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Photograph: Tom Osborne
Photograph: Tom Osborne

Every Michelin star restaurant in London for 2023

All of the London restaurants awarded a shining Michelin star, from long-standing institutions to newer spots gaining a star

Leonie Cooper
Written by
Time Out London Food & Drink
&
Leonie Cooper
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The yearly unveiling of the Michelin Guide’s ‘Great Britain and Ireland’ edition is always big news in the UK food-nerd world. For very good reason, too – London is one of the top-ranked cities in the world for fine dining. And it’s got plenty of those coveted stars.

Newcomers on this year’s list include Luca in Clerkenwell and Taku in Mayfair. The 2023 list also sees Hotel Café Royal and The Ledbury scoring two sparkling stars, but there were no new three stars awarded. They join plenty more places that also appear in our meticulously compiled list of the best restaurants in London.

While Michelin’s expertise on expensive, upmarket restaurants is well known, the Michelin Guide has been criticised for its lack of relevance to ordinary diners. Conspicuous by their absence yet again are London’s more affordable places to eat.

Still, if you’re feeling flush, read on to find all London restaurants with a Michelin star (or two, or three).

RECOMMENDED: The best restaurants in London

London restaurants with one Michelin star

Amaya
  • Restaurants
  • Indian
  • Belgravia

Specialising in stylish pan-Indian tapas, sleek, clubby Amaya struts its stuff for well-heeled Belgravia types with inquisitive palates and deep pockets. Ask for a table by the theatrical open kitchen, where you can watch the chefs manning their battery of tandoors, tawa skillets and sigri grills. Service is as smooth as Indian silk, and the sexy cocktail bar hots up as the evening wears on.

Angler
  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Moorgate
  • price 4 of 4

Michelin-starred seafood cookery is the lure at this swanky City restaurant on the seventh floor of the South Place Hotel. The food’s ultra-modern, technically excellent and impeccably crafted – a perfect fit for the dining room’s sophisticated vibe and gleaming monochrome interiors. It’s not the most daring restaurant in town, but the combination of consistent cooking and ultra-polished service is bang-on for the City’s expense-account crowd.

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Barrafina
  • Restaurants
  • Spanish
  • Soho

The move from Frith Street to its current home alongside the Hart Brothers’ Quo Vadis hasn’t dented Barrafina’s allure – or shortened the endless queues outside this no-bookings star of London’s tapas scene. Fans still clamour for perches at the L-shaped marble counter, while the chefs continue to dole out dazzlers such as oozing tortillas and milk-fed lamb sweetbreads to go with picks from a knockout Spanish wine list. It’s also become one of the stars of Soho’s outdoor dining scene.  

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Bravo to the team at the London Fields newcomer for pulling out all the stops in its difficult launch year. The 18-seater chef’s table experience has a tasting menu from Andy Beynon – a former development chef for Jason Atherton – focusing on sustainable seafood.

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  • Restaurants
  • Indian
  • Mayfair

A longstanding favourite for Indian fine dining, Benares sacked chef-patron Atul Kochhar in 2018 (over anti-Islamic tweets directed at the actress Priyanka Chopra). As a result of the disgraced chef’s departure, the restaurant saw its star rating removed. Now it’s back to one-star glory with chef Sameer Taneja on the pans. The kitchen produces modern cooking in the haute-cuisine league across its à la carte and six-course tasting menu – all of which packages up pretty nicely in its Benares at Home concept, too.

Brat
  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Shoreditch
  • price 3 of 4

We think the first solo venture from Welsh whizz-kid Tomos Parry (late of Kitty Fisher’s) is brilliant; service is switched-on, you feel like you’re right there in the kitchen, and the food is full-frontal, no-frills stuff from the wood-fired grill – including a show-stopping dish of turbot (aka ‘brat’) cooked Basque-style in an iron cage. Small plates and wines by the glass add to the all-round fun. We like Brat even more for dreaming up the best outdoor dining spot imaginable over in Climpson’s Arch – which is going permanent.

