal food from a chalked-up menu. It feels like a real labour of love: wilfully small-scale and unaffectedly personal.
You could throw a feather from one end to the other of this tiny offshoot of the raucously successful Camino, but a drink and a nibble here will transport you to a different world.
Much about this bar is reminiscent of Manhattan – low lighting, smoky mirrors, cool but comfortable furnishings – but British chef Mark Hix has stamped his personality on the place with an apothecary-style shelf of in-house infusions, ambitious bar snacks and a bar billiards table.
A lovable place that aims to recreate the atmosphere of a New York speakeasy, the list of original cocktail creations here is grounded in a confident mastery of classicism.
‘Ale/Cider/Meat’ announces the sign on the side of the building, and that’s what you get: a changing roster of ales and ciders, plus old-fashioned bar snacks including fantastic pork pies and sausage rolls.
This is indeed a princess among gastropubs, where you’re as comfortable quaffing (local cask ales, a respectable list of wines by the glass, bottle and carafe, Bloody Marys) as scoffing.
Resembling a colonial public school for hipsters, with trophies (antelope horns, darts cups, a stuffed fox on a piano) and shelved books, this is the kind of place you pop into for a quick brunch, only to stumble out at closing time, big sloppy smile on your face.
This superb, unstuffy venue – more a beer café than a pub – boasts a 60-strong beer menu, served by the third-of-a-pint for easier exploration, and is a brilliant place to enjoy great beers and food together.
An elegant, airy conversion of a former brewery. While the ‘pub’ part of the equation is a bit too civilised, the ‘gastro’ aspect is fully justified. Staff are friendly, helpful and relaxed.
There’s an impressively refined atmosphere to this neighbourhood Iranian restaurant, which specialises in cooking from Iran's Gilan region. Gentle blue and white lighting strafes the ceiling, soft classical music plays and the white tablecloths are illuminated by candles.
Udon, the thick white wheat noodles (made with flour imported from Japan and softened water from the Thames) are Koya’s speciality. These are served three ways: in big bowls of hot broth, cold with a dip or (cold) pouring sauce, or cold with a bowl of hot broth for dunking.
Clientele at this take on the bar mleczny – the Polish milk bar – is based around students tucking into vast portions of slippery pierogi, and Polish couples sipping big bottles of Zywiec beer or 50ml vodka shots as they enjoy a range of hearty stews and tenderised, breaded meats.
There’s a no-booking policy and scant accommodation at this minuscule Neapolitan pizzeria, but those persistent enough to get a seat can expect a stunning pizza.
Although Hix (Soho) and Hix Oyster & Chop House (Smithfield) are clearly siblings, the Brewer Street Hix is altogether more slick. Prices may be centre-of-town high but starters, mains and puddings are all top-notch and the wine list is similarly assured.
A buzzing restaurant where everyone feels at home, the menu here contains a few American dishes, but is mainly French. Much inspiration comes around Lyon, where French-born, US-based star chef Daniel Boulud was born, and charcuterie takes centre stage.
Bruno Loubet has completely reinvigorated the restaurant at the Zetter hotel. The short menu now reads like a dream and it's a restaurant with a real – and rare – wow factor.
If only more restaurants had Zucca’s approach: good food at great prices, served by interested staff with a genuine regard for diners. Sounds simple, but it’s pretty rare. It was also a finalist in our Best New Design category. More new restaurants like this, please.
Shining out from the takeaways and tatty shops of Camberwell’s main drag, this has been a hit since opening in 2009. The tapas-style menu includes familiar Spanish dishes alongside more unusual concoctions.
Caravan has slotted into the Exmouth Market dining scene with consummate ease. The casual vibe and industrial-funky design are part of the appeal, but the food is the main draw. Expect a parade of unusual, international tastes.
