Jimmy McIntosh

There’s nothing quite like a proper London pub. After many evenings of important, pint-based research, we’ve done the impossible and ranked the 50 best pubs in London, with a brand new list for 2025.  London’s best pubs at a glance:  🐎 Best pub in Soho: Coach & Horses 🪖 Best pub in Hackney: Army & Navy ⛪ Best pub in Peckham and Nunhead: The Old Nun’s Head 🍻 Best pub in Shoreditch: The Pride of Spitalfields 🎭 Best pub in Angel: The Shakespeares Head Old school boozers are the beating heart of this city, and the ones on this list are heavy with the powerful whiff of history – though that just might be the carpets – and throbbing with heart, soul and community charm.  How did we decide what made the final 50? With a worrying amount of the UK’s pubs closing weekly, we wanted to highlight some of this city’s less well-known and independent inns. The pubs included here are places where you’ll not only get perfect pints, but pickled eggs, karaoke nights and darts sessions. There’s no gatekeeping here at Time Out and these spots are where old-school regulars rub shoulders with the new wave of pintspeople, from Holloway to Hackney, via Bexleyheath, Brixton, Nunhead and more. Want cosy and convivial? You’ve come to the right place.  Of course, in a city with well over 3,000 pubs, not everything can make the cut. If you’re looking for posh pubs with fancy food, you’ll find them in our list of the best gastropubs in London. Wondering where London’s most legendary drinking dens ar

Every week, a frankly silly amount of brilliant new restaurants, cafés and street food joints arrive in London. Which makes whittling down a shortlist of the best newbies a serious challenge. But here it is. The 20 very best new restaurants in the capital, ranked in order of greatness and deliciousness. All of them have opened in the past year and been visited by our hungry critics. So go forth and take inspo from this list, which is updated regularly. Check in often to find out what we really rate on the London restaurant scene. And look here for all the info about the best new openings in November. London's best new restaurants at a glance: 🐟 Central: Island, King’s Cross 🍠 North: Belly Bistro, Kentish Town 🍜 South: Lai Rai, Peckham 🍝 East: Osteria Angelina, Shoreditch 🥗 West: The Lavery, South Kensington October 2025: New additions include Chingford chophouse Gina, Filipino freshness at Belly Bistro in Kentish Town, indie disco turned gastropub the Macbeth in Shoreditch, Spanish smashers at Legado in Shoreditch and Balkan comfort food at Doma in Sydenham. Hungry yet? Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. RECOMMENDED: The 50 best restaurants in London. The hottest new openings, the tastiest tips, the spiciest reviews: we’re serving it all on our London restaurants WhatsApp channel. Follow us now to tuck in.

Shoreditch is a dining destination for tourists, hipsters and ravenous city workers alike, so it’s no wonder that there are restaurants of all cuisines and price ranges in this always-buzzy area. But which of the many options deserve your time and money? Let us tell you, with our list of the best restaurants in Shoreditch and Spitalfields, which only features places that we know will hit the spot. Check out everything from Michelin-starred favourites for big spenders to stellar plant-based joints and some of the best Italian restaurants in the capital. Go east and feast. September 2025: We've just given this list a proper revamp, removing those Shoreditch spots that are no longer up to scratch and adding a load of new must-visit restaurants in their place. There's also a brand new number one - Plates, which is the UK’s only Michelin-starred vegan restaurant. Other new entries include sleek Ukranian restaurant Tatar Bunar, Japanese-Italian fusion spot Osteria Angelina, bottomless lasagna paradise Senza Fondo, the brand new Singburi and spruced up gastropub The Macbeth. Plenty of local classics remain, from Brat and Smokestak to Smoking Goat, Rochelle Canteen, Manteca and The Clove Club.  RECOMMENDED: The best bars, pubs and rooftops in Shoreditch. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.

St Pancras Old Church is allegedly the oldest site of continuous Christian worship in England, but today pilgrims of all faiths flock to its churchyard and the lush grounds that surround it. A tranquil oasis sandwiched between the modernity of the railway and the A5202, the gardens can claim a number of famous historical residents, including the French revolutionary spy Chevalier d’Eon and the composer Johann Christian Bach, plus the mausoleum of John Sloane and the grave of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.

Located on a backstreet where the Old London of Caledonian Road meets the contemporary bustle of King’s Cross proper, the King Charles I is one of the capital’s finest examples of the inter-war boozer. Walk in to its cosy, wood-panelled interior on a winter’s night and you’ll find a welcoming, warm pub filled with knick-knacks, a rotating cast of ales and stouts, and regular, raucous live music nights. The pub was saved from closure in 2015 by a group of regulars, and in 2021 was listed as an Asset of Community Value, ensuring its status as vital King’s Cross cog for years to come.

The last time I found myself in Hoxton’s The Macbeth, it was 2009, I was wearing drainpipe jeans, and I was going to see a friend’s terrible, terrible band at the tail end of the indie glory years. Sixteen years later and I’m back, splitting a bifana in roughly the same spot where I once suffered through an onslaught of angular guitars and yelped vocals. The Macbeth has a storied history. Built by the Hoxton Distillery as the White Hart in the 1800s, it got its Shakespearian moniker in the mid-noughties (presumably as a result of the ceramic mural inside depicting the Bard’s Caledonian classic). It became an important site of pilgrimage for indie kids across the capital – hosting such musical titans as Franz Ferdinand, Florence + the Machine, and, er, Iglu & Hartley.  By its end the venue had been smartened up in a manner unbefitting a divey music spot, and so it wasn’t much of a surprise when, in July of this year, the premises was taken over by Jamie Allan – the chef who co-transformed The Auld Triangle in Finsbury Park from Hibernian hoochhole into the much-feted Plimsoll – and became a gastropub serving up Portuguese-inspired small plates.  It is, our server assures us, still very much a boozer (and if you wish you can sit in at the front of the pub and sink six pints of £4.95 Macbeth Lager without eating), but the food is the star of the show here. We order eight plates, and first to arrive are the viva-grande tomatoes, which were arguably the best thing we ate all eveni