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  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Hackney
  • price 3 of 4

A tasting menu for £65? Yes please. And not a starched tablecloth in sight. Instead, it’s a place serving a cutting-edge line-up of seven small courses, plus freebies (bread, petits fours). All in a single Hackney dining room. Dishes are the surprisingly, relentlessly ambitious kind, with the kitchen led by ex-Pidgin head chef Adolfo de Cecco. Quite simply, one of the best-value tasting-menus in town.

City Social
  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • City of London

Promising low-key glamour in high-rise surroundings (the twenty-fourth floor of Tower 42, to be precise), City Social is one of super-chef Jason Atherton’s more conservative ventures – a go-to for City suits wanting to impress or let off steam. The gorgeous, sexy space comes with all-enveloping wraparound views and the cooking is all about precision-tuned contemporary flavours – from pretty-pretty salads to slabs of beefy protein.

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Chez Bruce
  • Restaurants
  • French
  • Wandsworth
  • price 4 of 4

Chez Bruce may not be especially original, but it’s reliable and one of Wandsworth’s prime neighbourhood assets. The look is a study in classic (if slightly dated) restaurant decor but the cooking is timeless, led decisively by the Franco/European school without much deference to culinary fads. Expect big-boned muscular flavours supported by one of the finest wine lists in the capital.

Club Gascon
  • Restaurants
  • French
  • Smithfield
  • price 3 of 4

Duck, foie gras and the flavours of main man Pascal Aussignac’s native Gascony point up this serene Michelin-starred homage to French regional cuisine – although there’s also a lighter side to the cooking these days with veggie (‘garden’) plates now sitting alongside their heftier meat-based bedfellows. Cosy up amid the heavy wooden screens and marble-clad panels with a bottle from the stonking Provence-inspired wine list.   

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Cornerstone
  • Restaurants
  • Seafood
  • Hackney Wick
  • price 3 of 4

This large, ruggedly handsome restaurant turns out dishes – with a special emphasis on seafood – that are meticulous and restrained. When you consider who’s behind all this, it’s no surprise. Chef-owner Tom Brown is Cornish and trained under the acclaimed Nathan Outlaw (a Cornish seafood maestro). This is quiet finesse, in a genuinely buzzy, attractive space, and wherever you sit, you’ll feel like part of the action.

 

Housed in east London’s Blue Mountain School, you have to ring a bell to enter this hidden drawing room-style restaurant with a kitchen led by Theo Clench, a chef who’s worked at a slew of Michelin-starred spots including Trinity, Clove Club and Portland. Welcome drinks and a first course are served in the bar before you tuck into the rest of the surprise meal in the intimate dining room. You can even eat one of the dishes in the kitchen. Be warned: you’ll have to book well in advance here, with new reservations released a couple of months in advance. 

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The Dysart Petersham
  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Richmond
  • price 2 of 4

Located between Petersham Nurseries and the Petersham Hotel in the verdant expanses of Richmond Park, this ornate-looking former pub is now the culinary domain of former Roux Scholar Kenneth Culharne – a chef who cares about provenance. Seasonal ingredients, rare-breed meats, heritage vegetables and sustainable fish are the building blocks for a roster of high-end contemporary dishes with the odd Japanese nuance. 

Elystan Street
  • Restaurants
  • British
  • South Kensington

You know the score: meticulously presented high-end food served in warm low-lit surrounds with a suitably hefty price tag. However, the fact that Elystan Street is fronted by Phil Howard (ex-The Square) may persuade you to give this sleek Chelsea rendezvous a go. In return, you’ll be rewarded with a roster of immaculately crafted, Euro-accented dishes backed by big-ticket wines.  

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  • Restaurants
  • Japanese
  • White City
  • price 4 of 4

Sushi fans: gather round. Endo is not like any other omakase restaurant (omakase being the ‘chef’s selection’: like a tasting menu, but more personal). At least, not like one you’ll find in this city. Endo Kazutoshi is a third-generation ‘sushi master’, who introduces most of the dishes – all of which are dazzling.

  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Chinatown

The intimate 12 seater counter, led by head chef James Goodyear, serves a monthly-changing seasonal set menu that’s sure to blow your socks off. Hidden away in the basement of The Blue Posts pub in Chinatown, this small but mighty place is not to be missed. 

