Ideal for bringing five-star flair to your most private room…
There’s a moment, somewhere around night two of a holiday, when you stop noticing the sea view and start coveting the bathroom. That floor-to-ceiling stone. The rainfall shower you didn’t want to leave. The way everything felt considered, from the lighting down to the weight of the towels.
If you’ve ever checked into a luxury hotel in Thailand, Bali or even Vietnam and found yourself more excited by the bathroom than the beach, you’re not alone, and you’re certainly not beyond help. Because here’s the thing: most of what makes those hotel bathrooms feel so special isn’t prohibitively expensive or architecturally impossible. It’s a matter of understanding the principles at play and applying them with discipline. The good news? Your bathroom in Bristol, Bath or Balham can borrow heavily from the best suites in Bangkok.
Zone Your Space & Separate Your Functions
The single biggest difference between a hotel bathroom that feels like a retreat and a domestic one that doesn’t? Zoning. In most hotel suites the bathroom is not treated as a single, multipurpose room. It’s a series of distinct spaces, each with its own function and, crucially, its own sense of purpose.
The Japanese model is the most instructive here. A traditional Japanese home separates the bathroom into three areas: the toire (toilet room), the senmenjo (washing and vanity area) and the ofuro (the bathing room itself, built around a deep soaking tub). The toilet is entirely enclosed in its own small room. The vanity sits in a dry zone. The bathing area, shower and tub included, is a fully waterproofed wet room where every surface can handle water with no fuss.
This three-zone approach is the blueprint behind some of the most impressive hotel bathrooms in the world, from the minimalist suites of Aman Tokyo to the open-plan wet rooms of a luxury Krabi villa. And while most British homes don’t have the square footage to replicate it exactly, the principle scales down beautifully. Even a modest partition wall, a glass screen or a cleverly positioned vanity unit can introduce the idea of separation between wet and dry functions. If a full partition isn’t feasible, a half-height wall or a simple change in flooring material, say from timber-effect tile to natural stone, can do the psychological work of dividing the room without losing a sense of openness.
For smaller spaces where full zoning isn’t possible, consider smart glass or frosted glass screens to maintain a bright, open feel while still providing that sense of visual separation. Switchable privacy glass, which shifts from transparent to opaque at the press of a button, is increasingly available from UK manufacturers and brings that high-end hotel trick of a glass-walled bathroom into the domestic realm without sacrificing modesty.
Rethink Where Your Bath Lives
If there’s one design move that luxury hotels have normalised and British homes have been slow to adopt, it’s liberating the bathtub from the bathroom entirely. In some tropical 5 star resorts, you’ll find a bathtub outside.
The UK, of course, doesn’t have the weather for this. So consider instead, a freestanding tub positioned in the bedroom. You’ll often find this arrangement too, in high-end suites across Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean. The bath becomes a sculptural centrepiece rather than something wedged between the toilet and the towel rail, and the bathroom itself gains back valuable square footage – enough to consider those dry and wet zones previously mentioned.
Even if a full bedroom bath isn’t for you, the underlying principle is worth applying: don’t assume the bath has to live where the previous owner put it. Moving a freestanding tub to a different position within the bathroom, perhaps beneath a window, against a feature wall or into a central position where it can be approached from all sides, can completely transform the room’s layout. That repositioning alone is often the difference between a bathroom that feels cramped and one that feels like somewhere you’d actually want to spend time.
Ideal Tip: While there’s no UK law explicitly prohibiting a bath in a bedroom, installing plumbing in a room that didn’t previously have it is considered a change of use under the Building Regulations, and you’ll need Building Control approval.
Choose A Material & Commit To It
Walk into a beautifully designed hotel bathroom and you’ll notice that, more often than not, the material palette is tight. Two or three surfaces at most, repeated with conviction. One type of stone running from the floor up the shower wall. A single timber tone across the vanity and shelving. Metalwork in one finish throughout. The restraint is what gives the room its sense of calm.
The luxury hotel approach is simpler than it sounds: pick a hero material and let it do the heavy lifting. Natural stone, whether marble, travertine, limestone or slate, is the most immediate route to that five-star feel. Marble brings veined drama, travertine offers warmth, slate grounds a room in something darker and more textural. If a full stone bathroom is beyond budget, even a single feature wall in the shower or behind the bath can anchor the whole room.
Large-format tiles are another hotel trick worth borrowing. Fewer grout lines mean cleaner sight lines, and larger tiles create an illusion of space that’s particularly welcome in British bathrooms, which are, let’s be honest, not generally built for lingering. Lay them floor to ceiling for maximum impact.
Stone shower panels are worth a particular mention here, because they eliminate grout lines altogether. Rather than tiling a shower enclosure and dealing with the inevitable maintenance of grout (which, in a wet environment, is a battle you will eventually lose), a solid stone panel offers a single, seamless surface that’s both easier to clean and visually striking. Natural stone panels in marble, granite or travertine bring genuine weight and texture to the space, though they require sealing and come at a premium.
Engineered stone and composite alternatives offer much of the same visual impact at a lower price point, with better resistance to staining and less upkeep. Either way, the effect is the same: your shower stops looking like a tiled cubicle and starts looking like something you’d find in a villa in Koh Samui.
Whatever you choose, the key is coherence. Limit yourself to three finishes: one for surfaces, one for woodwork or cabinetry, and one for metalwork. That discipline is what separates a bathroom that feels like a suite at a luxury Thai resort from one that feels like a mood board that got out of hand.
In a hotel bathroom, the fixtures are the furniture. A freestanding bath, a wall-mounted basin, a floor-standing tap; these are the pieces that define the character of the room, much as a sofa or dining table defines a living space. And yet in most home bathrooms, fixtures are treated as afterthoughts, chosen for price rather than presence.
A rainfall showerhead is one of the simplest and most effective upgrades you can make. Ceiling-mounted versions create a drenching, immersive experience that feels categorically different from a handheld shower. Waterfall taps are another fixture that luxury hotels deploy to great effect, and they translate beautifully to a domestic bathroom and create a visual and auditory experience that feels closer to a natural waterfall than a piece of plumbing.
Wall-mounted taps and basins are another easy win. By lifting the basin off the floor and running the pipework into the wall, you create that floating, minimal look that luxury bathrooms trade in, while also making the floor easier to clean. If a full wall-mounted set-up isn’t practical, a countertop basin on a timber or stone vanity achieves a similar effect with less disruption to existing plumbing.
The finish of your hardware matters enormously, too. Brushed brass, matte black and brushed nickel all read as more considered than standard polished chrome, which can look clinical in certain settings. The trick is to commit to one finish across all your fixtures and accessories, from shower controls to towel rails to toilet flush plates. That uniformity is one of the quieter details that makes a hotel bathroom feel so composed.
Layer Your Lighting
If there’s one area where domestic bathrooms consistently fall short of their hotel counterparts, it’s lighting. Most rely on a single ceiling fitting, which produces flat, unflattering light and does nothing for the atmosphere of the room. Hotels, by contrast, use layered lighting to create a space that can shift in mood depending on the time of day and the task at hand.
The three layers to consider are ambient, task and accent. Ambient lighting provides the room’s overall brightness; recessed ceiling downlights or a central fitting serve this purpose. Task lighting is focused and functional, designed for grooming; wall-mounted sconces or LED strips on either side of a mirror are far more flattering than a single light above it, as they eliminate harsh shadows on the face.
Accent lighting is where the atmosphere lives: LED strips beneath a floating vanity, a backlit mirror, niche lighting inside a shower recess or a warm glow behind a freestanding bath. Each layer should, ideally, be dimmable, giving you the ability to move from bright and functional in the morning to warm and low in the evening.
Ideal Tip: A word on colour temperature: aim for warm white bulbs, somewhere around 2700K to 3000K. This is the range that flatters skin tones and creates that inviting warmth you associate with a good hotel. Anything cooler starts to feel surgical.
Upgrade Your Towels & Robes
It sounds almost too simple, but the tactile experience of a luxury hotel bathroom owes as much to its textiles as its tiles. Those impossibly thick towels, the kind that make you want to stand in them for longer than is strictly reasonable, are not a mystery ingredient. They’re simply good towels, properly cared for.
A bathrobe is a small luxury that disproportionately shifts the feel of a room. Waffle-weave cotton is the classic hotel choice, lighter and more breathable than heavy terry cloth, and it looks better draped on a hook. Heated towel rails deserve reconsideration here, too. A well-chosen rail in a finish that matches your other fixtures, a slim, ladder-style design in matte black or brushed brass, for instance, doubles as both a warming device and a sculptural presence on the wall.
Invest In Scent
No hotel bathroom worth its Egyptian cotton hand towels neglects scent. It’s one of the most powerful and least expensive ways to shift the atmosphere of a room, and it works on a level that’s almost subconscious. The right fragrance, encountered as you walk in, can do more for the mood of the space than a new tile job.
The approach should be layered, much like the lighting. A reed diffuser provides a constant, low-level background fragrance. Scented hand soap and body wash tie the experience together. The key is consistency; choose a single scent family, whether that’s something woody and resinous, green and herbaceous, or clean and citrus, and let it run through everything. Hotels do this deliberately, creating an olfactory signature that guests associate with the experience of being there. There’s no reason your bathroom can’t do the same.
Aesop is the gold standard here, and for good reason. Their hand washes and body products look the part without trying, the amber bottles are handsome enough to display without decanting, and the formulations genuinely smell like something a grown-up would choose.
If you’ve blown your renovation budget on stone panels and brushed brass fixtures, the M&S Apothecary range is a very creditable mid-price alternative. The packaging is sleek, the essential oil-based fragrances (Calm, Restore, Meditate) are well-judged for a bathroom setting, and the whole range is designed to sit together as a coherent collection.
For those on a tighter budget still, Lidl’s Deluxe hand wash range is quietly one of the best dupes on the high street. The bottles look smart, the scents are more than passable, and at a fraction of the price you can afford to keep your bathroom stocked without wincing. Of course, any brand can be decanted into pretty matching bottles – something most hotels do now.
Declutter With Discipline
The final lesson from the hotel bathroom is perhaps the most important and the hardest to maintain: keep your surfaces clear. Every luxury bathroom you’ve ever admired in a resort had one thing in common: you couldn’t see anyone’s shampoo collection.
This means storage, and quite a lot of it. Recessed niches in the shower wall eliminate the need for caddy baskets and free-standing bottles. Closed cabinetry beneath the vanity hides everything from toilet rolls to cleaning products. Internal drawer organisers keep cosmetics and toiletries in order without stacking them on the counter. The goal is to have a home for every single item in the room, so that the default state of the bathroom, the version of it that exists when nobody is actively using it, is one of total calm.
Decanting your everyday shampoo, conditioner and body wash into matching bottles is a small act of theatre, but an effective one. Amber glass or matte ceramic dispensers bring cohesion to the shower area and eliminate the visual noise of branded packaging.
The Bottom Line
If you’re looking for more ways to bring a touch of luxury to this most intimate of rooms, have a read of our 8 luxury alternatives to your traditional bathroom fixtures. Your bathtub will thank you, even if your bank account is a little less enthusiastic.
In the heart of London’s West End – a broad term that encompasses Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea – lies a glittering gem renowned globally for its dazzling drama and sparkling performances.
No, we’re not talking about the London Coliseum or Palladium, striking as they may be. Rather, we’re referring to the West End’s other great centres of showmanship; its restaurants.
Indeed, both the culinary and the theatrical roots of the West End run deep, the latter stretching back to the dawning of the Restoration period in the 17th century, when the reopening of theatres marked an era of unbridled creativity, innovation and artistic expression.
