Kieran Morris

October 2026: The frankly exceptional Impala in Soho has taken the top spot as our favourite new restaurant in London, but coming up close behind is Kid, which is just around the corner. Other new additions include The Horses in Clerkenwell, Kismet in Borough Market, Cloudstreet in Stoke Newington, Bar Blondie in Queen's Park, Hon's BBQ in Hackney Wick and Kinz in Notting Hill. Hungry yet? 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 over the past 12 months 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 October 2026. London's best new restaurants at a glance: 🥩 Central: Impala, Soho 🍷 North: Cloudstreet, Stoke Newington 🦐 South: The Victory, East Dulwich 🍝 East: Hon's BBQ, Hackney Wick 🥗 West: Maai by Nikita, Fulham 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 restauran

Public House Group are a Made in Chelsea sideplot of a business, snaffling tired old boozers and paring them back to a charming sparseness. Call it Daylesford-core: bare oak, glowing hearths, mirrors flecked with rust — a garden centre by day; a village dance by night. They all look much the same inside and draw exactly who the team are after: Mr & Mrs Down-From-London, married at the family pile, calories justified by an afternoon’s padel. Everywhere else has been – how to put it – on-brand: The Pelican and Fat Badger in Notting Hill, The Bull in Charlbury. But The Horses is in Clerkenwell, as dense for restaurant quality as San Sebastian: Luca, Vesper, Bouchon Racine, the looming spectre of St John – and the Eagle, the original gastropub, two minutes away. Undeterred, Public House Group have swaggered into this battlefield with old-money confidence. The ground floor was heaving, a proper pub with no whiff of gastro about it, warm with after-work chatter and the illicit thrill of midweek indulgence. We were swept up to a love seat in the first-floor dining room: a great place to bring your wife and quite a funny place to have brought your mate. A Southampton shipbuilder has fitted it out, evoking a life at sea without a single anchor or Big Mouth Billy Bass on the wall, but rather the day’s fish placed in cabins along the counter. Meaty, briny, smoky and rich Seafood is mostly from Fin and Flounder on Broadway Market, so we went all in with the fish. Our waiter gave fair wa