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The Five Fields
  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Chelsea

A bijou Chelsea spot and a showcase for chef-proprietor Taylor Bonnyman’s gloriously fresh flavoured food – much of it from British growers, fishermen and his own gardens in East Sussex (his gardener used to work for Raymond Blanc). Intriguing flavour combos such as ‘sea and earth’ just beg to be tried, and desserts include some wonderfully playful sweet/savoury riffs. You’ll want to try the cocktails and global wines too.  

  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Covent Garden

Celeb chef Adam Handling’s flagship restaurant in Covent Garden showcases seasonal dishes in a stripped-back, stylish dining room. Choose from five or eight course tasting menu that offers flavour, theatrics and inventive plates. The guide described Handling’s food as ‘carefully crafted, eye-catching dishes with a rather uplifting feel.’

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  • Restaurants
  • French
  • Spitalfields

Brother Jeff’s patch of the Galvin siblings’ empire, La Chapelle, is an awe-inspiring architectural behemoth with ecclesiastical overtones and a menu of impressively rendered modern French cuisine. Service is as smooth as béarnaise, with staff on hand to suggest champagne aperitifs, point out the menu’s signature dishes (lasagne of Dorset crab sounds too good to refuse) and advise which bottle of Hermitage La Chapelle to choose.

  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Victoria

Gaze around the Goring Hotel’s plush dining room as bow-tied waiters glide serenely by and imagine you’re back in the Edwardian era – mobile phones are most unwelcome here. The decor has been updated while preserving the refinement and understated luxury of the vintage interior – although the food is anything but stuffy, with highly sophisticated interpretations of British classics outshining more outré ideas.

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Gymkhana
  • Restaurants
  • Indian
  • Mayfair

Gallop to Mayfair for this hot-ticket offer from Karam Sethi and co (of Trishna, Hoppers and Bubbledogs fame). Done out like some wood-panelled Indian colonial club (without the strict dress code), Gymkhana lays on a splendid spread of tiffin treats, superlative game dishes and retreads of old regional favourites, while bar staff wheel out Indian punches in sealed medicine bottles for pouring into silver goblets. For lockdown times, you can enjoy its Gymkhana at Home delivery service.  

Harwood Arms
  • Bars and pubs
  • Gastropubs
  • Fulham
  • price 2 of 4

Is it a pub? Is it a restaurant? In truth, this upmarket Fulham boozer is a bit of both – although with a serious wine list and a Michelin star to its name, we know where its priorities lie. Seasonal bags of furred and feathered game receive special attention, whether you’re noshing in the chunkily furnished dining room or boozing and snacking at the bar.

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  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Mayfair
  • price 4 of 4

Part of a hugely ambitious three-storey project off Piccadilly, Ollie Dabbous’s latest gaff is on a different scale to his bijou self-named Fitzrovia debut. ‘Below’ is the bar, ‘Above’ is the restaurant where the chef serves up a signature tasting menu – eight dazzling courses bursting with excitement for the tastebuds and visual mischief. To drink? Consult the leather-bound iPad for access to some 6,000 bottles courtesy of Dabbous’s backers, Hedonism Wines.

  • Restaurants
  • Indian
  • Mayfair
  • price 4 of 4
High-end Indian restaurant Jamavar London regains its Michelin status. Founder Samyukta Nair and culinary director Surender Mohanhas have been raising the bar in pan-Indian flavours. Expect dishes from the royal kitchens of northern India and the coastal cuisine of the southern states such as kid goat shami kebab, Telicherry pepper and garlic soft shell crab, and Malai stone-bass tikka.
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  • Restaurants
  • Chinese
  • Mayfair
  • price 4 of 4

For more than 20 years, Malaysian-born Bernard Yeoh and his team have been teasing Londoners with their ‘liberated’ take on Chinese cuisine in an exotic Mayfair dining room that exudes confidence. The kitchen shows its inventive streak from the off and the momentum never dips, while accommodating staff also get our vote. This being Mayfair, Kai’s culinary liberation obviously comes at a high price. 