Over the centuries, this district has evolved into a theatrical powerhouse, featuring remarkable venues from the grand and ornate, like the Royal Opera House, to the more intimate, such as the Ambassadors Theatre. Today, this legendary locale is synonymous with the best that theatre has to offer – a place where dreams take centre stage, where heartache and euphoria intermingle in tales of love, loss, and ambition.
Yet, the allure of the West End extends beyond its stunning performances. There is an intrinsic romance surrounding the tradition of attending theatre in this magical corner of London. Part of this allure comes from the cherished ritual of dining before the curtain rises – the pre-theatre meal.
The concept of a pre-theatre meal is as time-honoured as the West End itself, rooted in the practicality of dining early enough to ensure no late arrivals to the auditorium (and the disruption of rustling crisp packets once the show has begun).
However, it’s the convivial charm of these meals that has truly made them an enduring tradition. A moment of anticipation, where palate-pleasing cuisine gives way to the excitement of the impending performance – it’s a match made in heaven.
Today, we’re exploring that delicious opening act with an eye on our pockets, seeking out the best dinner deals, price fixes and set menus in the heart of London’s theatre district.
So, with that in mind, here’s where to find the best value pre-theatre menus in London’s West End.
Wild Honey, St. James
Ideal for effortless Modern European cuisine with an eminently reasonable price tag…
Chef Anthony Demetre is one of the most unassumingly influential chefs in the UK, and a man whose first restaurant Arbutus was credited with bringing the Modern European, small plates vibe to Central London long before pretty much every other restaurant in the UK was doing the same.
We’d go as far as to say that his Michelin-starred restaurant Wild Honey does the flagship pre-theatre menu in London. Now in its fourth consecutive year holding a Michelin star, Wild Honey’s pre-theatre supper runs from 5pm to 6.15pm, and is packed out for each of those early evenings. The proposition here is refreshingly simple; three courses of effortlessly faultless, always generous cooking for £45.
On the current menu, Cornish mussels arrive in a warm squash velouté with sea herbs and vegetables – it’s a bowl of coastal comfort. Follow with Tamworth pork belly ‘a la plancha’ alongside a ragout of snails and grilled sand-grown carrots, or Cornish cod with crushed early potatoes and Tokyo turnip for something lighter. End with a warm apple crumble tart and thick custard cream (yep, you read that right, and doesn’t it sound good?), or the restaurant’s take on île flottante with pink pralines, and you’ve got one of London’s best set menus, full stop. The fact that it’s light, bright and at times effervescent in its delivery feels just right before settling into the performance proper.
And if Demetre’s signature crispy chicken with hand-cut macaroni ‘Cacio e Pepe’ is on the menu, pre-theatre or not, order it. The dish is divine.
Ideal for Italian opulence and refined dining in the heart of the theatre district…
On the lower ground floor of the luxury, high camp hotel Broadwick Soho, Dear Jackie is a destination that exudes Italian opulence and glamour, in that kind of big-hearted, extravagant way that we love so much about Bel Paese.
Located in the heart (or, should that be bowels?) of London’s theatre district, it’s the perfect spot for an early evening dinner before emerging blinking into the light, ready to once again be plunged into darkness at the theatre.
The pre-theatre menu at Dear Jackie is a curation of some of the restaurant’s most-loved dishes, served, in true Dear Jackie style, with a fair amount of flourish. The ambiance is set with Murano lighting, crimson silk walls, and plush banquettes, ensuring a truly special experience to sink into, even if you are only commencing your evening here, rather than the evening taking you over.
Guests have the option of either two courses for £30 or three for £35, making it excellent value for the quality of cuisine on offer. Start your meal with light, zippy starters like sea bass crudo with navelina orange and fennel, or burrata served with fresh peas, asparagus, and white balsamic.
For mains, expect dishes such as roast cod with Jerusalem artichoke, Blythburgh pork neck with heritage carrots, or a bowl of orecchiette with Roman courgettes, datterini tomatoes, and smoked almonds – a truly elegant reflection of the season.
No meal at Dear Jackie would be complete without one of their indulgent desserts, which chime succinctly with the sumptuous surroundings of this den of deliciousness. Round off your dining experience with a classic Amaretto tiramisu or a selection of ice creams and sorbets to end things on a sweet note.
The menu is available for dinner Monday to Wednesday until 6.15pm, and Thursday to Saturday for both lunch (from midday) and dinner (until 6.15pm).
Ideal for regional Italian food in the heart of Soho…
Here at IDEAL, our love of Soho restaurant Bocca di Lupo is no secret; it’s a place we come back to time and time again, never getting tired of chef Jacob Kennedy’s ode to regional Italian cuisine.
Whether it’s the Laziale salt-baked bream or the melting mangalitsa coppa from Emilia Romagna that’s served over bang-in-season slices of melon, there’s no restaurant in London more adept at transporting you to Bel Paese than this one.
Before your next bout of escapism in the nearby Apollo Theatre, you can first immerse yourself in Bocca di Lupo’s lunch and pre-theatre set menu, which runs until 6.30pm, Monday to Friday. For £18 (!) you’ll get a starter and main, with the option to add dessert for an extra £8. It’s a concise, focused affair that changes monthly with the seasons.
On a recent visit, the main course was an open-handed bowl of the Sicilian classic rigatoni all norma, all fudgy from deep-fried aubergines and umami-rich from tomatoes and salted ricotta. It was joyous. Start with a Puglian dried broad bean puree with cicoria and chilli for a proper taste of regional Italy, and finish with an affogato – hazelnut gelato drowned in espresso – that’ll perk you up nicely before taking your seat for a two-hour play.
Here, in a bright and breezy dining room defined by blonde wood and cheery waitstaff, it’s a set menu designed for sharing – for £46 per person you won’t see the whites of your table for the veritable spread of perky vegetable-led dishes that are laid out in front of you. Available Monday to Friday, 5pm to 6.30pm.
Those dishes are unmistakably Ottolenghi; on the current menu, expect aubergine with coconut tahini, ezme and mint, roasted beetroot with gochujang, tofu and almond cream, and seared sea bass with turmeric potatoes and rassam broth. There’s amba lamb kofta too, with roasted pepper, pickled kohlrabi and burnt butter yoghurt, plus baharat-buttered pink fir potatoes with tarragon. A passion fruit sorbet with Urfa tajin, mezcal and lime rounds things off with a kick.
It’s a lovely light way to raise the curtain on an evening of theatre, but if you’re keen to loosen up a little before the show, then for an additional £21 you can enjoy several consummate paired glasses of wine to go with your food. Cheers to that!
The all-conquering British steakhouse needs little in the way of an introduction; there are now a dozen in operation, including a recent opening in New York that’s been receiving all the plaudits.
Though Hawksmoor isn’t necessarily known for its inclusive pricing, at the Seven Dials outpost, just a short hop from several West End theatres, you’ll find a commendably priced set menu. Right now, through January 2026, their legendary ‘£19 Steak & Side’ promotion is back – one course for £19, two for £23, or three for £26. That gets you 35-day dry-aged rump steak with a choice of side, and you can bookend it with potted beef and bacon to start or a sticky toffee pudding to finish.
It’s one of the best steakhouse deals in London, and you’ll be pleased it wasn’t one of the restaurant’s larger, heavier cuts when you’re bright eyed and bushy tailed come theatre time.
The January menu runs Monday to Friday 12pm-3.15pm and 4.30pm-5.30pm, and Saturday 12pm-5.30pm.
Ideal for celeb spotting with a side of Stateside staples…
There could be nowhere more fitting to end our round-up of the best value pre-theatre menus in the West End than at Joe Allen. Aside from the fantastic New York brasserie-style food and side order of celeb spotting (Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian Mckellen have both been known to dine here), you’ll find excellent value within these hallowed walls. The set menu runs Monday to Friday, midday to 6.30pm, and is just £25 for two courses or £30 for three.
For that straightforward sum, you’ll get satisfying plates loosely inspired by what’s going on Stateside (or rather, what was going on around a century ago), whether that’s a refreshingly uncomplicated Caesar salad or a portion of back baby ribs with bread and butter pickles.
The current set menu keeps things classic – roasted chicken leg with Lyonnaise potatoes, or pan fried gnocchi with roasted squash, tomato and sage if you’re going meat-free. Finish with apple pie and custard, and you’ve well and truly earnt your West End stripes.
Ideal for British cooking with bohemian spirit in the heart of theatreland…
As belts tighten across the UK, Soho’s pre-theatre dining scene seems to be expanding, with diners prioritising efficiency and affordability over languid luxuriating. In a striking corner spot where Brewer Street meets Warwick, Nessa brings a dash of art deco elegance to that scene, proving that a speedy meal needn’t be a gauche one.
Named after Bloomsbury Group artist Vanessa Bell (rather than, as some might assume, Ruth Jones’s Gavin & Stacey character), the restaurant occupies what was once The Warwick pub, now transformed into an elegant dining space by the team behind Mortimer House, anchored by tan and terracotta tones. When warmer months arrive, the al fresco tables under striped green awnings are sure to be among Soho’s most coveted spots, for the people watching as much as the food.
Not that the food doesn’t hit the mark. At the helm is chef Tom Cenci, formerly of Duck & Waffle and Loyal Tavern, whose menu deftly walks the line between comfort and creativity. The Nessa Express menu, served Monday to Friday, offers exceptional value at £22 for two courses or £27 for three – perfectly designed to get you to the theatre in time for a glass of champagne before curtains up.
On a recent menu, a beetroot and sheep’s cheese number, with granola for crunch and hot honey dressing for intrigue, kicks things off. Follow that with a suave artichoke ravioli, given heft and sweetness with an onion puree and nubs of glazed Jerusalem artichoke – it’s a gorgeous dish that’s full of surprises.
Desserts showcase Cenci’s flair for elevated British classics and are the highlight here – the cherry Bakewell with almond frosting and caramelised pecans is fast becoming a signature, a decadent affair that manages to be both light and satisfying.
If it’s on the express menu when you visit, try their carrot cake, which has the sumptuousness of a sticky toffee pudding and is drenched in a decadent buttery carrot caramel. The delicate cream cheese frosting on top lightens things and is topped intriguingly with a subtle sprinkle of dill powder – it’s one of the most memorable desserts we’ve eaten lately.
If you’ve worked up a thirst, slip into the adjacent bar for one of bar manager Floriano Cubeddu’s expertly crafted cocktails. The drinks list champions British producers and seasonal ingredients, perhaps try their Cuppa G&T with Cotswolds gin, Italicus, rose, and cherry, or their signature Boho Negroni featuring East London Gin, nectarine, and saffron. Or, you know, have both; and forget all about the play you’re now missing…
And with its prime location just minutes from the bright lights of Shaftesbury Avenue, Nessa perfectly positioned for an early dinner before the main event.
That 5am departure to Barcelona looks like a bargain at £47 return. But before you book, consider what happens at the other end of the transaction: how exactly are you getting to the airport at 3am?
Budget airlines have built their business models around unsociable hours. Slots at Stansted, Luton and Gatwick come cheaper in the small hours, and those savings get passed on to passengers. But the airport itself is only half the journey, and a £50 flight that requires a £120 taxi was never really £50 at all.
Here’s how to avoid the most common traps.
Calculate Door-To-Door, Not Airport-To-Airport
Open a spreadsheet before you book anything and calculate every expense from your front door to your destination. Include ground transport at your specific departure time (not the daytime fare you’re imagining), parking if driving, any overnight accommodation, and transport at the other end too. Compare this total across different flight times, not just the ticket price. A flight costing £30 more but departing at 11am frequently works out cheaper once you factor in a standard train versus a pre-dawn taxi.
