Hester van Hensbergen

Whether you’re after a simple chippy or something a bit more snazzy (or even Michelin-starred), Notting Hill is jam-packed with great cafés and restaurants. Whatever you desire – from a Carnival time top-up to a posh dinner – pile through our list below of the best eateries in this ace area. Fancy a pint afterwards? Here are Notting Hill's standout pubs. Or head for something a little more refined at the area's best bars. RECOMMENDED: The 50 Best Restaurants in London. 

Akub, or cardoon, isn’t actually on the menu at Akub, chef Fadi Kattan’s Palestinian restaurant on a residential backstreet in Notting Hill. ‘I’m trying to find a supplier,’ Kattan told me on the steps of the townhouse where he has set up shop for his second restaurant, following Fawda in the West Bank. He was braving the January cold in just a T-shirt. It’s not that cardoons are impossible to find – the stalks are eaten across Europe, especially in Spain, where they are considered delicacies. But Palestinians eat them differently. ‘We eat the flowers,’ explained Kattan, eyes alight with the thought of the bright, artichoke-like thistles.  Inside, I was led up two further flights of stairs, winding past olive branches and warmly lit dining rooms, to the top of the house. Tucked between an inverted butterfly roof and a wall draped with arabesque William Morris pomegranates, I felt as if I’d been given the key to a secret garden. I wondered what fruit it would bear.  The answer was three perfectly plump blueberry-round aubergines, their bellies slit and filled with floral, lightly pickled carrots and glistening green beads of coriander that popped boisterously in my mouth. Visually, and because of its citrus fragrance, the filling reminded me a little of French lentil salad, and I wondered if Franco-Palestinian chef Kattan was making a deliberate nod to that classic. But I also wondered why this unmistakably summer-y dish was on the menu right now. It was pushing zero degrees o