Kitchen W8
  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Kensington

For understated Michelin-starred charm, look no further than Kitchen W8. This dining room exudes refinement with its orderly white table linen and smooth, unstuffy service. Diners in the know come for the pedigree: founding partner Philip Howard is co-owner of the Ledbury in Notting Hill. The menu is modern English with a French complexity, its delicate mains featuring the finest seasonal ingredients. 

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  • Restaurants
  • Mexican
  • Marylebone

The seasonal high-end Mexican restaurant led by nomadic ex-Noma and Noma Mexico chef Santiago Lastra is fine-dining done slick and span. The menu is all about Mexican dishes with the finest British ingredients. Think: lobster and smoked chilli tacos and whole grilled ocotpus with bone marrow.

Leroy
  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Shoreditch

Ellory is dead, long live Leroy. It’s the same team, and (almost) the same name as before, but this EC2 reboot of the short-lived Hackney star is miles better than the original – mainly because the whole package is much more relaxed. The new site was originally a wine bar and the ethos of pairing Euro-style small plates with glasses of vino lives on. Hugely welcoming staff really know their stuff.

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Locanda Locatelli
  • Restaurants
  • Italian
  • Marylebone
  • price 3 of 4

One of London’s most highly regarded Italian chefs, Giorgio Locatelli presides over this glamorous, well-groomed destination, allowing the dining room’s suave interiors to soothe his well-heeled clientele while his kitchen doles out food that deserves to be relished as well as admired. Superb hand-crafted pasta is the top shout, but everything screams quality. Wines offer a positively educational survey of Italy’s regions. 

  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Restaurants
  • Fusion
  • Clerkenwell
  • price 3 of 4

Luca, a Clerkenwell Italian from the bods behind the Clove Club, is a classy joint. From the airy marble-clad bar section, to the lofty dining room and the faded-palazzo loos, it’s a handsome spot. This warmth extends to the menu: trad-rustic and occasionally finicky, this is upscale country comfort food. This isn’t a spot to come on a budget, but if you’re sans expense account, the bar is set up for more casual sandwiches and salads. For slick cooking in design-mag surroundings, Luca ticks all the boxes.

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Lyle’s
  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Shoreditch
  • price 3 of 4

Dinner at Lyle’s is a leisurely affair, so kick back, take in the understated interiors and chat to the sweet staff before getting stuck into some palate-dazzling food from one of the most talented cooks in town. Formerly part of the ‘Young Turks Collective’, chef James Lowe regularly hits his mark when it comes to fine-tuned new-breed British cuisine. There’s no table-turning (hooray!), so stay as long as you like.

Marcus
  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Knightsbridge
  • price 4 of 4

Marcus Wareing’s grandiose blue-blooded dining room within the renovated Berkeley Hotel now trades as Marcus – a richly panelled, claret-toned Belgravia cocoon where the Anglo-French food is fashioned with surgical precision and sommeliers wheel trollies of champagne on ice while advising on a mighty global wine list that rises to all occasions. If you think £50 for three courses (without wine) is a good deal, go at lunchtime.

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  • Restaurants
  • Italian
  • Mayfair
  • price 4 of 4

We happen to think that Angela Hartnett’s flagship is Mayfair’s least stuffy fine-dining restaurant. Yes, there are beautifully dressed tables and carpets so thick you’d slip out of your shoes if only they were Manolo Blahniks, but the focus is resolutely on the good times: cue generous portions of big-flavoured Italian dishes, ferried by smiling, down-to-earth staff. (Psst: the set lunch is a steal.)

  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Belgravia

Tom Aikens opened Muse at the start of 2020 at a time when anything still felt possible. The 25-cover restaurant takes over a Georgian townhouse and serves dishes based on stories from Aikens’s own life experiences (yes, really). If he’d had to draw on inspiration from just 2020, dishes could have included deconstructed banana bread, we guess.  

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  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Fitzrovia
  • price 3 of 4

Big-name chef Jun Tanaka has been around for years, and this chic, contemporary venue in Fitzrovia is the ninth restaurant he has been involved in (geddit?). Although small plates with a French slant are the focus, the cooking doesn’t really lend itself to sharing-is-caring – still, Tanaka is a genius when it comes to pointing up flavours, creating harmonious marriages and making ingredients sing.