Use Overnight Flights To Eliminate A Hotel Night
Long-haul red-eyes have a hidden benefit: they can eliminate your first night’s accommodation cost entirely. A flight departing at 10pm that lands at 6am local time means you sleep on the plane instead of paying for a hotel room you’d barely use.
For destinations where hotels run £150+ per night, this represents genuine savings even if the overnight flight costs slightly more than a daytime alternative. The calculation works best for travellers who can actually sleep on planes, but even a few hours of broken rest beats paying for a bed you’d only occupy briefly before an early checkout.
Understand The Regional Airport Trade-Off
Flying from Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester or Edinburgh often costs slightly more per ticket, but ground transport savings can flip the equation entirely. If you’re based in the Midlands, a £80 flight from Birmingham beats a £50 flight from Luton once you add the £60 train fare to get there.
More importantly, regional airports tend to be smaller, faster to navigate, and less prone to the chaotic security queues that make London hubs so stressful during peak periods.
Know The Taxi Tipping Point
Solo taxi journeys to airports rarely represent good value, but the equation shifts dramatically with more passengers. Taxis to Heathrow, Gatwick or other London airports become the smartest option once you’re splitting the fare two, three or four ways. A £90 taxi divided among three people costs £30 each, which often undercuts three separate train tickets while offering door-to-door convenience and no luggage hassle.
The tipping point for most airport runs sits around two passengers; beyond that, taxis almost always win.
Check What Your Destination Airport Actually Connects To
Budget airlines love secondary airports: Beauvais instead of Paris, Treviso instead of Venice, Girona instead of Barcelona. The flight savings can evaporate entirely when you discover the ‘Barcelona’ airport requires a 90-minute bus transfer costing €15 each way.
Before booking, search the actual transport options from your arrival airport to where you’re staying. Sometimes the budget airline’s secondary airport is genuinely convenient. Often it adds hours and costs that would have paid for the mainstream alternative.
Beware the False Economy Of Connections
Flying via a hub like Amsterdam, Dublin or Madrid can slash ticket prices, but connections introduce risk that’s difficult to price. A 90-minute layover looks efficient until your inbound flight runs 40 minutes late and you’re sprinting through Schiphol. If you miss the connection, the airline will rebook you, but you’ll lose hours or potentially an entire day.
For short trips especially, a missed connection can wipe out a significant chunk of your holiday. The direct flight costing £60 more might represent the better value once you account for the stress and the statistical probability of delays.
Budget airline pricing assumes you’re travelling with hand luggage only. The moment you add a checked bag, the equation changes substantially. Ryanair and easyJet charge £20-45 each way for hold luggage depending on when you book and the route. That £40 fare becomes £120 return once you’ve added a suitcase.
Before celebrating a cheap headline price, click through to the final checkout screen with your actual luggage requirements selected. Sometimes a legacy carrier with included baggage undercuts the budget option once you’re comparing like for like.
Consider Whether You Actually Need To Fly
For destinations under 500 miles, the train often competes once you account for total journey time and cost. A London to Paris flight might take 90 minutes in the air, but add security queues, boarding, taxiing, immigration, and the journey from a suburban airport to the city centre, and you’re looking at five or six hours door-to-door.
The Eurostar takes 2 hours 15 minutes from central London to central Paris, with none of the airport theatre. For Amsterdam, Brussels, Lille and other northern European cities, the train increasingly makes sense on both time and cost, particularly when you factor in the productivity or relaxation possible on a train versus the dead time of airports.
Look At What Day You’re Flying, Not Just What Time
Tuesday and Wednesday departures consistently price lower than Friday and Sunday flights on the same routes, sometimes by £50-100 per person. If your schedule allows any flexibility, shifting your trip by a day or two can unlock savings that dwarf the difference between a 6am and 11am departure. The cheapest flight of the week at a reasonable hour often beats the cheapest flight of the day you’ve fixated on.
Don’t Assume Booking Early Is Always Cheaper
The conventional wisdom says book flights months ahead for the best prices. This holds for peak summer weeks and school holidays, but for off-peak travel, airlines often drop prices as departure dates approach to fill empty seats.
If you’re flexible and travelling outside busy periods, setting a price alert and waiting can pay off. The risk is that prices rise instead, but for low-season city breaks, last-minute deals frequently undercut the advance purchase price.
Account for What You’ll Spend Because You’re Tired and Hungry
Is saving £30 on that earlier flight worth it?
Early flights create knock-on costs that don’t appear on any receipt. You’re more likely to buy expensive airport coffee because you’re exhausted, and if your departure time coincides with breakfast or lunch, you’ll almost certainly eat at the terminal rather than at home. Airport food runs two to three times high street prices: a sandwich, coffee and bottle of water can easily cost £15-18.
You’ll probably take a taxi at your destination rather than navigate public transport with heavy luggage (and eyes!). You might write off your first afternoon to a nap instead of sightseeing. None of these show up in a spreadsheet comparison, but they represent real money and real lost time. The flight that lets you travel rested and fed often pays for itself in decisions you won’t make from a place of exhaustion and hunger.
The Bottom Line
The cheapest flight is only cheap if getting there doesn’t cost more than you saved. Before booking, calculate the genuine door-to-door total for each option, factor in your luggage, your energy levels, and the realistic probability that everything goes to plan. The headline price is marketing. The number that matters is what actually leaves your account.
Moving out is never easy, particularly when it comes to cleaning the property you’ve made memories in. When ending a tenancy in the UK, leaving the property sparkling clean is not just courteous – it’s usually a ‘requirement’ to help you reclaim your full deposit.
Not keen on hiring a professional cleaning company? No problem. Here are 10 essential steps to tackle the end-of-tenancy cleaning yourself, ensuring you leave your landlord happy and your deposit intact.
Step 1: Organise Your Cleaning Tasks
Begin by organising your cleaning tasks, methodically, deliberately and practically. Develop a detailed checklist of all areas that need cleaning. You will, of course, need to customise the list according to your property but usually, it includes bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, living room, hallways, and any outdoor areas.
Step 2: Invest In The Necessary Cleaning Appliances & Products
Invest in sturdy, quality cleaning appliances, such as a hoover, mop and squirt bottles. Multi-purpose scrub brushes and a sturdy bucket will also come in handy. Good quality appliances not only make the cleaning process quicker and easier, but they also provide a better finish.
Before splashing out, though, it’s worth weighing up the costs; end of tenancy cleaning in London might run you £200-400 depending on property size, so if you’re buying equipment from scratch, the savings from DIY may be slimmer than you think.
Avoid the typical one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to cleaning solutions. Glass surfaces, wooden floors, and kitchen counters all sparkle best when cleaned with substance-appropriate solutions – steer clear from using abrasive cleaners on delicate surfaces.
Step 4: Freshen Up Walls & Doors
Although walls and doors are not likely to be muddied, they often bear scuff marks or smudges. Cleaning these visually noticeable areas can greatly improve the overall appearance of the rooms. A quick wipe down with soapy water usually does the trick.
Step 5: Deep-Clean Carpets
Carpets might be the most challenging aspects of end-of-tenancy cleaning. Carpets often accumulate dust and debris over the years and may not revive with a simple vacuuming. If your property has carpets, hire or purchase a carpet cleaner to deep-clean and reinvigorate them.
Step 6: Pay Attention To Kitchen Appliances
Kitchen appliances, like your oven and refrigerator, will likely need a thorough clean. Take your time to remove grime, burned food particles, accumulated dust and, of course, cooking smells. Mainly for ovens, specialised cleaning solutions may be required—ensure you use these cautiously to not damage the appliance.
Step 7: Deep Clean Your Bathroom(s)
Bathrooms would greatly benefit from a deep, angular clean. Address limescale on taps and shower heads using a suitable descaler. Clean the toilet bowl, floors, and wipe mirrors and windows spotlessly.
Step 8: Don’t Neglect The Exterior
If your property includes an outside space, don’t overlook these areas. Sweeping the patio, tidying up the lawn and trimming overgrown plants can hasten the retrieval of your deposit.
Step 9: Validate The Cleaning Process
Next, don’t forget to validate your hard work. Return to your initial cleaning checklist and cross check each item. If possible, ask an impartial friend or family member to review the rooms. This can ensure that the cleaning task is completed thoroughly, (hopefully) securing the full return of your deposit.
Step 10: Document Everything
Before you hand back the keys, take dated photographs and videos of every room, including close-ups of appliances, fixtures, and any areas that might later be disputed. This visual evidence can prove invaluable should your landlord attempt to make unfair deductions from your deposit.
Store these images securely, perhaps in a cloud folder, and consider emailing them to yourself so you have a timestamped record. If there were any pre-existing issues when you moved in, cross-reference your new photos with your original inventory to demonstrate nothing has worsened under your tenancy.
Is Professional End-of-Tenancy Cleaning Mandatory by Law In The UK?
One question that often arises among occupants preparing to move out is whether professional end-of-tenancy cleaning is legally required. In the UK, the simple answer to this is “No”. However, like most legal matters, there’s more to the story.
According to the Tenant Fees Act 2019, landlords or letting agencies are not permitted to require tenants to pay for a professional cleaning service when moving out. They also cannot automatically deduct money from the tenant’s deposit for cleaning charges.
The landlord has the right, however, to stipulate that a property be returned in the same condition (excluding normal wear and tear) that it was initially rented out in. If the tenant did not do this or if the rental agreement included such a clause and the property was initially rented out in a professionally cleaned state, it is implied that the tenant is required to return it in a similarly professionally cleaned state.
That being said, while landlords can request this, they cannot enforce it or hold back deposit money without proof of necessity. If issues do arise, deposit disputes can be submitted free of charge to a Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) – one of the three government-approved Deposit Protection Services – for adjudication. The TDS adjudicates with complete impartiality and makes a binding decision based on the evidence presented.
In general, therefore, while professional cleaning may not be mandatory by law, it might be strongly advised in the tenancy agreement to ensure a hassle-free conclusion to your tenancy, especially in cases where the property was initially rented out in a professionally cleaned state.
You might want to consider getting quotes from a cleaning service before deciding whether to do it yourself or hire professional help. Regardless of whether you do hire a professional cleaning service or choose to clean the property yourself, just remember that a spotlessly clean property when you vacate can prevent any cleaning cost deductions from your deposit and make your moving process much smoother. The choice, ultimately, lies in your rubber-gloved hands.
The Bottom Line
While end-of-tenancy cleaning can feel like a mammoth task, a structured and systematic approach can help make it manageable. In doing so, you’ll not only (fingers crossed!) save a fair bit of money,, but also build novel cleaning skills to serve you in your future home. Good luck, and may your end-of-tenancy cleaning be as smooth as possible!
Hey, you! Yes, you. Eyes off the TikTok tab. We see you. We hope we can keep your attention at least unt……..
Hello! Are you still with us? Back in the room. Sometimes, checking out memes and reading funny motivational quotes on your socials feed may not be the best way to get your work done.
We realise a discussion of procrastination and motivation doesn’t have the same gravitational pull as the ol’ scroll and swipe, but if you’ve found your lack of focus affecting your work and productivity lately, then it might be worth your while to stick with us.
Now that the novelty of working from home has worn off, so many of us have found the home office environment to be somewhat lacking in motivation. In fact, research published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, drawing on the 2024 Household Pulse Survey of over 87,000 employed US adults, found that those working remotely three to four days per week had 16% higher odds of reporting loneliness than those not working remotely at all, with similar patterns for those working from home five or more days.
The key here, perhaps, for achieving the right balance of productivity and personal contentment is to make the home office environment conducive to clear-headedness and focus.
The irony’s not lost on us; offering tips on staying focused and motivated when you’re probably reading this article to distract yourself from work perhaps isn’t the best idea, but consider the next five minutes an investment, in your productivity and your mindset. You’re here now, and we have your attention, so do yourself a favour and read on; if you’re still WFH in 2026, then here’s how to stay focused and motivated while working from home.
