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It may, famously, be the most important meal of the day, but breakfast is often severely underrated – overlooked in favour of a trendier brunch or simply skipped altogether. Not by us. London is stuffed with places serving fry-ups, pancakes, pastries and porridge and more worth rising early for. And Time Out has put together a new list of the very best.
Number one in our ranking of London’s greatest spots for breakfast is The Wolseley. There are few places that take the first meal of the day quite as seriously as this Piccadilly restaurant. It’s been famed for its breakfast spread for decades – one of the UK’s most renowned food critics, the late AA Gill, even wrote an entire book dedicated to it.
Time Out’s food editor Leonie Cooper called the Wolseley an ‘always-fun and always-busy art deco-styled grand café - and still a celeb-spotting paradise’. She added: ‘If you like to start your day with a sense of occasion, it doesn’t get much better than The Wolseley. From a just-baked pastry or an omelette Arnold Bennett, to a decadent kedgeree or the creamed porridge with fruit compote.’
Alongside every breakfast classic you could wish for, the Wolseley’s has a selection of specialities that include grilled kipper with mustard butter, fired haggis and duck eggs with whiskey sauce and fishcakes with poached eggs and hollandaise.
This is a rather posh venue, so prices aren’t low. But, Leonie says, ‘at a place of this exceptional quality you wouldn’t expect them to be’. Hot breakfasts range from £7.50 for classic porridge to £25.50 for the kedgeree with poached egg.
On weekdays, breakfast service begins bright and early at 7am and lasts until 11.30am, and on weekdays it starts at 8.30am. There’s also another branch in the City, should the Piccadilly restaurant be full.
Some of our other favourite breakfasts in the capital include the croissant royale at Fallow, the stonking breakfast burrito at Bad Manners (‘the greatest hangover cure in town’) and the proper fry-up at E Pellicci.
Check out all of London’s best restaurants for breakfast here.
Did you see that London’s first Michelin-starred breakfast tasting menu has launched in Mayfair?
Plus: The 9 best new London restaurants opening in February 2026.
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