  • Restaurants
  • Haute cuisine
  • Belgravia

A womb-like room enveloped in shades of pearlescent pink and dusky greys, this Belgravia outpost of Gordon Ramsay’s empire is famed for its centrepiece circular wine store holding vintages of titular Château Pétrus and much more besides. The food is all about indulgence and luxury ingredients, although the Ramsay connection draws those on a salaryman’s salary too – in other words, it’s possible to dine here affordably.

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  • Restaurants
  • Haute cuisine
  • Fitzrovia

A bijou Fitzrovia aristocrat, Pied à Terre trades on intimacy and purrs like a pedigree Persian cat. From sensational amuse-bouches onwards, the attention to detail is mightily impressive as the kitchen sends out wave after wave of stellar dishes that look a million dollars on the plate. Prices are top-end, but superb-value set lunches make this the perfect setting for tête-à-têtes, business-related or otherwise.

  • Restaurants
  • Haute cuisine
  • Mayfair

Midas-touch Jason Atherton’s Michelin-starred Mayfair flagship promises near-perfect fine dining without over-egging the formality. British ingredients form the backbone of a seasonal menu that picks up influences from Spain, Japan and elsewhere, while the setting speaks of smart, sleek and unfussy sophistication. Well-drilled staff are some of the most professional in the business, and the globetrotting wine list is a real corker.

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Portland
  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Fitzrovia
  • price 3 of 4

This cool, pared-back and thoroughly grown-up Fitzrovia gem serves up bold, powerful and surprising food from its visible open kitchen. Diners congregate at bare Scandi-style tables for reasonably priced small plates and larger sharing dishes in the modern idiom – check the blackboard for the latest specials. Turn over the menu and you’ll find a list of ‘textbook’ and ‘leftfield’ wines, plus privately sourced single bottles.

 

Quilon
  • Restaurants
  • Indian
  • Victoria

It may look more like a bland business lounge than a top-end Indian culinary destination, but if you blot out the corporate hotel surrounds there’s much to enjoy here. Michelin-starred Quilon specialises in serving exquisite regional seafood from the subcontinent’s coastal southern provinces such as Kerala – although there’s also plenty for meat-eaters and veggies too. A comfortable refuelling point for residents and tourists.

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River Café
  • Restaurants
  • Italian
  • Hammersmith
  • price 4 of 4

Set back from the Thames Path, the River Café is a riverside icon in its own right. Warm, buzzy and expensive (in a semi-casual way), it’s dedicated to serving unfussy yet stunning Italian food based on artisan seasonal ingredients. Okay, the prices are painful, but portions are generous – so go for a summer lunch, sit on the terrace, and live it large like an A-lister.

The Ritz
  • Restaurants
  • Haute cuisine
  • Piccadilly

Chef John Williams MBE has presided over the unimaginably opulent Ritz restaurant since 2004, serving precision-tuned dishes (old and new) to punters ensconced in the Louis XVI-inspired dining room. Aside from the Michelin-starred food and all the gilt, what you are buying here is a conservative formula, complete with coat-tailed politesse, cloches, a tinkling piano and the reassurance that all remains unruffled in this privileged world.

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Sabor
  • Restaurants
  • Spanish
  • Regent Street
  • price 2 of 4

Tapas fans prepare to cheer loudly. After years as executive chef at Barrafina, Spanish queen bee Nieves Barragán Mohacho is now presiding over her first solo gaff – a highly distinctive set-up spread over two floors (small-plate counter fun downstairs, regional wood-fired feasting upstairs). The food’s all-round flawless with a rustic edge: don’t swerve the plumped-up, just-runny salt-cod tortilla – it’s sheer eggy bliss.

  • Restaurants
  • American
  • Soho
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This Californian restaurant sits on the former site of Rambla and comes from the very same chef, Victor Garvey. The name? It comes from ‘Soho via LA’, apparently (?). That translates to dishes like flambé native lobster and burnt figs with toasted buckwheat ice cream. And a very nifty delivery service – Sola at Home. 