Establish A Daily Routine
First, you should establish a daily routine. While one of the perks of remote work is the fact that you have more freedom, you will find that it is much easier to stay organised and productive when you have a routine. This means you should get up, start work, take breaks and finish at roughly the same time each day.
Download A Productivity App
Sure, it feels counter-intuitive to be outsourcing your attention span to the one thing so desperate to steal it, but productivity apps and tools are a great way to stay motivated, especially if you have a build up of assignments on your to-do list which are clouding your judgment or concentration. By outsourcing some of the more tedious aspects of organisation to the wonderful world of automation, you can free yourself up for the more creative elements of your role.
Such apps can, at a most basic level, offer deadline reminders and prioritise your tasks accordingly, as well as enabling job tracking and scheduling in an easy to view format. More advanced (usually ‘premium’ and requiring a monthly subscription) versions of productivity apps facilitate easy communication between colleagues remotely, enabling even greater organisation of your responsibilities. All of this leads to better focus when working from home.
Easier said than done, we know. Hey, we’ve walked off to the fridge several times already whilst writing this sentence. But procrastination, in its many sneaky guises, is the enemy of home office based productivity.
As the guys at Mind Cafe highlight, we often “blame lack of self-motivation, laziness, or incompetence for procrastination. In reality, procrastination is chemical and it’s all to do with a battle between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex in the brain.”
They go on to explain that “The limbic system is the emotional part of the brain, which includes the pleasure center. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain responsible for processing information and making decisions. The prefrontal cortex is less developed, and so it is weaker.’
‘That is why, usually, the limbic system wins the prefrontal cortex and thus creating procrastination. The limbic system is one of the dominant parts of the brain and could easily take over if you lose focus on the task at hand. This results in giving in to what makes us feel good, leading to the secretion of dopamine that comes with procrastination.”
Stock Up On Both Office & Lunch Supplies
Crafting your set-up for working from home is paramount to your productivity. One aspect often overlooked is ensuring that you have a plentiful stock of both office and lunch supplies. This is crucial not only to keep you comfortable but to ward off distraction and increase your work efficiency.
Running out of printer ink mid-deadline or realising you’ve no lunch in the fridge are small disruptions that derail focus disproportionately. Keep your home office stocked with essentials from reliable stationery suppliers; every trip to the shop or frantic drawer-rummage for a working pen is momentum lost.
Similarly, prepping your lunch supplies plays an equally important role. As appealing as it might sound to potter about in the kitchen on a leisurely lunch break, these diversions often end up taking longer than intended. Before you know it, a fifteen-minute break has spiralled into an hour. Having your lunch pre-prepared or at least having all the necessary ingredients on hand, enables you to have a balanced meal in a timely manner. This not only helps you keep to a schedule, but it also ensures that you’re providing your body with the necessary fuel to continue working effectively during the afternoon.
Find New Rewards For Working
To put it another way, Judson A Brewer, a neuroscientist and director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Centre at Brown University, tells the Guardian that “procrastination has its origins in reward-based learning: a trigger (think about a deadline), a behaviour (scroll social media), then a reward (distract from the unpleasant thought).”
She goes on to say that “Willpower alone is often not enough to overcome such a powerful impulse, evolved to help us remember where to find food.’’
Basically, it’s about reframing that sense of reward. Brewer explains that “The reward can be reframed as the feeling of accomplishment, instead of the relief (tempered by guilt and building anxiety) of a momentary distraction. Reflecting on the rewarding properties of not procrastinating builds healthy habits that become stronger than procrastination itself – hacking our brain in the process.”
The key here is skilfully identifying your procrastinating behaviours and finding new rewards to replace previous distraction methods. If these rewards boost your productivity in the process, then you’re on to a winner!
Don’t Forget To Take Breaks
Perhaps the best reward of all is a short, purposeful break, enabling you to recalibrate and refresh before returning to work reinvigorated.
When your mind becomes tired, unfocused or stressed regarding a deadline, it’s natural to pull up Twitter, scroll meaninglessly, get angry about the state of the world, curse the Kardashian’s good fortune, wonder if a bear would beat a lion in a fight…
Sorry, we got distracted again there. Instead, it pays to identify when your brain needs a distraction, rather than subconsciously seeking one, and making that distraction (the ‘reward’) count.
Rather than reaching for your phone and opening up Instagram, why not take yourself off for a quick walk around the block? The sun on your face and eyes away from screens will open up a fresh sense of perspective and inspiration, enabling you to work better when you return.
Or, consider running on the spot for five minutes or doing a set of sit-ups; make your rewards healthy and beneficial, and you’ll break that procrastination cycle we mentioned so much more effectively.
As long as the reward is productive and wholesome, it’s fair game, we think. Having a crack at a crossword, playing Sudoku or even reading a chapter of your bookcan all help you find new energy and motivation.
Set Personal Goals
Personal goals, targets and outcome paths are crucial when it comes to staying motivated and productive. Simply sashaying through the day, ticking boxes and doing the bear minimum genuinely takes up as much time and effort as completing your tasks thoroughly and with full attention. The only difference is that the latter advances your career and sense of personal worth.
So, set goals, both in the short term (deadlines) and longer term (a promotion or industry-based award) to reinforce that sense of achievement and reward which is key to self-discipline and motivation when you’re working from home.
Keep Your Body Active
It’s not just your mind which needs stimulation to avoid distraction; keeping your body active is essential, too, to ensure you’re fighting fit each and every day, and motivated to reach your goals.
Working out is a great way to stay productive and be more energized throughout the day. Physical activity gives you a more consistent control of your energy levels, both in your body and your brain, and has even been said to increase your overall productivity in the process.
Don’t feel the need to overwork yourself in the name of someone else’s concept of ‘productivity’; doing so will only lead to burnout.
Instead, make sure you’re setting boundaries and drawing distinctions between work and home. Remind your workplace that a stressed colleague isn’t a successful one, and try these ways to de-stress after a tough day at the home office, too.
The Bottom Line
It’s challenging to stay motivated and focused, even at the best of times. And we probably don’t have to remind you that these are most certainly not the best of times.
But by learning to understand the procrastination cycle, and by setting goals and targets, as well as keeping your mind and body active, you’ll be able to adapt to home working with increasing ease and comfort. Good luck!
January is a cruel month. The tree comes down, the credit card statement lands with a thud, and your bank balance looks like it’s been through a particularly brutal episode of The Traitors. But here’s the thing: while you’re counting pennies and wondering why you bought quite so much Baileys, there’s a good chance your hard-earned cash is quietly haemorrhaging out of your account without you even noticing.
Welcome to the world of zombie subscriptions. According to research from Nationwide cited by The Guardian, UK households are spending up to £1,200 a year on subscription services, with a staggering 19% of subscribers not even using every platform they pay for.
The same research found that more than a third of people are paying for duplicate subscriptions, while almost half don’t share a single subscription with anyone else in their household. Streaming platforms are the worst offenders, with 23% of respondents admitting they pay twice for services like Netflix, NOW TV, or Disney+.
The potential savings from killing off these financial vampires could reach £400 annually, which is not an insignificant sum when you’re staring down the barrel of a long, cold February.
The Great Subscription Audit
The first step to financial resurrection is understanding exactly what’s lurking in your bank statements. Personal finance experts recommend a thorough audit: go through your statements, collate payments to streaming services, apps, delivery subscriptions, and gym memberships onto a spreadsheet, and note when you last actually used each one. You might be surprised, or frankly horrified, by what you find.
That meditation app you downloaded during the first lockdown and used precisely twice? Still charging you £9.99 a month. The recipe box subscription you signed up for when you had ambitions of becoming a home cook? That’s another £50 quietly disappearing every four weeks.
The approach is straightforward: audit your subscriptions, note down renewal dates, then contact providers and politely explain you’re considering leaving. The key word here is politely. Staying calm and kind gets better results than going in heated, since retention agents are far more likely to help customers who explain their situation clearly rather than those who open with accusations. Think of it less as a confrontation and more as a negotiation where both parties want to find a solution.
The Mobile Phone Money Pit
While you’re reviewing your subscriptions, there’s another zombie lurking that could be costing you far more than any streaming service: your mobile phone contract. Around five million mobile subscribers are at risk of overpaying their bills while remaining out of contract, paying on average an extra £351 annually by staying put compared to switching to a SIM-only plan.
The maths here is brutal but worth understanding. If your bundled phone contract includes a handset, you’ve essentially paid it off once your initial contract ends, usually after 24 months. But here’s the catch that catches so many people out: your monthly payments don’t automatically drop to reflect this. You’ll continue paying the same amount, or more, indefinitely, essentially buying a phone you already own over and over again.
Text ‘INFO’ to 85075 to find out if you’re out of contract. If the reply shows zero cancellation charges, you’re free to take your business elsewhere. For the best deals, compare the best SIM only deals rather than approaching operators directly, and don’t forget you can haggle with your current provider using competitor rates as leverage. Loyalty may be a virtue in friendships, but in telecoms it’s just expensive.
Energy: Switch Or Get Switched
The energy market has finally returned to something resembling sanity after years of chaos, which means switching is back on the menu. Households on the Price Cap could save around £250 annually by moving to a fixed tariff, and with government’s Autumn Budget changes set to knock approximately £150 off energy bills from April 2026, those on fixed tariffs should see their providers pass on equivalent savings.
Even without the hassle of switching, there are quick wins to be had. Lowering your boiler’s flow temperature to between 55°C and 60°C can cut energy use by around 12%, saving roughly £65 a year. Dropping your thermostat by just one degree, a difference you’ll barely notice under a blanket, could yield savings of up to £145 annually.
The Insurance Loyalty Penalty
Despite FCA rules introduced in 2022 to stop insurers overcharging existing customers, the so-called ‘loyalty penalty’ hasn’t entirely disappeared. Letting your car insurance auto-renew collectively costs UK drivers £560 million a year in higher premiums, which is a staggering amount of money being left on the table through sheer inertia.
The sweet spot for renewing? Research from MoneySavingExpert suggests 20 to 26 days before your policy start date, which could save you up to 40% compared to leaving it until the last minute. The reasoning is delightfully absurd: insurers apparently view last-minute renewers as disorganised and therefore higher risk, while those who sort things out a few weeks early are rewarded for their administrative virtue. Search in the morning rather than the evening too, since insurers apparently view late-night policy hunters with similar suspicion.
Free Money From Bank Switching
Here’s the closest thing to free money you’ll find in 2026: bank switching bonuses. According to Moneyfactscompare, several high street banks are currently offering substantial incentives to lure new customers. Lloyds has £250 available for switching to a Club Lloyds account before 3 February 2026, TSB offers £200 with its Spend & Save accounts, and First Direct provides £175 plus access to a 7% Regular Saver.
The Current Account Switch Service makes the whole process painless, completing in just seven working days with your payments, Direct Debits, and standing orders all transferred automatically. It’s genuinely one of the few areas where bureaucracy has been streamlined to the point of near-invisibility.
The Bottom Line
The January financial hangover is real, but it doesn’t have to define your entire year. Between zombie subscriptions, overpriced phone contracts, auto-renewing insurance, and unclaimed switching bonuses, the average household is leaving hundreds of pounds on the table.
A few hours of admin spread across a couple of weekends could mean the difference between scraping by until payday and actually having something left over at the end of each month. And if that’s not a resolution worth keeping, we’re not sure what is.
Ideal for banh, bun and beyond in Thailand’s capital…
Vietnamese restaurants have historically been thin on the ground in Bangkok, overshadowed by the city’s Japanese, Chinese and Korean options, and the Thai capital’s insatiable desire for bold, bracing flavours.
