As Jonathan Nunn wrote in his guide to north London’s best-value restaurants, “Durak, a tantuni salonu run by Dogan Yesil on West Green Road, is the superior late night snack template.” Only the tantuni, a speciality which originates in the city of Mersin on the southern coast of Turkey, is served here. Beef is boiled, seasoned with the likes of tomato, pul biber, sumac, and cumin and subsequently fried in cotton oil before being loaded, meat juices aplenty, inside a thin lavash with chopped parsley, tomato, and onion. It is then given a pleasing bend before being eaten; a selection of high-acid accompaniments — pickled chillis, lemon — provide the necessary cut-through.

Mukaddes Yadikar’s restaurant near Walthamstow Central station opened in London in summer 2017. It was London’s first strictly Uyghur restaurant, and has become perhaps E17’s finest neighbourhood restaurant. Some points of advice: First, go with a group. Second, to start, go for the Chaomian, a stir-fry of short noodle snippets wokked with chunks of beef, spring onion, and tomato. Third, and most importantly, get the signature da pan ji (“big plate chicken”): a remarkably deep, savoury, and spicy chicken and potato stew, teeming with Sichuan peppercorns, served with flat hand-pulled noodles. This is a warm, homely, and treasured space to eat in east London.

Gratefully, chef Sirichai Kularbwong and family have reopened London’s preeminent Thai neighbourhood restaurant. Customers returning to the most homely and reassuring of dining rooms find menu staples such as phad thai, wok-fried morning glory with garlic and fish sauce, sour tom yum, and fried tilapia. But real ones know that it’s the blackboard menu of specials where Kularbwong really flexes: steamed sea bass Cantonese style; herbal fruit salads, such as mangosteen, lychee, shallot, and mint; jungle curries; larbs; grilled ribs; and the peerless twice-fried moo krob with garlic, chilli, and holy basil.

When P. Franco, one of London’s most important wine bars and restaurants of the last decade, closed in March, it did so to widespread disbelief and sadness. But natural wine and small plate lovers need grieve no more, for 107 Wine Shop and Bar is here — on the same site, with many of the same staff (led by Will Gee), the same ilk of peripatetic guest chefs (recently Mitchell Damota and Elliot Hashtroudi), and the same low-intervention wines that P. Franco was so successful in mainstreaming in Hackney over the years. The communal high table remains; so too does the storm-snapped half sign bearing three letters of the name of the Chinese takeaway that came before P. Franco. Plus ça change?

Jeremie Cometto-Lingenheim and David Gingell’s Westerns Laundry (the pair also oversees Primeur, the various Jolenes, and Big Jo) is one of London’s best seafood restaurants, a notable champion of English and especially Cornish suppliers. It’s still serving glorious plates like fideo pasta rich with cuttlefish, squid ink, and aioli; monkfish friggitelli and mojo verde; and John Dory, peas, braised gem lettuce, and pancetta. A covered terrace and stellar wine list, with low-intervention and classic options, add to the reasons to visit this outstanding warmly lit and carefully designed Holloway restaurant.

Max Fishman’s Quarter Kitchen — the breakfast and lunch kiosk which he opened with chef Rodrigo Cervantes in a Hackney churchyard in the summer of 2022 — serves some of London’s best Mexican food. Originally from Mexico City and previously an employee of Smoking Goat, Koya, and Rita’s in London, Cervantes cooks a mighty fine breakfast. Options include two tortillas with hash browns, fried eggs, and smoked bacon glazed with maple syrup and sugar; breakfast burritos based on the American McDonald’s versions (with sausage patties, American cheese, and chopped peppers); gorditas; tepache; tacos al pastor done on a small yakitori grill inside the kiosk; and the mess-making bright red pambazo. The Quarter Kitchen also serves excellent coffee and features a range of espressos from some of Europe’s best roasters.

