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Rooftop restaurants in London provide a dazzling setting for dinner in the clouds. Here’s a handful of the best up-high eateries
Want views with your food? Then eat at altitude. London’s best rooftop restaurants offer the elevation you need to gaze upon our beautiful city, and top menus to enjoy while you do. Our list includes swish spots, great gastropubs, hotel terraces and even a thriving herb garden. Although dining in the clouds is best in the summer – shout out to this country's unpredicatble weather – most of these places have outdoor spots that are open all year-round, so you can catch a sunset whenever you like, with some much appreciated heaters or glass roofs in the mix. If you’re thirsty for the high life but just want a drink, try London’s best rooftop bars.
RECOMMENDED: London's best outdoor dining restaurants.
Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.
The only way is up at this much-loved Italian rooftop restaurant in Peckham. Soak up outragegous panoramas, irresistible vibes and rowd-pleasing aperitivo sharing food and Negronis. A sleek, high-perched oasis where dinner is as good at the views.
Open year-round.
Southwark’s Hoxton Hotel is home to sea-to-table restaurant Seabird, which has a delightful terrace and indoor tables with a view – plus sunny California vibes aplenty. A Med-influenced all-day menu includes the likes of dressed crab, fried calamari and whole tiger prawns with aioli. And it would be rude not to order from an oyster list claiming to be London’s longest. Make sure you catch the oyster happy hour from Mon-Thurs 3-7pm where you can nab £2 oysters and £7 martinis.
Open year-round.
Superstar chef Björn Frantzén London's outpost of his three Michelin star spot in Stockholm can be found at the top of this world-famous Knightbridge department store. Studio Frantzen is a custom space, and Harrods' first ever rooftop terrace restaurant. Food is somewhere in liminal space between Asian and Swedish, so think; tartare of tuna & red deer, sake-cured mackerel à la ceviche and Orkney scallops with scrambled duck egg, black winter truffle, beurre noisette & crispy lichen. Nordic, but nice.
Take your pick of modern Peruvian dishes such as lamb empanada with aji chimichurri and slow cooked chicken skewers or cod with yuca cream up on the top floor of Shoreditch's Hoxton hotel (they love a rooftop, do the Hoxton lot). This glammy space is all Ibiza-by-way-of-east-London, with plenty of cocktails to suit the party-ready atmos; from guava sours to a Chiri Colada with rum, palo cortado sherry, pineapple, coconut, and coffee bean.
Forza's first central London spot is perced on the top floor of the National Theatre. There's a wonderful wraparound terrace with space for a whopping 70 guests, ideal for gazing at the Thames while working your way through the menu of Italian-ish small plates, including golden cauliflower fritti nuggets and a bounty of fresh and field-grown flavours spanning bitter leaves, lightly dashed with a muscular anchovy dressing, to lamb shoulder with salsa verde, pumpkin with pearl barley and burrata with beetroot.
Open year-round.
On the seventh floor of the fancy Stratford Hotel, Allegra is almost comically swish, with gently dimmed lighting, stone surfaces, funky plants and smooth jazz music. The food is great, though, from savoury choux bun snacks to whole barbecued Cornish brill and aged sirloin mains to share. Staff add to the glitz and glamour with friendly service – even pouring all the posh sauces for you.
Open year-round.
Here’s some good news for anyone partial to a central London rooftop: Orrery’s chic, sleek terrace, hidden from Marylebone’s madding crowds, is an all-weather zone. The long, narrow alfresco space with its bright yellow awnings offers a lunchtime carte full of delicate Modern European dishes such as Jerusalem artichoke risotto and herb-crusted sea bass. Not hungry? Just enjoy a cocktail or two as the sun goes down.
Open year-round.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to Coq d’Argent’s four view-tastic terraces – just like every other city slicker in town. Book lunch on the restaurant terrace for a side of sunshine with your pan-fried skate wing or slow-cooked lamb shank. Otherwise, keep the bills in check by snacking on some garlicky escargots on the garden terraces. If you're keen on emptying your wallet, do it by filling up on steak in the open air.
Terrace open year-round.
A boutique hotel with an all-day bar and grill that offers panoramic city-wide views even in unclement weather (thank goodness for that glass orangery extension). Food here leans toward the Mediterranean, with grilled chermoula prawns with sesame mayonnaise, lamb köftes, octopus with sundried tomato and even a vegan moussaka.
Open year-round.
Sat on the corner of Granary Square (a hotspot that’s also home to Caravan, Dishoom and so on), The Lighterman is an airy bar and gastropub with an even airier first-floor wraparound terrace overlooking the plaza and bordering the canal. It’s not technically on the roof, but it’s as good as – and an ideal place to hack through a lovely-sounding menu of modern British plates. Expect anything from pea-and-mint croquettes, flatbreads and salads to beer-battered fish and hunks of charred flesh sizzling from the wood-fired grill.
Open year-round.
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