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Sollip

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Chef owners Woongchul Park and Bomee Ki have been praised for combining their Korean heritage with French techniques. Buckle up for seasonal tasting menus like no other featuring sophisticated and innovative fusion of cuisines in a tranquil and calm space.

This minimalist Scandi-style spot specialises in top-class seasonal produce sourced from around the British Isles, which it serves up on beautiful handmade crockery. You’ll find everything from Chinese water deer from Woburn to Cornish cuttlefish and Wiltshire truffles on its dinner menu, which is packed with punchy flavours. Not feeling super-flush? Opt for the reasonable £60 lunch menu instead. 

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  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Farringdon
  • price 3 of 4

The original ‘nose-to-tail’ pioneer and a Michelin-starred restaurant for those who flee from the very idea, St John is a defiantly casual, bare-bones kind of place with come-as-you-please decor and famously full-on cooking. Born-again British dishes are given a sophisticated spin that often belies their humble origins – we all know about that bone marrow and parsley salad. Powerful stuff, with French(!) wines providing unpatriotic support.  

  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Restaurants
  • Japanese
  • Mayfair
  • price 4 of 4

Taku is an extremely serious place. The front door is unbolted to let diners in, and then swiftly bolted again behind them. With a maximum of 16 covers perched along a light pine bar, this highly fancy omakase joint is headed up by chef Takuya Watanabe. Watanabe knows good fish (he used to be behind the counter at Jin, Paris’s first omakase to score a Michelin star). Harking back to the way fish was cured during the 1800s Edo period, this is deeply traditional  Japanese cuisine. Watanabe embraces the theatre of omakase, slicing fish, shaping rice and personally delivering each piece to the diners. It’s a night spent with sushi royalty. 

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Trinity
  • Restaurants
  • French
  • Clapham

Balancing smart decor and smiling service with exemplary wines and cutting-edge Michelin-starred cooking, Trinity is king of the hill in Clapham – a restaurant that gets the swish/casual balance just right when it comes to creating a neighbourhood vibe. Chef-patron Adam Byatt knows how to put on a show without showboating his talents or puffing up his food. A dead-cert for special occasions and celebratory splurges.

  • Restaurants
  • Global
  • London Bridge
  • price 4 of 4

It’s a double whammy for the Bermondsey-based Trivet scooping up a shiny new Michelin-star and the
guide’s prestigious best sommelier award. Ex-Fat Duck duo sommelier Isa Bal and head chef Jonny Lake, have been making waves since 2019 for its fuss-free, assured cooking in a simple and warm setting. Go before it gets too booked up.

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Trishna
  • Restaurants
  • Indian
  • Marylebone

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. The setting is smart and quietly conservative, while the kitchen thrills punters with its interpretations of Indian regional cuisine – especially seafood from the south. And the thrills continue with Sunaina Sethi’s globetrotting wine list.  

La Trompette
  • Restaurants
  • French
  • Chiswick

Chiswick’s favourite ‘posh’ neighbourhood restaurant just keeps trundling on: the tables are still decked with starched white tablecloths and gleaming glassware, service is impeccably polished and the diners tend to be plummy-voiced locals with cash to splash. The revamped interior may have lost some of its original intimacy, but the cooking is as classy as ever – so too, the magnificent wine list.

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Umu
  • Restaurants
  • Japanese
  • Mayfair
  • price 4 of 4

It’s all about attention to detail at Yoshinori Ishii’s Japanese enclave, from the futuristic entrance to the chef’s handcrafted tableware and the procession of surgically precise, extraordinarily delicate dishes emanating from the kitchen. If you’re celebrating, go for the full-strength multi-course tasting menu highlighting the intricacies of Kyoto kaiseki cuisine. Be warned: prices will slice through your wallet as mercilessly as a samurai sword.

Veeraswamy
  • Restaurants
  • Indian
  • Regent Street

Proof that good things come to those who wait, the venerable Veeraswamy finally bagged a Michelin gong a mere 90 years after opening in 1926. If you’re expecting staid, however, think again: old Veera styles it out like Iris Apfel, with exotic colours, tinted lamps and turbans, not to mention some top-end, perfectly spiced food: we head straight for the signature dishes. The only thing that jars here is the cost.