Which is surprising, when you think about it, given how deep the culinary connection actually runs. A significant Vietnamese population has lived in Isan for generations, particularly around Udon Thani, Nong Khai and Nakhon Phanom, and their influence on the region’s food is considerable. VT Namnueng in Udon Thani is so beloved that Bangkokians regularly receive deliveries of their sausages via the night train from the north, and dishes like kuay jap yuan (a Vietnamese-influenced rolled noodle soup) have become a beloved fixture of the broader Thai culinary canon.
But despite this history, the kind of regional depth you’d find in Paris or Melbourne has been harder to come by in the capital. Or harder to find, at least, given that few of these restaurants have much of an Instagram presence, and some require Google Maps and a willingness to follow a pin into a parking lot to track down. Yet between them, they cover everything from royal Hue recipes to southern home cooking.
With that in mind, and seemingly with an ability to never get full, we’ve eaten our way across the Thai capital, following strands of pho like Theseus in the maze, leaving a trail of banh mi crumbs in our wake, in search of the best food from Vietnam. Here’s what we found; the best Vietnamese restaurants in Bangkok.
Le Dalat, Sukhumvit
Ideal for refined Vietnamese cooking in a century-old transplanted teak house…
We had to start here, at Bangkok’s most venerable Vietnamese restaurant. Le Dalat sits at the end of a leafy soi off Sukhumvit 23, its entrance shaded by a banyan tree whose aerial roots form a canopy overhead, and a courtyard garden beyond that makes you forget you’re minutes from a sky train.
The building tells an interesting story: a century-old teak house shipped piece by piece from Vietnam and reassembled where it now stands. Completing that sense of escapism, lotus-petal lamps hang above cooling terracotta floors, and staff in traditional ao dai guide you through an extensive menu of refined, French-colonial-era celebration recipes.
Just like the setting, dishes are gently theatrical in that playful way you get from a Viet joint charging a little above the baseline. Spring rolls arrive standing on their ends like little towers, carrots are carved into flowers, that kind of thing – but the cooking is precise and expertly seasoned when you peel away the frippery.
The cha tom is superb; shrimp patties shaped around a sugarcane and grilled with the kind of delicate attention that marks out the very best Vietnamese food. Continuing on that theme, the banh cuon is as exquisite and silky as anything you’d eat in Hanoi’s Old Quarter.
From the larger plates, the ‘Indochine’ beef stew rewards those not deterred by its prosaic description with rich, slow-cooked depth and the misty warmth of spices that define Vietnamese braised dishes. The ga sa gung (chicken with caramelised ginger) is a signature worth ordering – it’s bright but boasts profound depth, simultaneously.
Prices sit at the higher end for Vietnamese food in Bangkok, but portions are generous and the setting warrants a certain premium. That garden courtyard is a real joy, offering respite from Sukhumvit’s reliable chaos, and lunch here can easily stretch into the afternoon if you realise you’re not ready to brave Asok station just yet. Google might list service as ending at 2:30pm, but we’ve never been moved on when staying later.
If you’re to visit one Vietnamese restaurant in Bangkok for a special occasion, make it Le Dalat.
Ideal for Michelin-recognised French-Vietnamese fusion in heritage surrounds…
Thien Duong has been serving faithful, assured Vietnamese food in Bangkok for close to four decades, but its current incarnation inside the heritage grounds of Baan Dusit Thani feels thoroughly contemporary.
The name means ‘paradise’ in Vietnamese, and the setting does its best to deliver. If your idea of heaven is closer to a tropical fever dream, that is. Tropical murals swallow the walls whole, a rainbow of tiles runs down the floor like an airport runway, and bright rattan chairs compete with it all for your attention. It’s a lot, and it shouldn’t work, but somehow it does, the greenery brushing against the windows and the colour on your plate helping it all feel of a piece.
Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition speaks to the quality. Or, perhaps, it just serves to highlight the Francophile proclivities of the Big Red Book, as the menu at Thien Duong leans into the French-colonial influence on Vietnamese cuisine more explicitly than most places in the city. A case in point; the grilled lamb rack with mint-tamarind sauce, which is a signature that regulars return for, though the kitchen is at its best in the more traditional dishes like cha ca, the Hanoi speciality of turmeric-fried fish served sizzling at the table.
A shout out to the page-long dessert menu, the rabbit under Thien Duong’s nón lá, a real treat. Longans bobbing in sweetened coconut cream, sweet sago with cantaloupe, sesame dumplings in ginger syrup… Vietnamese desserts share an intertwined DNA with their Thai cousins, and it’s a neat way to circle back before you step out, blinking into the harsh light of Silom.
Not before a Vietnamese drip coffee, mind, which here is excellent, prepared with a ‘phin’ metal filter and sweetened condensed milk that defines the style. Cocktails draw on Vietnamese herbs – makrut lime, Thai basil, lemongrass – and are worth exploring if you’re settling in for the evening, high on that strong coffee and with no hope of an early night. In Bangkok, there never is…
Ideal for family recipes from Vietnam’s former imperial capital…
This family-run shophouse near Wat Pho focuses on the food of northern and central Vietnam. The name nods to Tonkin and Annam, the French colonial terms for those regions, and to the owners’ grandparents who came from Hanoi and Hue respectively. Headlining dishes here skew towards the imperial capital, but the austere, savoury sensibility of Hanoi is all present and correct, too.
Run by noted food anthropologist Gai Lai Mitwichan and his sister, the two-storey space has a modern shabby-chic feel, with distressed walls and unassuming artwork. The cooking is anything but casual, though. It’s precise and deliberate, in fact, and is as close to the real thing as we’ve had in Bangkok.
Bun bo Hue is the dish to order: a deeply flavoured beef noodle soup that’s spicier and more aesthetically complex than pho. Tonkin-Annam’s version uses a family recipe, with tender chunks of beef and a lemongrass-heavy broth that rewards those who like their soups with backbone. That spine is reinforced further with the low thrum and subtle sweetness of good shrimp paste. Dare we venture that they’ve deployed a bit of gapi here, rather than the funkier, brasher mam tom? It’s a move that works in the regal shadow of two iconic wats, we think.
Equally good is the banh xeo. Here, it’s the size of a hubcap and its lacey batter shatters satisfyingly when you attempt to dissect it with chopsticks. Stuffed generously with pork, shrimp and bean sprouts, the accompanying bundle of fresh herbs brings everything to life.
It’s all so delicious, which makes the unceremonious removal of Michelin recognition last year feel all the more curious. Ignore the red guide on this one; Tonkin-Annam remains the best option for regional Vietnamese cooking in all of Bangkok.
Note that it’s cash only, and reservations (exclusively by phone) are recommended given the limited seating. If you do pitch up and find there’s a queue, there’s a mighty fine view of Wat Arun from just outside the restaurant to keep you busy.
Ideal for home-style Vietnamese with Michelin Guide consistency…
Saigon Recipe occupies three storeys of the Piman 49 complex off Sukhumvit Soi 49, run by a Japanese-Vietnamese couple who wanted to recreate the feeling of eating at home in Vietnam. Chalk-yellow walls, silk lanterns, paintings of women in ao dai and a soundtrack of pre-1975 Vietnamese ballads set the scene and deliver on their mission.
The menu covers southern and central Vietnam without claiming strict regional purity. Canh chua ca loc, the sour soup with snakehead fish that’s a southern staple, is a signature worth ordering – it’s pert and alive, and gives your tom yum gung next door a run for its money in the revitalising stakes.
The bo la lot – beef wrapped in peppery ‘betel’ leaves and grilled over charcoal – is another highlight, and the bánh mì is a reliable rendition (honestly, we’ve not found a great one in Bangkok).
Work your way through the excellent sinh to (Vietnamese smoothies) menu, which comes in everything from watermelon to avocado, the latter a classic in Vietnam. There’s a good selection of fresh juices too – pandan leaf with sugarcane, lemongrass, lime soda – that suit the Bangkok heat.
The kitchen has held a Michelin Guide listing since 2020, which speaks to its consistency if not its fireworks. Vietnamese cooks staff the stoves and the owners source vegetables from their farm in Pathumthani, so freshness isn’t an issue. Pricing is moderate for the area, and free parking makes it a practical option for those driving.
Ideal for seafood-forward Vietnamese in a gorgeous heritage setting…
An Com An Ca opened in September 2022 inside a 100-year-old Indo-Chinese house on a narrow lane in Sathorn, and quickly became one of the most talked-about Vietnamese openings in years. The name translates as ‘eat rice, eat fish’, and the menu leans heavily on seafood dishes alongside the usual street food staples.
The setting is the initial draw: wooden beams, geometric tile floors and a garden courtyard that feels entirely removed from central Bangkok. Step inside, though, and the spell admittedly wavers – glossy picture menus and a familiar slickness betray its origins as an Iberry group operation. No bad thing, just a little corporate. An Com An Ca has eight branches now, the majority in shopping malls, and you can feel it.
Cooking is polished rather than rustic accordingly, with spring rolls arriving crisp and greaseless. There is pho on the menu, but in our view, pho is always better from a dedicated slinger who has caressed the stock all night – or, in some cases, for years. When buried on a menu of country-spanning dishes, it’s so often insipid.
The fish dishes are why you’re here. Grilled blood cockles with scallion oil, spicy Indochina river prawns, and bánh khọt – crispy, turmeric-tinted mini pancakes each crowned with a single shrimp – are the plates to order. That banh khot is particularly good, its presentation sharp, its flavour precise.
The Sathorn original remains the most atmospheric of the eight. Prices are higher than the neighbourhood noodle shops but reasonable for the more opulent setting.
Ideal for a Hanoi grandmother’s recipes given a contemporary refresh…
The original Le Mai Anh operated on Samsen Road near the Chao Phraya for over two decades, serving home-style Vietnamese food from recipes passed down by the owner’s Hanoi-born grandmother.
Though we miss the nourishing nature of the original, there’s no point getting stuck in the past now things have moved on. LELE is its modernised successor, relocated to Sukhumvit 31 and given a contemporary refresh while keeping the dishes that built the original’s reputation. The name means ‘quickly, quickly’ in Vietnamese, a nod to the fast-casual format, but the pace here is unhurried.
Nem nuong (the old Thai favourite that isn’t nearly as popular in actual Vietnam) is the signature: charcoal-grilled pork sausage served with rice paper, fresh herbs and a thoroughly complex dipping sauce made from over 20 ingredients. The classic accompaniment of spring rolls is done well here; thin-skinned and generously stuffed.
Back to Hanoi, and LELE’s pho takes a milder, northern approach that favours savoury and subtlety over punch. A risk in a city that likes its food loud, perhaps, but one that pays off in a bowl that’s truly fortifying. There’s even a rare outing for a pork version of this most famous Vietnamese soup, and you know what? It works.
Interestingly, LELE also does one of the best yum naem khao tod we’ve had in Bangkok – a curious interloper at first glance, but one which makes sense when you consider how freely fermented pork traditions travel across Indochina. The dish is Lao in origin, Thai by adoption, and the sour pork at its heart has cousins in every country in the region. It’s ace, and LELE is where we head when we have a craving for this elite salad.
Bright and modern, the space is a world away from the cosy Samsen original, and service is efficient without being rushed. Opening hours run 8am to 8pm daily – a reminder that Vietnamese food is best at breakfast – making this a solid option when you fancy a break from jok.
Ideal for cheap and cheerful Vietnamese home cooking in unexpected surrounds…
Finding Madame Ong requires commitment: you enter through a parking lot, pass the lobby of VP Tower apartment building, and eventually arrive at a fluorescent-lit dining room with formica tables and zero pretension. The eponymous Madame Ong still dines at her own restaurant several times a week, and the place fills up with local families who’ve been coming for years.