This diminutive shop on Hackney’s Graham Road serves one of the city’s best sandwiches — inside one of the city’s best baguettes. Although the spot has just one table and three or four seats, it’s difficult to think of warmer hospitality than at Bánh Mì Hội-An. The duo behind the counter prepare fresh sandwiches to go, and while the pork classic is excellent, don’t sleep on the turmeric-heavy fried catfish on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays; fragrant with coriander, mayo, fermented chilli paste, sriracha, and pickled vegetables, it is an object lesson in flavour, texture, and balance.

Trullo’s elegant dining room and simple, seasonal food make it one of London’s best Italian restaurants and one of its finest neighbourhood restaurants. Dark wood, low lighting, white tablecloths, and straightforward plating make Trullo decidedly anti-Instagram. Its spiritual parents are the two most important restaurants of a generation, the River Cafe and St. John. Dishes marry Italian traditions with British (and Italian) ingredients, which are fashioned into antipasti, fresh pastas, and secondi, dishes which often do a little time on the charcoal grill. Where sister site Padella is cheaper, faster, and increasingly difficult to get into, Trullo, which offers the same signature beef shin pappardelle and other Padella hits, is more of a grown-up place to eat and relax. A largely Italian (and natural-leaning) wine list is just as considered as everything else.

East Ham is home to London’s largest Kerala community and its greatest concentration of South Indian restaurants. The pick of them is Thattukada, run by chef-owners Biju and Preeti Gopinath. Curries and roasts have a depth of flavour and spicing that belie their simple descriptions, and they should be mopped up with crisp parottas or snow-white appams. But it’s the legendary fries that are unmissable: half a chicken cut into segments, then aggressively and skilfully fried with chilli and crispy onions; little netholi (anchovies) cooked and eaten whole; or battered mussels that pop thrillingly in the mouth.

This elegantly designed wine club beneath a Haggerston railway arch now firmly belongs in the top bracket of (French) restaurants in London. Chef Seb Myers and his modern-ish, playful take on French country cooking fits perfectly with the fascinating and broad wine list owned by patron Jonathan Alphandery. With dishes such as a red mullet tartine; grilled leeks vinaigrette with Tunworth cheese; a duck offal choux farcis; and mackerel with coco beans and greens; as well as a caramel tart with blue cheese, Planque has nearly everything that makes a great modern European restaurant great.

Since Cafe Cecilia opened in 2021, it has maintained a steady flow of plaudits from all the coolest places, in part because of chef-owner Max Rocha’s connection to the world of fashion (father John and sister Simone are designers). However, there’s a surfeit of substance as well as style in this stark, minimalist cafe-bistro. Rocha and his staff are direct descendents of the ingredients-obsessed River Cafe, Rochelle Canteen, and Quo Vadis. Like peer Anna Tobias’s cooking at Cafe Deco, Rocha’s can be a bit beige, but it’s deserving of the attention it has received. Do not miss the steak and chips with peppercorn sauce, nor fruit tart at dessert.

The area around Euston station is replete with no-frills, delicious places to eat. This little Malaysian basement setup from chef Sugen Gopal on Doric Way may be the best. Two pieces of freshly made, high-moisture roti canai — to eat in or take away — are best served with curry dal. That speciality costs only £4.50, though round two is likely, and a newly introduced online queueing system has added a new seamlessness to the experience.

Chef Ed Wilson’s hearty French Italian menu is a showcase for his own personal love of food. To eat here is to share that passion, especially now with an increased emphasis on fresh pasta and spectacular comfort food. Wines are predominantly natural and biodynamic. Illustrated wine posters, art, and curios on whitewashed brick walls also make the two relaxed dining rooms on Columbia Road among London’s most handsome and cool. Here also lie the city’s smallest and most beautiful bathrooms — among the very first to use Aesop, to boot.

After a refurbishment of both kitchen and premises, this haven on Farringdon Road is back to the form that has made it one of the most essential of the city’s essential kitchens in recent years. Chef Nick Bramham’s cooking now leans more towards the Aegean, with the likes of giouvarlakia bringing herbed meatballs bobbing in avgolemono. The menu will change weekly and will travel across southern Europe, but look out for Bramham’s clever riffs on BLTs, lobster rolls, and perfectly seasoned pasta dishes, after peerless gildas, before flawless sour cherry cannoli.