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Wild Honey St James
  • Restaurants
  • British
  • St James’s
  • price 4 of 4

The recently revamped Wild Honey at the Sofitel London St James is where all Londoners should immediately swarm to. Chef Anthony Demetre offers the finest seasonal British produce using contemporary French techniques. The best thing? It’s all about flavours, not frippery in glamorous and intimate setting. 

London restaurants with two Michelin stars

A Wong
  • Restaurants
  • Chinese
  • Victoria

Forget gilded dragons, book-length menus and stir-fries by numbers, Andrew Wong’s big-hitting but pared-back Pimlico Chinese is a singular affair offering elevated cuisine at everyday prices. Preserved duck egg with marinated tofu, chilli and soy is typical, as is poached razor clam with sea cucumber, vinegar tapioca and wind-dried sausage. Take a trip round China with the spectacular tasting menu or simply park up at the bar-counter and nibble away at your leisure. 

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  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Old Street

Everything about the Clove Club screams ‘look at me’: from the austere dining room and blue-tiled kitchen within Shoreditch’s Old Town Hall to the intentionally avant-garde cooking and the tasting menu – it’s a masterpiece of contemporary aspirations in nine courses. Now, with two stars under its belt, the east London powerhouse is set to skyrocket into the stratosphere. It’s British yet esoteric, accessible yet obscure, and it delivers absolutely ravishing flavours. Hot tip: the corner bar is a destination in its own right, complete with creative cocktails and a bespoke small-plates menu.

Claude Bosi at Bibendum
  • Restaurants
  • French
  • South Kensington
  • price 4 of 4

A bona fide London institution with a fine-dining powerhouse at the helm, Bibendum remains London’s nattiest and most heart-warmingly pleasurable dining room – although über-chef Claude Bosi (of Hibiscus fame) is putting his own dizzyingly technical and dazzlingly creative stamp on proceedings. Prices are unnervingly high, but the food is overwhelmingly excellent – so go on, blow the budget and prepare to be blown away.

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La Dame de Pic London
  • Restaurants
  • French
  • Tower Hill

The fact that the first UK restaurant from French mega-chef Anne-Sophie Pic is located in the City outpost of the Four Seasons hotel chain should tell you everything you need to know about this overtly ostentatious and eye-wateringly expensive venue. That said, the food is dazzlingly skilful, meticulously detailed and chock-full of powerful, unexpected flavours from France and the whole wide world.

  • Restaurants
  • Haute cuisine
  • Knightsbridge
  • price 4 of 4

While Heston B’s flagship Fat Duck in Bray celebrates futuristic flamboyance and childhood nostalgia, Dinner plunders the annals of British food history for a catalogue of date-stamped reboots cooked with flair and precision by protégé Ashley-Palmer Watts and his team. Anyone for salmagundi, powdered duck, meat fruit or tipsy cake? No wonder this dining room within the luxe Mandarin Oriental hotel is a favourite with heritage-hungry tourists.

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Le Gavroche
  • Restaurants
  • French
  • Mayfair

Unapologetically old school, this restaurant colossus remains the go-to choice for wealthy diners craving the glories of ‘haute cuisine ancienne’. Founded by the late Albert Roux and Michel Roux in 1967, and still in the family, it offers gracious service, fabulous food and imperious wines in the cocooned surrounds of a windowless basement room. Prices are sky-high, of course, although the all-inclusive business lunch (£74) is still one of Mayfair’s high-end bargains. Its founders sadly passed away in 2021 and 2020 respectively, but Michel Roux Jr is continuing the family legacy. 

Ikoyi
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Restaurants
  • West African
  • St James’s
  • price 4 of 4

‘Bold heat and umami’ are the twin lures at Ikoyi, which specialises in Nigerian ‘jollof’ cuisine – although the kitchen uses this as a jumping-off point for cooking that transforms West African food into boundary-pushing hyper gastronomy. Ikoyi dishes up something truly new for London’s ever-curious diners.

