Things to do in London this week

Time Out has announced its brand-new best restaurants in London list for 2024. After 12 months of hard eating and deliberate degustation, we’ve whittled down our 50 absolute favourite restos from across the capital, featuring old school classics, modern marvels, Michelin star spots and neighbourhood treasures. Why not book a table at one of our top ten eats this week, including Mambow in Clapton, Fitzrovia’s Akoko and Bouchon Racine in Farringdon. 

Camden’s iconic circular arts venue The Roundhouse hosts another varied selection of excellent music artists for its ‘In the Round’ festival. This ten-day fest uses the venue’s tubular shape to full effect, staging a unique line-up of bespoke shows, one-off collaborations and surprise gigs designed to immerse you in eclectic sounds and get you closer to your favourite artists. Artists on the programme include Tirzah, Lucy Rose, Samara Joy and The Songs of Joni Mitchell featuring Emeli Sandé, Eska, Kate Stables (This Is The Kit), Lail Arad, Sam Amidon, and Vashti Bunyan, hosted by Cerys Matthew. 

The Big Apple, Empire City, The City of Dreams – whatever you want to call it, New York is one heck of a place, inspiring everything from music to art, to food. It’s now become the latest muse for London’s Six by Nico, with its latest menu creation taking cues from the team's travels to the city that never sleeps for an adventure with the help of local chefs and tour guides, crafting a true New Yorker menu which includes a playful take on the classic bacon, egg & cheese and the famous Pastrami Sandwich.

Get your six courses and a glass of Prosecco at Six by Nico for just £39, only through Time Out offers. 

The fifth edition of the Queer East Film Festival arrives in kinos across London with a diverse programme of rarely-seen queer cinema from across Asia. A vast programme of features and shorts from 10 countries will be screened at venues across London. Other highlights include ‘Re-encountering Sunsets, Waves, Birds and Bees’ at the Museum of the Home, which involves a screening of Long Time between Sunsets and Underground Waves (by Hu Wei), before a stroll through the Museum’s gardens led by ecologist Connor Butler. What’s more, Hackney Wick Community Sauna will be hosting ‘Steamy Intimacies’, where you can catch films and then literally let off some steam in the saunas afterwards.

Henry VIII’s former gaff is already one of the most splendid-looking buildings in London, but fill it with 10,000 tulips and you’ve got something mighty special to look at. Hampton Court Palace’s Tulip Festival is one of the biggest planted displays of the colouful flowers in the UK and it’s a good excuse to celebrate the start of spring. See the buds pouring out of the Tudor wine fountain and in floating tulip vases. Plus, spot rare, historic and specialist varieties.

Caravaggio was the most dramatic of all Renaissance painters, both in his work (darkness! shadow! light!) and life (murder! revenge! syphilis!). In his final years he produced his most dramatic works. This small, free display focuses on what is possibly his last painting, ‘The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula’ on loan from Italy, and it’s full of death, violence, blood and darkness. Genuinely can’t wait. 

Filmmakers Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck’s cine-essay tells the story from the camera, from its earliest days to our selfie-and-live-stream-obsessed present. Have we lost control of the thing we use to document ourselves? Or is the camera lens still a gateway to see ourselves in a new light and maybe even make a motza in the process? A montage of memes unafraid to send up the absurdity of it all, it’s no dry sociology lecture but a fascinating insight into our camera-ready culture.

Out Apr 19 

This enjoyably feral offering from all-female, historian-led theatre company Dirty Hare is a very unconventional dramatisation of a very specific historical incident: the strange, lurid tale of Anne Gunter. In 1604, Alice’s dad Brian Gunter, killed the two sons of local woman Elizabeth Gregory, igniting a feud between the families. Later, Anne grew sick – which Brian seized upon as evidence of witchcraft on behalf of Elizabeth. There probably is a conventional historical drama in all this, but that’s definitely not what Dirty Hare have crafted. It’s a gleeful slap in the face of a show – history served up messily, with the bits still twitching.

The nation’s most beloved Tory (ie she's not really a Tory, though her videos have fooled many) returns to London with her entourage of political pisstake characters. She’s never quite been cool, but her ramshackle brand of government skewering has undoubtedly touched a nerve in the dying days of the Conservative government. 

For two decades Ceramic Art London has been showcasing – and selling – the most exciting pottery from the UK and overseas. This year the work of 119 ceramicists will be on show, as well as examples from the current crop of Royal College of Arts students. A programme of talks on ceramics techniques and aesthetics also accompanies the event.