Since March 2023, the always inventive Ben Chapman and his brilliant development chef Kim SongSoo have repositioned the laid-back Shoreditch Thai restaurant and bar Smoking Goat as a “chicken shop” — serving (very good) fried chicken, fish sauce wings, and snacks fashioned from crisped seasoned chicken skin. But Kim has also conceived a number of new dishes with a fresh focus on wok-cookery, including fried noodles with egg, chilli, and green onion that makes a visit essential; the moreish, textural phenomenon can work on its own or as the centrepiece around which other dishes can be enjoyed, such as the sweet, umami-rich pork with Chinese olives.

This handsome, minimalist, blond wood-and-concrete Shoreditch restaurant is a marriage of its co-owner James Lowe’s British heritage (St. John Bread & Wine) and his many stints across the globe, including one at Noma. Lowe is a gifted chef and one of London’s foremost proponents of quality British produce. His relaxed brand of fine dining regularly celebrates mutton, game, and goat, as well as wood-fired seafood and seasonal English vegetables.

Here is a restaurant that unashamedly and decadently revisits the past. Theatrical cooking happens tableside, and many guests take the chance to marvel at the traditional silverware required for the preparation of canard à la presse (pressed duck), Otto Tepasse’s trademark; the duck meat is dressed with a rich brandy-heavy gravy made from the pressed carcass and served alongside the world’s most otherworldly carbohydrate: pommes soufflées. When a restaurateur opens a namesake restaurant, especially in the possessive, it can be narcissistic or lazy or both. In the case of Otto’s, Tepasse is so important to this operation, the name could not be more appropriate.

Florence Knight’s Sessions Arts Club pairs one of the city’s most stunning dining rooms with one of its low-key best and cleverest kitchens. No dish better demonstrates Knight’s skill and ingenuity than the fried potato, smoked eel, and cod’s roe, which sees the eel embedded inside the carbohydrate like a smoky fish-and-chip millefeuille. Other must-tries include the squid with calamarata pasta; crab croquettes; and rabbit, cotechino, cabbage, and mustard. If a Diptyque candle became a room, then this would be it.

Chef Wei Guirong is a star of London dining: Her first (joint) venture, Xi’an Impression opposite the Emirates stadium in Highbury, has long held cult status among food lovers in London. But increasingly, Master Wei, Guirong’s solo project in Bloomsbury, is outshining its forebear. This is a bigger site, for one, which means there’s a greater chance of scoring a table — more space in which to enjoy peerless biang biang noodles with vegetables or beef; fine liang pi, cold skin noodles with a cool, refreshing, umami-rich dressing; and the chef’s Xi’an-style “burgers” with a filling comprising cumin-spiced beef or pork.

Giorgio Locatelli is one of London’s best-known chefs, and while peers of a similar renown leave their namesake creations in the hands of others, Locatelli is often at Locanda, either in the kitchen or working the room. The restaurant’s location, inside the Hyatt Regency Churchill hotel in Marylebone, belies a friendly warmth and conviviality. It’s one for a special occasion, but the quality of the food keeps the restaurant — after two decades — among London’s essential venues. Try the fresh pappardelle with ceps; malfatti potato parcels with peppers, mint, Parmigiano-Reggiano; roast monkfish with walnut-caper sauce and samphire; or anything on the menu in autumn, the best time in the year to eat a lot of Italian food.

Shuko Oda’s little bar in Soho is among London’s most acclaimed Japanese restaurants. Over a long, blond wooden counter, chefs calmly and politely pass hot bowls of steaming broth containing noodles made on-site, topped with proteins like tempura prawn or smoked mackerel, or seasonal green vegetables from Sussex farm Namayasai. The specials board of small plates changes every day and exhibits some of the city’s best modern British cooking; the traditional Japanese breakfast is the most steadying in London.