‘Vietnamese pizza’ is the dish that draws people here: plate-sized rice crackers topped with, essentially, the ingredients of a spring roll or bánh cuốn. So, that’s minced pork, wood ear mushroom, crispy shallots and herbs. Break a shard off and enjoy. The steamed rice flour parcels stuffed with pork and spring onion, served with plum sauce, are a quieter pleasure, and the grilled pâté with fresh garlic is worth ordering for the table, too, a humble, rustic dish that hits a certain spot sometimes.
If you’re settling in for the evening, order the ‘Vietnamese fondue’ – a menu descriptor that’s passed through a couple of rounds of Google Translate, no doubt. What comes is a hotpot bobbing with shrimp, fish and squid. It’s another signature and seems to grace every larger family table here. Save room for dessert: sesame balls in hot ginger syrup, or sala fruit in crushed ice if you need cooling down (that hotpot is nice and spicy).
Don’t expect the refinement of Le Dalat or Thien Duong. But often with a cuisine this grounding, you don’t want it to be elevated or fussed over. What you will get is affordable, honest Vietnamese home cooking, and a fixture of Bangkok’s Vietnamese community. What more could you ask for?
Britain’s coastline, rivers and lochs offer some of the finest paddling in Europe, from gentle estuary meanders to heart-pumping whitewater and dramatic sea kayaking along UNESCO-protected cliffs. Whether you’re a first-timer seeking calm waters or an experienced paddler chasing rapids, these twelve destinations represent the very best the UK has to offer.
What makes the UK such an exceptional kayaking destination is its sheer variety within a relatively compact landmass. In a single long weekend, you could find yourself navigating the glass-calm waters of the Norfolk Broads before heading west to tackle Dartmoor’s legendary whitewater. The Scottish Highlands offer multi-day expeditions through landscapes virtually unchanged since the last ice age, while the Welsh and Cornish coastlines deliver world-class sea kayaking with seals, dolphins and puffins for company.
The infrastructure for paddlers has never been better. Canoe trails with dedicated campsites now crisscross Scotland, hire centres dot the banks of popular rivers, and operators offer everything from beginner taster sessions to advanced coaching. Paddle UK membership unlocks access to over 4,500km of waterways across England and Wales, while Scotland’s Land Reform Act means paddlers can explore virtually any body of water north of the border without restriction.
With all that in mind and without further ado, here are 12 of the UK’s best kayaking destinations.
The River Wye, Welsh Borders
Ideal for multi-day adventures combining gentle paddling with pub stops and wild camping…
Often called the crown jewel of UK kayaking, the River Wye winds for over 130 miles from Plynlimon in mid-Wales to the Severn Estuary. The most popular stretch runs from Glasbury to Symonds Yat, roughly 75 miles that takes most paddlers four or five days. The river meanders through the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, passing limestone gorges and sleepy villages where kingfishers are a regular sight.
The current is gentle enough for confident beginners, and the river is too shallow for motorised craft, meaning kayakers largely have the water to themselves. Multiple hire centres operate along the valley, with riverside pubs and campsites making multi-day trips wonderfully achievable.
The Great Glen Canoe Trail, Scottish Highlands
Ideal for experienced paddlers seeking a coast-to-coast expedition through iconic Highland scenery…
This 60-mile route connects Fort William to Inverness, following the Caledonian Canal and its chain of lochs: Lochy, Oich and the legendary Loch Ness. Opened in 2012, the Great Glen Canoe Trail typically takes three days in a kayak or five in a Canadian canoe, with 29 locks requiring portages.
Only 22 miles are man-made canal; the rest involves paddling across open lochs where conditions can resemble being at sea. Loch Ness and Loch Lochy are designated Class C waters with waves reaching two metres in adverse weather, so open-water experience is advisable. The trail draws over 4,000 paddlers annually. No licence is required thanks to Scotland’s Land Reform Act.
The River Dart, Devon
Ideal for whitewater enthusiasts progressing from intermediate rapids to serious grade 4 challenges…
Dartmoor’s River Dart has earned near-mythical status among British whitewater paddlers. The Upper Dart, from Dartmeet to Newbridge, is a serious grade 3 to 4 run through a deep gorge. Below that, the Loop section has become perhaps the most popular stretch of whitewater in England, graded 2 to 3 with named rapids including the Washing Machine and Lovers Leap.
Access is governed by an agreement with fishing interests: paddling is permitted from 1 October to end of March. Check levels before setting out, as conditions change rapidly after rainfall.
The River Teifi, West Wales
Ideal for a relaxed day trip through wooded gorges with excellent wildlife spotting…
The Teifi flows for 75 miles from its source in Ceredigion to Cardigan Bay. Otters, herons, buzzards and kingfishers are regular companions along the wooded sections, while seals sometimes appear near the estuary.
Starting from the gorge near Cilgerran Castle and floating down to St Dogmaels makes a memorable day trip, particularly if you time it to catch the incoming tide. A waterways licence may be required for certain sections.
The Pembrokeshire Coast, West Wales
Ideal for sea kayakers wanting wildlife encounters, sea caves and island crossings…
The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park offers 186 miles of dramatic coastline featuring sea caves, towering cliffs and abundant wildlife. Launching points at Fishguard Bay, Porthclais, Solva Harbour and Stackpole Quay give access to coastline that regularly sees grey seals, dolphins and puffins on Skomer Island.
Beginners will find sheltered conditions in estuaries like Milford Haven, while experienced sea kayakers can tackle tide races around Ramsey Island or make crossings to Skomer and Skokholm. Multiple operators offer guided trips along this spectacular stretch.
Loch Lomond, Central Scotland
Ideal for island-hopping day trips and overnight expeditions with stunning mountain backdrops…
Loch Lomond stretches some 24 miles through Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park and contains over 30 islands. The southern end offers sheltered bays perfect for beginners, while the narrower northern reaches feel increasingly wild. Launch points at Luss, Milarrochy Bay, Rowardennan and Balloch provide easy access.
Paddlers can explore islands like Inchconnachan (home to a colony of wallabies) and Inchmurrin (with its pub, perfect for a paddle-to-pint expedition). Conditions can turn quickly on open water, so check forecasts and stay close to shore if inexperienced.
The Norfolk Broads, East Anglia
Ideal for beginners, families and wildlife lovers seeking tranquil, flat-water paddling…
Kayaks and canoes can access backwaters inaccessible to motor vessels, where bitterns boom in the reed beds and kingfishers flash past. The flat, sheltered conditions make the Broads particularly well suited to those paddling an inflatable kayak for the first time.
The River Bure from Coltishall to Wroxham is particularly popular. Either a Broads Authority toll or Paddle UK membership is required.
Old Harry Rocks & the Jurassic Coast, Dorset
Ideal for guided sea kayaking with dramatic geology and photo opportunities…
The chalk stacks of Old Harry Rocks, at the eastern end of the Jurassic Coast, reveal perspectives impossible from the cliff path above when approached by kayak. Tours typically launch from Studland Beach, paddling past white cliffs and into sea caves before reaching the dramatic formations at Handfast Point.
The water is generally calm enough for beginners on guided sessions. Beyond Old Harry, the Jurassic Coast extends westward past Swanage, Lulworth and Durdle Door.
Ideal for intermediate paddlers wanting fast-flowing water and whisky distillery detours…
The River Spey runs from the Cairngorms to the Moray Firth, passing through celebrated whisky country. Scotland’s fastest-flowing river, it’s swift but not particularly technical, making it excellent for intermediate paddlers comfortable with moving water. Multi-day trips typically run from Loch Insh downstream towards Fochabers, wild camping along the banks.
Salmon fishing is significant on the Spey, and paddlers should give anglers wide berth. The combination of pace, scenery and distillery detours makes this a uniquely Scottish paddle.
Anglesey & the Menai Strait, North Wales
Ideal for building sea kayaking skills with options from sheltered straits to challenging tide races…
The Menai Strait separating Anglesey from the Welsh mainland offers exceptional sea kayaking, with tidal flows creating challenging conditions for experienced paddlers and sheltered coves providing gentler options for beginners.
The waters host grey seals, porpoises and occasionally dolphins, while the tide races at the Swellies beneath the Menai Suspension Bridge draw advanced kayakers seeking adrenaline. Numerous operators offer courses from beginner level through to British Canoeing leadership qualifications.
The River Tay, Perthshire
Ideal for Scottish river touring with options ranging from flat water to solid whitewater…
The River Tay offers paddling for all abilities, from gentle stretches near Kenmore to proper whitewater around Grandtully, where rapids provide solid grade 2 to 3 action. Scotland’s longest river, it carries the highest water volume of any British river, giving it a powerful feel even on seemingly calm sections.
Extended expeditions can start from Killin at the head of Loch Tay and continue downstream for days. Stanley Mills and the gorge below Dunkeld are particular highlights.
The Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall
Ideal for sea kayaking in turquoise waters with hidden coves and seal encounters…
The Lizard Peninsula offers spectacular sea kayaking, with turquoise waters, hidden coves and dramatic cliff scenery. Launching from Mullion Harbour, Cadgwith Cove or Kynance Cove, paddlers can explore a coastline shaped by centuries of Atlantic storms at England’s southernmost tip.
Conditions suit intermediate paddlers comfortable with ocean swells. The Helford Estuary provides calmer water for beginners, with the chance to explore Frenchman’s Creek. Grey seals are frequently seen basking on rocks along this coast.
The Bottom Line
From the whitewater thrills of Dartmoor to the serene broads of Norfolk, the UK offers kayaking experiences to rival anywhere in the world. Before setting out, check whether your destination requires a waterways licence, familiarise yourself with local conditions and tides, and always wear a buoyancy aid. Scotland’s Land Reform Act grants open access to most waters, making it particularly welcoming for paddlers.
The golden months run from late spring through autumn, though river levels are often better in autumn and early winter. Sea kayaking is best in summer when water temperatures are marginally less frigid and daylight hours are longest. Whichever waters you choose, the UK’s paddling opportunities are abundant, varied and waiting to be explored.
There’s a reason Gran Canaria has been pulling in British families for decades. The island sits roughly 150 kilometres off the coast of Morocco, close enough to Africa that the famous Maspalomas dunes look like they’ve blown straight across from the Sahara, yet it’s only a four-hour flight from the UK and operates on Greenwich Mean Time for most of the year.
The clincher, though, is the climate: temperatures hover between 20 and 28 degrees pretty much year-round, making it one of the few European destinations where you can book a half-term holiday in February and genuinely expect sunshine.
For families, the south coast is where the action concentrates. The strip from San Agustín to Puerto de Mogán packs in beaches for every mood, theme parks that genuinely hold their own, and enough day-trip options to fill a fortnight without repetition. The north has its charms, but the infrastructure, weather consistency, and sheer density of family-friendly stuff makes the south the obvious base. Here’s how to make the most of it.
Why Gran Canaria Works For Families
Tenerife has the bigger theme parks. Lanzarote has the volcanic drama. Fuerteventura has the kitesurfing. But Gran Canaria offers variety within a genuinely compact area that none of them quite match.
Within a 30-kilometre stretch of coastline you’ll find sheltered man-made beaches, wild dune-backed stretches, a proper amusement park, a zoo, a Wild West theme park, and a submarine. The infrastructure is geared towards families without being saccharine about it: pushchairs work on the promenades, restaurants have high chairs without you needing to ask, and most attractions cater to a range of ages rather than just the under-fives or just teenagers.