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Kitchen Table
  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Fitzrovia
  • price 4 of 4

A semi-secret space squeezed in at the back of Bubbledogs, the U-shaped Kitchen Table allows up to 20 punters to perch at stools while getting their kicks from James Knappett’s 12-course tasting menus. The day’s blackboard gives few clues apart from single-word pointers such as ‘oysters’, ‘chicken’ and ‘potato’, but the chefs explain everything and the results are off the scale for invention and flavour. In 2020, its owners made the tough decision to close Bubbledogs, so that Kitchen Table could continue under social distancing.  

  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Restaurants
  • French
  • Notting Hill
  • price 4 of 4

The Ledbury is something of a west London institution. First opened in 2005, it has gone on to win hearts, minds, and more awards than Bey has Grammys. The room is smart (tones of mocha and cream), there’s no music and many of the staff serve in polite silence. But the charismatic maître d’ treats guests like old friends and the dishes – from Aussie chef Brett Graham – are as close to perfection on a plate as you’ll get in this town.

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Restaurant Story
  • Restaurants
  • British
  • Tower Bridge

Don’t expect to be given a menu at this seat of modernist cuisine. Instead, tattooed chef Tom Sellers wheels out a cavalcade of playfully artistic plates – an ad hoc selection of thoughtfully matched tasting dishes served in an open-plan Scandi-style dining room with sculpted birdlike figures and big windows looking out on the street. Of course, the fun ends when the seriously weighty bill arrives.

Da Terra
  • Restaurants
  • Global
  • Bethnal Green
  • price 4 of 4

The latest occupant of a dining space that has also been home to Viajante and The Typing Room, Da Terra is fronted by the dream team of Paulo Airaudo (chef/owner of San Sebastian’s Michelin-starred Amelia) and his able sidekick Rafael Cagali. The setting is a compelling mix of informal elegance, courtesy and good taste, while the kitchen delivers precise, unimpeachable but playful Latin-inspired food with Italian undertones.

London restaurants with three Michelin stars

Sketch Lecture Room & Library
  • Restaurants
  • Haute cuisine
  • Mayfair
  • price 4 of 4

The crowning glory of Sketch’s theatrical pleasure palace, the Lecture Room & Library delivers unadulterated opulence and OTT indulgence in spades. Flooded with light from a glass ceiling dome, and governed by immaculately tailored staff, it promises fantastical food sans frontières – all deftly presented as a procession of pretty, witty and gay mini-banquets. Just make sure your bank balance is primed for such unrelenting complexity.

Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester
  • Restaurants
  • Haute cuisine
  • Park Lane

It sounds like the ultimate posh-dosh dream-ticket: a jet-setting superstar chef with three Michelin stars overseeing a restaurant in a legendary Park Lane hotel. Alain Ducasse’s Dorchester enclave may have many loyal fans, but it’s too rich and too restrained for our palates. Prices take no prisoners in this reverential French gastro-temple, although the three-course ‘lunch hour’ menu is a steal in such privileged, rarefied surrounds.

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Core by Clare Smyth
  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Notting Hill
  • price 4 of 4

Clare Smyth is no stranger here. She was the first female chef to bag three Michelin stars in the UK when at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. But how sweet it is to see her back at these lofty heights since going it alone. Core in Notting Hill is elegant, vibrant, not pompous, and great fun too. The food is special with immense technical brio but also a playful streak that makes it all very accessible.

  • Restaurants
  • Contemporary European
  • Chelsea

Of course, Mr ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ doesn’t cook here these days and his former chef-patron Clare Smyth is now wowing ’em at Core, but Gordon Ramsay’s beloved Chelsea flagship remains the absolute pinnacle of sophisticated fine dining in the capital. The vibe is never too starchy, legendary maître d’ Jean-Claude Breton is a master orchestrator, and the intelligently inventive food is guaranteed to blow your socks off.

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Hélène Darroze at the Connaught
  • Restaurants
  • French
  • Mayfair

Given an elegant and artful facelift in 2019, the Connaught’s flagship dining room now has a bold contemporary edge – all curved lines, blush shades and bare wooden tabletops. This being three-Michelin-star dining, your Primarni handbag will be rested reverently on an upholstered footstool by solicitous staff (awks), and the size of the delicacy-laden dishes will be inversely proportional to the enormity of the bill. It’s all very French, very refined and very memorable.

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