One of the comparatively recent new wave of Sichuan and Xi’an restaurants in Chinatown, Food House (風味食堂) is run by a younger generation of chefs and restaurateurs. Indeed, it might be the hippest restaurant in central London. Hordes of immaculately dressed shoppers and students gather for hot pots, whole fish in chilli oil, numbing Chongqing noodles, cumin-studded grilled skewers, and Chinese hamburgers while competing with the staff for the coolest look. This extremely trendy restaurant is a scene all of its own, but not unwelcoming; it’s perfect for either a date or a group booking.

Mayfair’s Michelin-starred Indian restaurant Gymkhana is one of a few places in London that manages to straddle the line between celebrity hype and quality cooking. Tandoori masala lamb chops, chicken butter masala, and the trademark wild muntjac biryani remain standouts. The prices match the level of cooking and the surrounds, making this one for special occasions.

A treasure. Unmoved by the comings and goings of trends, Bermondsey’s 40 Maltby St is a 40-cover answer to the question, pejorative as it may often be: What is British food? Steve Williams is a chef’s chef, cited by James Lowe, Brett Graham, and Florence Knight in their top five in the city. Raef Hodgson of distributor Gergovie Wines — which features low-intervention styles — runs the front of house without hubris. Check Instagram for the menu, which is always going to feature in-jokes and delicious dishes such as pork schnitzel with raw celeriac, mustard, and braised potatoes, onion, and thyme, or a chestnut and brown sugar meringue.

Chef Faye Gomes’s peerless Guyanese market stall has relocated to Castle Square following the controversial demolition of Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre next to which Gomes had traded for 17 years. Check chef Gomes’s Instagram in advance for trademark, long-prepared, and slow-cooked traditional dishes like pepper pot, garlic pork, and cow foot souse. Or turn up for a surprise of dishes that draw on the many culinary influences and colonial legacies of Guyana: dal puri roti; pholourie; fried fish with tomato; potato, green mango, okra, and coconut curry; stewed brown chicken, which, like the pepper pot, is coloured and enriched with cassareep, a liquid extraction from cassava root, as well as clove and cinnamon; and stew pumpkin.

For the past 12 months or so, London has welcomed a style of pizza that’s closer to American slice-joint pies. It’s drier, and, well, crispier than the sloppier, saucier Neapolitan cousins that have dominated the London pizza scene for over a decade. The aptly named Crisp Pizza (for Crisp Street, ya know) is serving this style, on the well-done side (don’t tell this guy), with a range of classic toppings, like pepperoni with mozzarella and tomato, ’nduja, and “seasoned mushroom.” Right now, there’s a four-cheese calzone too, and it’s all available Wednesday and Thursday (evenings only), as well as Friday through to Sunday 1 p.m. until 9 p.m. at the Chancellors pub in Hammersmith. These guys call Parmesan “Parm,” which belies the back-to-basics brilliance of the overall enterprise.

In his guide to the city’s best East African restaurants, Riaz Phillips says Adulis’s “palatial setting has to make it one of the finest east African and Eritrean restaurants in the capital.” The dark wooden fixtures give every meal here a sense of occasion. The restaurant is well-suited to solo or group dining, with a menu offering selections for one, two, four, and eight persons, and excellent options for vegans, vegetarians, and meat-eaters. Look out for kwanta fitfit, smoked, dried beef with green chilli and injera; zilzl assa, grilled red snapper seasoned with Eritrean herbs; and the entire range of vegetarian and vegan stews, comprising spinach, beans, chickpeas, and lentils, all eaten with more of the excellent, subtly tangy, and moreish injera.

The second branch for this south London institution, Nandine — “kitchen” in Kurdish — is run by Pary Baban, her husband Pola, and sons Rang and Raman. During the day it serves a menu of brunch dishes, meze, and intricate pastries. Technicoloured and abundant meze platters served in the evening include kubba (minced beef and rice patties), onion dolma, and qawarma. Pastries like borek, made with a Kurdish pastry called galgali, and baklava are not to be missed.