The story of the London food scene is one that includes dim sum, Sunday roasts, curries, pizza, sinasir, rarebits, banh mi, udon, pepper pot, sweetbread suya, and natural wine. Across cuisines, neighborhoods, and price points, all these dishes and drinks place London among the very best and most diverse places to eat in the world.

This guide, which I’ve been compiling and iterating on for the better part of the last decade, aims to reflect the best food and most important restaurants in the capital. As of winter 2025, London is enjoying the emergence of an increasing number of classically French-inspired restaurants, while diners — perhaps a little jaded by the status quo of the post-pandemic cookie-cutter opening — are revisiting old classics, many of which either maintain consistency through years of habit or just get better with age.

I want this map to help you navigate a city in which it is all too easy to eat poorly, but in which it is increasingly inexcusable to do so. It will showcase a mix of over three dozen restaurants, which have all done outstanding things in extraordinary times: emerging, surviving, thriving, and continuing to enrich the city and its food culture through more than half a decade of unprecedented change and tumult.

In this latest refresh, we’ve revamped our write-ups to include even more relevant info for diners, including a rough range of pricing for each destination — ranging from $ for quick, inexpensive meals with dishes largely under $10 USD (or the equivalent in pounds), to $$$$ for places where entrees exceed $30.

New to the map in March 2025: Ambassador’s Clubhouse, an over-the-top Punjabi restaurant fit for a party; Ikoyi, a two-Michelin-starred special occasion restaurant serving ultra-modern West African tasting menus; and Goodbye Horses, a thoroughly stylish new-age wine bar with an immaculate wine list and avant-garde small plates.

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