By day it's a café for the Discover Greenwich tourist attraction next door; by night it’s a restaurant. The short menu highlights provenance and seasonality, with matching beers suggested for each dish. Clued-up locals should head here pronto; it’s too good to leave to the tourists.
This Italian Highbury Corner newcomer is simplicity incarnate – from the decor to the short, ever-changing menu. The prices are a revelation; starters and puds cost £4-£7, mains top out at £14.
In association with Wines from Spain
Barrica has the feel of a smart taberna, and the excellent food comes in proper tapas-sized portions, not the larger raciones you usually get in London. It is perfect for an inexpensive and informal night out in the West End, and is a place you’ll want to visit regularly.
Walk into Cambio de Tercio and you’re hit by a profusion of colour: deep pink, bright yellow and rich red cover the walls and ceiling. The menu is Spanish haute cuisine and combines adventurous dishes (gazpacho with cherry ice-cream and lobster) with more traditional fare (calamares with alioli).
Fino offers a modern take on classic Spanish flavours – morcilla iberica with quail eggs, seared tuna on a piquillo pepper salad. For a smart night out, this is a place to return to time and again.
A tapas bar, a delicatessen with a walk-in cheese and wine room, books, ceramics and a mini-art gallery – Ibérica Food & Culture has a little of everything, and is a real find for hispanophiles.
WINNER! Old Brewery
There is very little that is sexy about a visitors’ centre café; and yet the Old Brewery manages to pull off being a functional (but not unattractive) appendage to the Discover Greenwich exhibition by day, and sumptuous dining room by night, with only an hour every evening to effect the transformation.
Linen tablecloths are spread over the robust oak tables, rich damson-coloured curtains are drawn across the metal shutters and signs for the visitors’ loos. Oak screens are unfolded across the chiller cabinet, and moody amber lighting switched on. But the design team at RealStudios had to fulfil yet another function, showcasing the product of its owner – Greenwich’s Meantime Brewing Company – without creating a theme pub. The dramatic chandelier that hangs low over the central tables turns out to be madefrom beer bottles, arranged in a wave to symbolise water (fundamental to brewing). An abstract mural of beer bottles and a brewing timeline give a graphic dynamic to the walls. Vast copper vats shine brightly at the end of the room. More subtly, hop flowers create a pretty wallpaper pattern.
Next door in the bijou bar, the seventeenth-century brewery building from which the establishment gets its name, beer is celebrated more openly. A whole wall showcases some 250 of the bottles from the collection of the late beer writer Michael Jackson. From a near impossible brief, in two listed buildings, on a World Heritage site, Real Studios have employed lashings of creativity toprovide both an enticing new restaurant and a practical café that are a joy tovisit any time of day.
Emulating the busy ‘Irani’ cafés of 1960s Bombay, Dishoom recreates their informal atmosphere and urban Indian snack foods from breakfast until late. Talking points are the fascinating display of old magazine covers, nostalgic adverts and fading photos of well-to-do Indian families which adorn the walls. The toilets provide more entertainment in the form of display cabinets above the toilets stocked with old-school pharmaceuticals.
The interior of this contemporary Italian restaurant perfectly matches its menu: light, fresh, and simple. Decor sticks to a limited palette: White, stainless steel and neutrals. There are carefully placed spots of intense colour, such as the deep orange gerbera on the tables, and drama is added by the show kitchen on one side.
Luxe by name and luxe by nature. United Designers have brought iconic chairs and sumptuous materials to Spitalfields’ Grade II-listed Old Flower Market building. The bustling ground floor café is subtly industrial, while the basement bar is studiously dark and moody. Meanwhile the notoriously pricy upper-floor dining rooms indulge in no-holds-barred sophistication, right down to the floral patterned china is a nod to the building’s original use. Smart, sensitive and stylish.
Including exclusive offers and tickets, the best events, news, competitions and giveaways.
© 2012 Time Out Group Ltd and Time Out Digital Ltd. All rights reserved. All material on this site is © Time Out
Comments