The best restaurants in Marylebone

Jikoni, which means ‘kitchen’ in Kiswahili, blends Asian, African and Middle Eastern cuisines. If you’re looking for ‘authentic’ food from any of those regions, you’d better go elsewhere. But if you want a charming and playful evening of culinary surprises, which includes a prawn-toast scotch egg with banana ketchup and adorable diddy pickled cucumbers (as good as it sounds), Jikoni won’t disappoint. 

A hidden gem – abeit one that's hiding in plain sight – this family-run café-cum-deli has been serving up homemade nourishment since 1900. Lately its beef goulash has been making waves (and stains, dribbled down T-shirts from over-eager eating). It’s a smoky soup that’s so thick you could almost call it gravy, chock-full of hearty vegetables and tender chunks of beef. It’s rich, dense and perfect for dunking one of the café’s gigantic sandwiches into.

Earthy pink terracotta walls, tropical hanging fronds and handmade paper lanterns from Oaxaca combine into the breezy, chic Cavita, Marylebone’s new modern Mexican hotspot. Chef Adriana Cavita serves up an everchanging menu of street food, raw bites of seasonal seafood and big sharing plates, full of bold Mexican flavours and convivial atmosphere.

John and Desiree Chantarasak bring seasonal British ingredients and whip them up into impressive, Thai cuisine, fine dining style. Sink a tart seabuckthorn margarita before blowing your mind with an oyster swimming in a vivid pool of fermented chilli and galangal. There are also grilled flatbreads slathered with shrimp butter and Cornish shellfish and Hebridean hogget in warm and fiery massaman curry. Impressive stuff.

St John Marylebone benefits from its intimacy – upstairs there’s an open kitchen and big windows, but downstairs is a cosy basement, where the lack of natural light might just lead to that brilliant thing – a lunch so lavish that you forget what time it is, only to stumble out at 5pm, pleasantly dazed and happily full. Unlike the other two St John restaurants, the menu here is small and seemingly ad hoc. Chalkboards explain the day’s offerings. There’s only a handful of starters and mains up for grabs. All are made for sharing, but by God you don’t have to if you don’t want to. The brevity of such a menu is never an issue; everything is exceptional.

They now have a string of hits to their name (think Gymkhana, Hoppers and Bao for starters), but this is where it all began for the all-conquering Sethi siblings and their JKS restaurant group. The setting is smart and quietly conservative, while the kitchen thrills punters with its interpretations of Indian regional cuisine – especially seafood from the south. Trishna has held a Michelin star since 2012 and you can see why.

There are cheese boards and then there are La Fromagerie cheese boards. We’d like to live in a world in which we were only ever served the latter – carefully sourced, themed by nation (with suggested wines to match) and prettily arranged on a wooden slab at the back of a shop filled with wonderful chutneys and handmade French tableware. A slice of cheese heaven.

A classy spot with ‘southern Mediterranean’ sharing plates. In reality this means lots of fish and lots of fire, and everything comes slicked with so much olive oil that the dishes are glossier than a Steely Dan outro. Ignore the pan con tomate with anchovies at your peril, and go hard on the raw fish starters. It’s not cheap, but food this spectacular rarely is. 

Bao Marylebone is the Taiwanese mini-chain's latest outpost following Shoreditch, Borough, King’s Cross and the original Lexington Street digs. It’s the first all-day-ish branch of Bao, and here focus is on dumplings, but it's the new selection of cold dishes (and the bao, of course) that really impress. Don't miss the jammy and caramelly, soy-boiled egg, in a sweet thick sauce that’s also pudding-worthy (and possibly the best thing you can get for approx. £3 at any central London restaurant).

Kima, a Greek fish restaurant in Marylebone, is sister restaurant to the more omnivorous Opso, which is across the road. The only meat dish at Kima is a dry aged T-bone steak, which surely only an idiot would order in a place like this. Kima operates a ‘fin-to-gill’ philosophy of zero wastage, and if you opt for the tasing menu you can eat the catch of the day prepared in a multitude of ways.