The Beaches Worth Knowing About
Playa de Amadores sits about 15 minutes west of Maspalomas and remains the go-to choice for families with younger children. The crescent-shaped bay, built with imported Caribbean sand in the early 2000s, stays sheltered from Atlantic swells and slopes gradually into calm, shallow water. There’s a promenade lined with restaurants behind, sun loungers for hire, and lifeguards on duty. It gets busy in peak season, but that’s partly the point. Kids can wander between other families without you having a coronary.
For something with more visual drama, Maspalomas delivers. The 6km stretch of golden sand backs onto the Dunas de Maspalomas, a protected nature reserve of Saharan-esque dunes that children inevitably want to climb and roll down. The beach itself runs all the way from the iconic Maspalomas Lighthouse to Playa del Inglés, so there’s always space even when the resorts are heaving. A word of warning: the section between the two is clothing-optional, so stick closer to the lighthouse end if you’d rather avoid the conversation.
Playa de San Agustín tends to get overlooked but deserves attention from families wanting somewhere quieter. This 670-metre stretch of darker volcanic sand sees mainly local Canarian families, especially at weekends, and the gentle swell makes it genuinely suitable for small children who want to splash in the shallows. A promenade connects it to neighbouring Las Burras beach, with cafés and restaurants dotted along the way.
Beyond The Sand
The honest truth is that children will tire of the beach before you do. Three days, maybe four, and they’ll start asking what else there is. Fortunately, Gran Canaria has answers.
Holidayworld Maspalomas is considered the island’s best amusement park and sits right in the heart of the tourist zone. The Wooland Fun Park section houses over 30 attractions, including a roller coaster reaching 60km/h, a 26-metre Ferris wheel with views across the southern coastline, a pirate ship that swings to 70 degrees, and Sky Drop for anyone brave enough to stomach a 20-metre free fall. Smaller children get dedicated zones with gentler carousels, bumper cars, and boat rides.
Image credit: Holidayworld Maspalomas
The clever bit is everything surrounding the rides. There’s a 16-lane bowling alley (the largest on the island), four themed karaoke rooms for teenagers who fancy embarrassing themselves, escape rooms for competitive families, and the Nomad Gastro Market food court upstairs serving everything from sushi to Spanish tapas to burgers. It opens late and operates year-round, making it the obvious answer to the eternal question of what to do after dinner when nobody wants to sit in a hotel room.
Palmitos Park sits about 10 kilometres north of Maspalomas in a valley and combines a zoo with botanical gardens. The dolphin shows draw the crowds, but the bird of prey displays, butterfly house, and aquarium keep children occupied for a full day. It’s not cheap (around €35 for adults, €23 for children aged 5-10), but the setting is beautiful and there’s enough variety to justify the spend. Pack snacks and make use of the picnic areas rather than relying entirely on the café.
For something more unusual, Sioux City in San Bartolomé de Tirajana is a Wild West theme park that’s been running since the 1970s. Bank robberies play out in the main street, cowboys demonstrate lasso techniques, and there’s a working farm with Canarian goats and ponies. It sounds kitsch, and it is, but children under ten tend to find the whole thing genuinely thrilling. The on-site barbecue is better than it has any right to be.
Puerto de Mogán sits at the western end of the south coast, about 30 minutes from Maspalomas, and makes for a near-perfect family day out. The village gets called ‘Little Venice’ by the tourist board, which oversells it somewhat, but the whitewashed buildings draped in bougainvillea, pedestrianised streets, and small marina genuinely charm.
The beach has calm, shallow water and all the infrastructure families need: sun loungers, umbrellas for hire, restaurants within staggering distance.
But the main draw for children is the Submarine Adventure, a 40-minute trip aboard the Golden Shark submarine to depths of 25 metres. You’ll glide over shipwrecks, including the 32-metre Cermona II fishing boat, and through an artificial reef now teeming with parrotfish, grey mullet, and the occasional grouper. There’s no pressure change, making it suitable for younger children who can’t equalise ears, and everyone gets a certificate at the end. It costs around €30-35 per person and books up quickly in peak season.
The Friday market is worth timing your visit around if logistics allow. Stalls sell local cheeses, honey, and handmade crafts alongside the usual tourist tat, and it gives the village a livelier atmosphere than the rest of the week.
If You Have A Car
Renting a car opens up the island’s interior, which looks nothing like the tourist south. Roque Nublo, the volcanic rock formation that’s become Gran Canaria’s unofficial symbol, involves a short, manageable hike that even younger children can handle. The path is clearly marked, the reward is genuine lunar landscapes, and it takes about an hour round-trip from the car park.
The Painted Cave Museum and Archaeological Park in Gáldar offers a dose of education disguised as adventure. The pre-Hispanic cave paintings are genuinely impressive, and the interactive displays keep children engaged without feeling like homework.
Nearby Cenobio de Valerón works the same trick – over 350 storage chambers honeycomb a volcanic cliff face, carved by the island’s original inhabitants more than 800 years ago. For children, it feels like stumbling upon a secret hideout, and the old legend about it being a convent where noble girls were locked away until marriage adds a touch of mystery. Under-10s get in free.
Las Palmas, the island capital in the north, has the Poema del Mar aquarium for families who haven’t exhausted their appetite for marine life. The Deep Sea pool features the largest curved glass window in the world, and the route through surface ecosystems, freshwater species, and deep-sea creatures takes a couple of hours. It’s slickly done and sits right by the port.
The Bottom Line
Gran Canaria’s south coast handles family holidays with minimal fuss. The weather cooperates year-round, the beaches range from sheltered and manicured to wild and dramatic, and there’s enough going on beyond the sand to fill even a longer stay. Holidayworld Maspalomas alone can absorb an entire day, and the island’s manageable size means nowhere feels particularly far away.
Pack light, leave expectations of adventure tourism at home, and accept that children will want to spend longer on the submarine ride than looking at Moorish architecture. That’s absolutely fine.
Oh, take us back to the summer; lazy, hazy days spent laying on dry ground, the mercury breaking records, and our hair; long, luscious and manageable. Fast forward a few months and the unpredictable winter weather combined with dry indoor air has wreaked havoc on our locks, with strong and healthy hair a distance, seasonally-defined memory.
To prevent the frizzed, end-split look, it’s important to bear a few simple routine tweaks in mind. Here are the golden rules for protecting your hair from damage this winter.
Hydration Stations
A beauty benefactor that’s never truer than in winter; ample hydration. You should drink a lot of water to stave off the dreaded dry hair (and skin, too). Just as plants need water to grow and thrive, so does your hair.
Getting enough hydration into your body will eventually reach your hair, leaving you will thick, confidently growing locks. Dandruff will also be reduced due to stimulation of the surface of your head, preventing a flaky, dry scalp. Drinking enough water, it seems, is key to hair health.
Warm, Not Hot
A mantra to remember with regard to both shower and house temperature. Firstly, if your shower head is running piping hot, the water will shock your scalp, possibly even burning it. And no one wants that.
It’ll also dry out your scalp and hair, making it brittle and damaging the roots. In some cases, it’s also speculated that really hot showers may eventually lead to hair loss – further clarifying the need to turn the dial down a notch or two.
Wash Your Hair Less
During summer, you get used to washing your hair frequently and often let it dry freely. However, it would help if you changed your hair-washing routine during the cold season because using too much shampoo can strip it of its natural oils and leave it more vulnerable to cold temperatures.
While there is no magic formula everyone can use to wash their hair to prevent damage and breakage, washing it less during winter is advisable. Suppose you have a dry scalp; washing it too often during winter can worsen your condition. Swapping the traditional products for gentler versions is recommended to ensure the ingredients aren’t too harsh on your scalp.
If you have greasy hair, try integrating dry shampoo into your hair care routine to keep your locks looking fresh for longer.
Review Your Hair Care Routine
The essential part of your winter hair routine is moisturising it properly. When you buy new products, look for those that boost hydration and moisture in your hair. You use a hydrating shampoo that moisturizes your scalp and hair and complete the treatment with a nourishing mask or conditioner. In case you suffer from redness or flaking, it’s best to use products designed for a sensitive scalp.
Additionally, if you have damaged or excessively dry hair, you can add damaged hair products to your routine. Moisture and hydration are paramount to keeping your hair healthy during winter. You can experiment with different products until you find your magic combination.
Professional-grade tools from brands like Duomo Pro can elevate your routine further, though they’ll only deliver results if the fundamentals are already in place.
Nourish From Within
Just as hydration plays a vital role in hair health, so too does proper nutrition. While a balanced diet rich in vitamins and minerals is ideal, our hectic modern lifestyles can make it challenging to consistently meet our nutritional needs through food alone.
These specialised supplements offer a convenient way to ensure your hair receives essential nutrients, combining vital minerals, vitamins, and amino acids that support healthy growth and strength. Look for formulations containing biotin, zinc, and vitamins D and B12—all crucial elements for maintaining lustrous locks during the demanding winter months.
Whilst supplements shouldn’t replace a wholesome diet, they can complement your nutrition strategy, especially when seasonal changes and central heating begin to take their toll on your tresses. Remember to consult with a healthcare professional before starting any supplement regime, as they can advise on the most suitable options for your specific needs.
Choose The Right Hat
Yep, we know the winter hat is fashionable as well as functional, but it’s important you choose one which will both protect you from the elements and not do unwelcome damage to your hair. A hat which is too tight, or made from material which doesn’t let your scalp breathe, is going to be detrimental to hair health, regardless of the snow, wind, and rain which it blocks.
Don’t Overstyle
The same rules apply to your appliances. When possible, try to let your hair dry naturally after washing as cutting down on heating appliances like hairdryers and straighteners will keep your hair moisturised and soft. Constantly moving from the cold outdoors to the warm, dry indoors in winter can affect the hair so reducing your hair’s exposure to further extreme changes in temperature will keep your hair healthy.
Stay Inside While Your Hair Dries
We all know the story. You’ve had your shower and you’re in a rush to hit the town; there’s not enough time to wait for your hair to dry, and you’ve been advised (above perhaps?) not to overdo the appliances during the winter months. The only solution, then, is to step out with hair still wet.
Big mistake. Firstly, you’ll catch a cold you crazy thing. But more importantly, going outside with wet hair can do serious damage to your hair; when wet hair meets freezing cold conditions, it becomes less supple and much more vulnerable to breakage.
Wear Protective Headwear While You Sleep
In the battle against winter hair damage, don’t underestimate the power of protective headwear while you sleep. Friction from tossing and turning can lead to breakage and dryness, but wearing a silk or satin bonnet or scarf can significantly reduce this damage.
Indeed, it’s best to opt for materials that reduce friction to prevent damage and breakage, such as ankara fabric instead of cotton, with the latter prone to stripping your hair of moisture. These smooth fabrics help to maintain your hair’s natural oils and keep your style in place, leading to less morning maintenance. For those who prefer not to wear something on their heads, a silk or satin pillowcase can serve as a friction-reducing alternative, ensuring your hair glides smoothly as you sleep.
Customised caps are also available for those with unique hair types, such as long locks or bountiful curls, offering tailored protection and comfort. Beyond just reducing friction, these protective coverings are instrumental in moisture retention, locking in both your hair’s natural hydration and any applied products.
This simple nighttime habit can make a substantial difference in maintaining healthy hair throughout the harsh winter months, making it a worthy addition to your hair care regimen.
Use A Quality Brush
All the above recommendations are useful during winter, but you should add another tip to your list to keep your hair healthy during all seasons. You should invest in a quality brush to maintain the health and appearance of your hair. Buy a gentle one that improves your tangles and prevents breakage. A great option is the brush made of boar bristle because it smooths your hair and distributes the natural oils evenly. Don’t use brushes with plastic brittles because they are harsh on your hair and can cause permanent damage.