Looking for authentic Italian food and freshly made pasta? Officina 00 in Old Street and Fitzrovia are here to deliver Italian cuisine favourites made from rare regional recipes from Italy. Founded by friends Elia Sebregondi and Enzo Mirto who grew up together in Naples, these London hotspots offers a carefully curated menu of indulgent dishes. 

Get this three courses and a glass of house wine at Officina 00 for £29.50, only through Time Out offers. 

Lightroom is back with another spectacle set to take your breath away. See this exciting Apollo Remastered collaboration with Tom Hanks, Christopher Riley and 59 Productions with an insight into the impending return of crewed surface missions by going behind the scenes of the Artemis programme, including interviews between Hanks and Artemis astronauts. With a musical score by Anne Nikitin, Lightroom’s powerful projection and audio technology will transport you to another world.

Get tickets to 'The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks' at Lightroom for £19, only through Time Out offers. 

Ahead of Earth Day on April 22, non-profit organisation Camden Clear Air Initiative has organised the first-ever Earthfest. Expect a weekend of speakers, workshops and immersive exhibitions all discussing the pressing issue of the climate, but in a way that won’t leave you with an existential crisis. A fashion zone will feature sustainable brands and upcycled masterpieces, and there will be talks by experts at the Future of Greentech summit. All events are free this weekend. 

This celebration of Eid-al-Fitr, which marks the end of fasting for Ramadan, will take over Trafalgar Square for a family-friendly day of activities and events. Live music and performances will fill the main stage and street food stalls will offer fayre from India, Venezuela, Somalia and more. You’ll also find stalls dedicated to face painting and Mehndi, plus a ‘Creative Art Zone’ with calligraphy, storytelling and drama workshops. 

Never ending baskets of delicious dim sum. Need we say more? That means tucking into as many dumplings, rolls and buns as you can scoff down, all expertly put together by a Chinatown restaurant celebrating more than ten years of business. Taiwanese pork buns? Check. Pork and prawn soup dumplings? You betcha. ‘Supreme’ crab meat xiao long bao? Of course! And just to make sure you’re all set, Leong’s Legend is further furnishing your palate with a chilled glass of prosecco. Lovely bubbly.

Get 51% off bottomless dim sum at Leong's Legend only through Time Out Offers

The veteran Irish comic – perhaps best known to younger audiences for his role as Gerry in ‘Derry Girls’ – is back in action with a new set of freewheeling, loosely Lenny Bruce-inspired funniness. He plays a couple of shows at Ally Pally before returning to the Apollo at the end of April.

For the first time in its 92-year history, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre has opened its doors in spring. And it’s absolutely worth it: the deliciously bonkers, endlessly inventive, and extremely funny ‘Bear Snores On’ is one of the best kids’ shows to hit London in an age. It’s adapted from the picture book of the same name by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman. This fairly free adaptation from co-writers and directors Cush Jumbo (yup, that Cush Jumbo) and Katy Sechiari, is filled with lots of lovely flourishes, like the Coldplay-style flashing wristbands the audience wears and magnificently committed performances from the whole cast. 

Albert Oehlen, the heftily post-modern contemporary German artist’s approach to painting has always been to strip it back and lay it bare. What's left, whether good or bad, is painting at its basest, most obvious. These new works are heavily gridded, the picture planes clearly, visibly divided. He’s making the hidden processes of painting visible, exposing painting’s guts. He’s saying this is how the sausage gets made: it’s not magic, it’s not sublime, it’s just grids and lines and colour, it’s basic. Art is simple. It’s not about big themes like capitalism or colonialism or whatever, it’s not trying to say anything. It’s just painting, and even when it’s bad it’s still pretty good.

Escape reality through maximum immersion and experience 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists, each reimagined through cutting-edge technology. Marble Arch’s high-tech Frameless gallery houses four unique exhibition spaces with hypnotic visuals reimaging work from the likes of Bosch, Dalí and more, all with an atmospheric score. Now get 90 minutes of eye-popping gallery time for just £20 through Time Out offers.

£20 tickets to Frameless immersive art experience only through Time Out offers 

The very flames of hell are licking the walls and ancient wooden beams of this church in Islington (the new home of Castor Gallery), and it’s all because of Fabian Ramirez. This is the Mexican painter’s act of revenge, this is how he gets back at the colonisers for using Christianity as a weapon of conquest and oppression. The works are vast, flame-singed paintings on wood and a central altarpiece with indigenous gods tumbling in flames. This is about righting historical wrongs. In Mexico, indigenous communities have taken to Christianity all while maintaining their native spiritual practices. Ramirez’s work is a violent testament to endurance in the face of oppression, to how culture survives, even when it has been set aflame.