7 London restaurants to try when the top tables are booked

Forget the perpetually packed places and try something new for a great dining experience, and a cheaper bill, too!

In the two decades I’ve lived in London (and covered the restaurant scene here), the city has shaken off its dull dining reputation thanks to a growing British interest in good food and newcomers who know their way around a frying pan. The capital now has close to 15,000 restaurants of all types, from no-expense-spared Mayfair dining palaces to superb family-run cafes in the city’s outer suburbs.

It’s a city with plenty of Michelin-starred restaurants—74 at the last count—but in my experience, you don’t have to eat in the most famous places to have a great meal. Quite the contrary: there’s always another excellent option, and it’s invariably cheaper. Here are seven of my favorites to get you started:

Andrew Wong is one of London’s finest chefs. One look at the dim sum lunch menu at his Pimlico restaurant A Wong explains why: this is Chinese cooking of the highest level, taking culinary inspiration from across that huge land, and rightly recognized with two Michelin stars. It’s no wonder gourmands fly from all over the world to eat here, and reservations—which open three months in advance—are hard to get.

But you don’t have to go to A Wong to eat delicious dumplings and dim sum. Wong’s culinary roots are in London’s Chinatown, where his grandfather opened a Cantonese restaurant in the 1970s. Chinatown is still a good place to eat: one of my favorite spots is Orient, where superb dumplings are made daily on-site. The fish dishes here—such as king prawn cheung fun, scallop dumplings, and marinated spicy baby octopus—are particularly good, too.

If you had to make a list of cuisines that are particularly good in London, Indian (in all its delicious diversity) would be right at the top. Excellent food from across the Indian subcontinent is available here, at all price points. One of the best is Michelin-starred Benares in Mayfair, where the inventive, elegant cooking matches the high-end decor, and tables are filled for every dining time.

Alternatives are legion. My personal favorite, though, is Ganapati in the youthful South London neighborhood of Peckham. I can’t get enough of the delicious, and good-value, South Indian food (vegetable curries, flaky parathas, masala dosa) served in a delightfully relaxed atmosphere.

Heston Blumenthal is the bespectacled face of Britain’s food revolution, the man who brought a touch of wonder to the table. With the Fat Duck in Bray, just outside London, and subsequently with Dinner by Heston, where British food through the ages is celebrated in flamboyant style, he has driven high-end British cuisine forward in a flurry of invention and energy.

If you can’t get a table, though, there are other equally zeitgeist-y options. My go to: Apricity. The restaurant’s New Zealander chef Chantelle Nicholson is plugged into what people want now—sustainability, vegan options, simplicity— exemplified by dishes like carrot pancake with lentils and a carrot top and basil relish, or eggplant with herbed gnocchi and chimichurri. There’s also a kids’ tasting menu for little gourmets.

Le Gavroche, which opened in 1967, is a legendary address in London for classical French cuisine, a bastion of traditional cooking where standards are extraordinarily high. It’s currently only open Tuesday to Saturday, though, and just for dinner, so good luck getting a reservation.

However, there is another excellent French option: Chef Henry Harris’ Bouchon Racine, located above a pub in a bright, sun-dappled dining room in Farringdon. There are few better places to enjoy traditional French food, from Bayonne ham with celeriac remoulade to deliciously unctuous lapin à la moutarde, all washed down with a bottle of Beaujolais.

Few London restaurants are as fashionable as The Chiltern Firehouse, where reservations open two months in advance and the most popular time slots fill up in minutes. With its simple American-accented menu, it has captured the affections of many young Londoners who crave a side order of glamour with their lobster linguine.

But London is not short on restaurants that offer a little sparkle. One of my favorites is The Delaunay. Excellent service complements a Middle-European menu in a paneled, spacious room that buzzes with contented excitement. If you’re feeling hungry, order the Berner Würstel, Austrian sausages filled with cheese and wrapped in bacon. For a truly magical experience, visit at Christmas when the dining room fills with the scent of fresh-baked gingerbread and glows with festive lights.

They used to say in Italy that the only Italians who couldn’t cook were the ones who moved to England. However that trend appears to have come to a shuddering halt and London is now full of excellent Italian restaurants. The most famous, perhaps, is The River Cafe, a favorite haunt of celebrities perched by the Thames in Hammersmith. It’s not easy to get into, though.

Happily there are other excellent Italian dining spots with availability beyond a 4:30 dinner. One of my favorites is the vibrant Manteca in stylish Shoreditch, with its house-made salumi and delicious grilled meats, from tri-tip steak to wood pigeon.

No other London restaurant has inspired as many imitators as St John, flag bearer of the British food revival, which explains why it can be hard to get a reservation in the main dining room here. Iconic dishes like roast bone marrow and parsley salad have made the restaurant, founded in 1994, a must-visit for food-lovers from around the world.

An easier way to get a taste of modern British food is at one of the city’s gastropubs (pubs that focus on food rather than drink). One of my favorites is The Anchor and Hope, just south of the Thames River, where dishes like potted shrimp—tiny shrimp encased in a clarified nutmeg and cayenne-infused butter, to be spread on toast—and baked Middlewhite pork reflect the best of traditional and modern British food.