Located within a naan’s hurl of Oxford Street, Roti Chai offers Indian thrills on two levels. Office workers pack the ground-floor ‘street kitchen’ for lunchtime ‘shack snacks’, ‘railway’ curries, dhals and the like, while the sexier basement room comes into its own for full blowouts in the evening. Wherever you’re seated, a bevy of alert young staff keep things pacy.

A post-Fellini glamourpuss that can be found curled up and purring contentedly in a sparkly Marylebone basement, Nina has a menu full of the kind of Italian-ish dishes London seems awash with these days (crudo, cacio e pepe, truffle fries and etc). Popular with the fashion crowd (could that be because of the cocktails named after cigarette brands; Silk Cut, Marlboro, etc?), skip the stodgy pasta and order the extremely ample chicken Milanese which comes accessorised with a lump of intoxicating parmesan butter, and you’ll have a great time.

A little taste of Mittel Europe transported to Marylebone, this grand café from Messrs Corbin & King has its culinary compass set to Austria, although it also absorbs ideas from neighbouring countries. Everything about Fischer’s is polished, from the acres of smooth, varnished woodwork to the all-encompassing menu, which satisfies from breakfast to late suppertime. It’s as seductively captivating as a full-dress Viennese waltz.  

The piece de resistance of this Big Mamma Group resto is a circular, floor-to-ceiling mirrored loo that’s more Studio 54 than manky cubicle. Here, all bathroom selfies (of which there will inevitably be many) are presided over by the Virgin Mary with a ring light for a halo. Where tradition and overt, unashamed Instagrammability meet: this is the Big Mamma way. It's more about the look than the food (big bowls of pasta, huge hunjks of burrata, etc), but if you're looking for a photo op, this is your spot. 

This chic Marylebone Village restaurant serves exemplary pasta dishes at appealingly reasonable prices you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere in W1. The tagliolini with black truffle is a must: but don't stint on the gorgeous array of antipasti, either, and it's worth lingering in their art-deco bar for a cheeky aperitivo. 

Donostia is the Basque name for the prestigious gastronomic hotbed of San Sebastián, and this minimalist tapas joint rightly basks in the reflected glory of its namesake. Understated flavour revelations are the order of the day, from pintxos skewers to veal fillet with ratte potatoes. The drinks list is also worth careful consideration, from biodynamic riojas to natural Basque cider poured from a great height.

Once one of Marylebone’s best-kept secrets, Dinings now has a reputation larger than its pokey townhouse setting. It may be cramped, and the downstairs room does resemble a concrete bunker, but the Nobu-inspired modern Japanese food is indisputably excellent – with some noticeable Peruvian flourishes added to its ‘tapas-style’ line-up. With polite, efficient chefs and waiters too, Dinings is a top performer.

A modern Greek eatery that doubles as a weekend brunch spot, wine bar and bakery, Opso serves contemporary mezédes and Hellenic classics in a stripped-back setting of bare wood, dangling lights and matrix-like metal gantries. Its small plates are jazzed-up concoctions such as a Greek salad ceviche or metsovone croquettes (smoked fried cheese with rhubarb jam), while mains could be as traditional as moussaka. There’s a feta bar too, as well as an array of starry home-baked cakes and pastries.

It’s all about roll-your-sleeves-up DIY at Kintan – a bargain-basement Japanese eatery specialising in yakiniku, a variant of Korean BBQ involving a smoky thick-ridged grill built into each table. The fully illustrated medley ranges from USDA kalbi short-rib to tiger prawns, although we’re hooked on the pre-marinated spicy pork. Wipe-clean menus are splashed with red-sticker deals, while extended ‘happy hours’ add extra value.

A tiny Basque enclave in Marylebone, Lurra is the baby sister of Donostia just down the road. Lap up the buzzy atmosphere and smoky aromas as you pick from a menu of rustic-luxe tapas and pintxos inspired by the bars of San Sebastián. Also, don’t ignore the appetising drinks list with its sprightly, spritzy txakoli wines alongside other indie regional tipples.