The Bottom Line
As the winter season unfolds, it’s clear that our hair requires extra attention and care to combat the harsh elements and indoor heating that can lead to damage. Embracing the golden rules of winter hair care is not just about maintaining the health and integrity of your hair; it’s about adapting to the seasonal changes with smart, proactive steps.
Remember, the key to thriving through the winter months is to minimise exposure to extreme conditions, both natural and artificial. This means less heat styling, more gentle brushing, and protecting your hair from the cold and friction.
By following these principles, you’re not just protecting your hair; you’re also investing in your overall well-being and confidence. Your hair is your crown, and with the right care, it can remain lustrous and strong all year round.
World Pizza Day is almost upon us. 17th of January 2026. The Big One. And while we doubt that those in Campania will be cracking out the commemorative pineapple stuffed crusts to mark the occasion, we’ll take any damn reason we can for even a sliver of the good stuff.
To pre-empt the pedants, here at IDEAL we’re just as in thrall to a traditional Neapolitan as we are to a single slice of something New Yorker. As long as it’s made with love, respect and good ingredients, we’re in.
With that in mind, here is our rundown of the best pizzas in London, IDEAL for celebrating World Pizza Day in style.
L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele, Baker Street
Ideal for a taste of the so-called ‘Best Pizza in the World’…
We had to start here, seeing as it’s been dubbed ‘The Best Pizza in the World’ and iconised in the film Eat, Pray, Love. Ignoring the fact that the inaugural London site in Stoke Newington fractured in bitter legal dispute, the second branch in Baker Street is still slinging out top, top pizzas, loyally in line with the Neapolitan diktat.
If you’re after an excess of toppings, this one isn’t for you. Though the choice isn’t quite as clear cut as the mothership in Forcella, Naples (simply between margherita and marinara), this is still a minimalist affair in the most traditional – and best possible – way. Go for a half and half of the aforementioned margherita and marinara, or go totally wild and order a capricciosa, the artichoke hearts of Michele’s version plump and not mired in pizza-ruining, vinegary run-off. All in all, this is still one of the very best pizzas in London, regardless of fall-outs and expansion ambitions. Long may it continue.
There are now outposts in Soho, Manchester, Amsterdam and Bangkok, too, as well as the OG in Naples itself, still the peak of pizza-making worldwide, in our humble opinion.
Idealfor a taste of one of the pizza game’s rising stars…
We come back down to earth, letting the fertile Vesuvius soil fall between our fingers, at Chiswick’s Napoli On The Road, where authenticity is again on the menu, with just little contemporary flair thrown on the paddle for good measure.
Named as the 5th best pizzeria in the world by the staunchly Italo-centric (and increasingly influential) 50 Top Pizza list for 2025, Napoli On The Road is the brainchild of Michele Pascarella, a celebrated pizzaiolo who began his London journey with a mobile Ape Piaggio, delighting the city with wood-fired pizzas in pub car parks before laying down roots with his first brick-and-mortar establishment on Devonshire Road (the second outpost in Richmond is just as good, by the way).
Testament to a continuing rise even more pronounced than his carnotto, Pascarella has also earned the prestigious accolade of Global Pizza Maker of the Year in 2023, a testament to his mastery of correct form and structure.
That’s not to say that this Chiswick pizzeria isn’t home to some gentle, respectful innovation on the pizza front. Arguably our favourite order here is the Tonno & Cipolla, a blend of tuna fillet and sweet caramelised red onion jam, all atop their ridiculously digestible dough.
Even better, though, is the We’re On Fire. Here, the sauce sees nduja mixed seamlessly and subtly in with its usual covering of tomato until emulsified – an inspired touch as, all too often, nduja can make a pizza incredibly greasy. Then, dotted across the surface of the pizza, ice cold buffalo stracciatella soothes the rough edges of the nduja, rounding off the tomato’s acidity for good measure. It’s smart, judicious, and just oh-so delicious.
The house red, the Greco Di Tufo Oltre DOCG Bellaria from Campania, drinkable and light, is the perfect foil to these fine pizzas.
And interestingly, Napoli on the Road’s latest and most ambitious venture, a Soho outpost at 140 Wardour Street, is now open. It features à la carte dining on the ground floor and London’s first pizza tasting menu downstairs – a seven-course Neapolitan fine dining experience priced at around £100 with a wine pairing included.
They say that at the best neighbourhood restaurants, you feel just as comfortable dropping in for a convivial ciao as you do a four-course meal. And so it is at 081 Pizzeria, Peckham’s proudest purveyors of pizza and street food straight from the Città del Sole.
Having opened in the turbulent times of May 2021, 081 (named after the telephone code of Naples) has quickly established itself at the heart of the hospitality community on this stretch of Peckham Rye, with local chefs, bartenders and wait staff coming here to congregate around the 480C° heat of the ANVP-approved Izzo Forni as though it were a campfire.
Yep, this is a place that wants you to linger, a position at odds with the usual bam-bam-grazia-signoria nature of traditional Neapolitan pizzerias in the capital. There are arancini generously filled with ragu bolognese to enjoy as you wait for the main event, alongside a whole host of other deep-fried treats, here billed as tapas. The cocktails are ace, too, the negroni properly assertive. A graffiti-inspired sketch of ASAP Rocky weeping cheese looks down on the dining room, for some reason.
Of course, the pizzas have to hit the mark to keep the punters returning in a place like this, and, fortunately, 081 has some serious pedigree in that department; the head pizzaiola here is previously of Bravi Ragazzi (also on our list), and the pizzas are on a level with those being slung down the Circular Road to Streatham. If you’ve eaten at Bravi, that’s all you need to know.
Ideal for our very favourite pizza south of the river…
It felt right – poetic, even – to head south to Bravi Ragazzi next, foreplay dispensed with and appetite whet.
Streatham’s revered Neapolitan pizzeria prides itself on tradition and authenticity, and in our humble opinion, this right here is the best Neapolitan pizza in South London.
Several boxes have to be ticked for a pizza to qualify as a traditional Neapolitan in the eyes of the connoisseurs. 00 flour, water and salt form the dough, and it must be hand kneaded and given ample time to rise before being shaped by hand rather than rolling pin. After that, it’s topped with San Marzano or Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio tomatoes and Mozzarella di Bufala Campana, and cooked quickly at incredibly high heat in a wood fired pizza oven. The result should be pillowy, soft and elastic, with toppings light rather than overwhelming.
Anyway, the good guys at Bravi Ragazzi know all that, and their respect for tradition has made their pizzas the toast of Streatham and beyond. This is, quite simply, one of London’s best pizzas (must add it to that list, actually). They also do a superb tiramisu, for those with a sweet tooth.
Though the dining room is compact, unassuming, and walk-ins only, locals will be pleased to hear that Bravi Ragazzi is on Deliveroo… As if they didn’t know already!
Before we go, it would be remiss of us not to give a shout-out to another local favourite famous for slinging fantastic wood fired pizzas in the Neapolitan style, who have now sadly closed. Addome, how we miss you!
Ideal for getting close to a pizzaiolo consistently voted among the world’s best…
Excuse the heavy mouthful of a name, but the pizzas at 50 Kalo are anything but. Regularly named as one of the best pizzas in Europe outside of Italy, and with a world class pizzeria in Naples that’s even made it into the Michelin Guide, 50 Kalo and its superstar pizzaiolo Ciro Salvo boast some serious credibility.
The restaurant, whose name means ‘good dough’ in a Neapolitan dialect, stays true to its name with the lightest, airiest bases and premium ingredients used to dress that very good dough. Though we’re big fans of the headlining margherita here, the pizza fritta is perhaps even better, its base light and without a hint of grease, its texture verging on a doughnut. Topped with a pleasingly acidic marinara sauce and gratings of pecorino, it is absolutely superb. Could this be London’s best pizza? We certainly think so.
Ideal for pizza tonda romana at wallet-friendly prices…
From their first opening in Spitalfields in 2014, Pizza Union has grown to five buzzing locations across London – adding Aldgate, Holborn, King’s Cross and Hoxton to their roving roster.
Their Spitalfields original remains a benchmark for the group, perfectly positioned to serve both City workers and East Enders with its swift service and consistent quality. Here, pizza tonda romana (round Roman-style pizzas) emerge from the blazing hot oven in mere minutes, their bases characteristically thin and satisfyingly crisp. The Roma, pitched at a remarkably reasonable £4.95 and topped with tomato, rocket and drifts of parmesan, represents some of the best value in the capital. No pizza here tops £8.95.
What were we saying about pizza being the most inclusive foods on the planet? We were saying that, right? Perhaps we were just thinking it. Anyway, it’s true…
Images via PizzaUnion
The industrial-chic aesthetic and counter service keep things casual and the pricepoint down, but the quality of those crispy bases – achieved through a carefully controlled proving process that creates that distinctive Roman crackle – means Pizza Union punches well above its weight. With bottles (yes, bottles) of decent house wine clocking in at £16.95, this place is perfect for a quick lunch (glasses are the same price as that Roma, incidentally) or casual dinner that won’t break the bank.
The house-made garlic butter for crust-dipping is a must, but it’s certainly not a dessert. Finish instead with and espresso and a Sicilian cannoli – they look beautiful and taste even better.
Flat Earth, Bethnal Green*to close, last service 22nd April 2026*
Ideal for planet-conscious pizza that doesn’t compromise on flavour…
What began as a lockdown pop-up operating out of various East London kitchens has blossomed into one of the city’s most exciting vegetarian ventures. After gaining a devoted following through a celebrated residency at The Hive in Cambridge Heath, Flat Earth finally put down roots in their own permanent space in 2022.
Here, in Hackney, sustainability is very much the watchword – from their heritage grain bases to their reusable wine bottle scheme, even down to lampshades crafted from old orange peel (cor, I bet they smell good when the bulbs are hotting up). The restaurant’s commitment to ethical suppliers and local producers would all read a bit ‘marketing gimmick’ if the pizzas didn’t deliver on flavour, but those grains don’t half make for a digestible base, it has to be said.
The Hackney Hot is the hero dish here, make no mistake (basically every table seems to be ordering it), and features a deft balance of sweet pickled beetroot, a trio of Somerset cheeses, jalapeños, and fermented hot salsa. And if that wasn’t unique enough, try the Kimchi Fiorentina, which reimagines a classic pizza (not sure we’ve ever actually seen one outside of Pizza Express) with house kimchi and a perfectly cooked egg. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it; it’s ace.
There is, unsurprisingly, a strong organic wine list, with the restaurant working with Sustainable Wine Solutions to receive their wines in three formats: on tap, in recycled bottles, and refillable wine bottles. Cheers to that!
*Update, April 2026: Sadly, Flat Earth has announced it will be closing permanently at the end of April 2026, with the last service on the 22nd. If you haven’t yet made the pilgrimage to Cambridge Heath Road, consider this your final call.*
Ideal for a truly authentic slice of Naples in North London…
Listen: the backstory between L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele and the guys at Vicoli di Napoli is a little unclear. It’s certainly acrimonious, though it’s been largely scrubbed from the records so we can’t spill the tea. What we can do is confirm that the pizzas here are right up there (up there, at the top of this article) with some of the best properly faithful Neapolitan ‘cart wheel’ pizzas in London.
With its bright blue interior and open-armed, limoncello-wielding welcome, this Stokey institution lives up to its name (which translates to ‘alleys of Naples’) in terms of that much sought after ‘authenticity’. Run by sisters who are keeping their Neapolitan heritage alive and kicking, Vicoli di Napoli serves up sprawling, soupy pizzas that no normal size plate can contain.
Images via @vicolidinapolipizzeria
While the marinara and margherita are house specialties that showcase the pizzeria’s dedication to humble tradition, venture into their calzone and prosciutto e funghi offerings for equally rewarding experiences. Though do be careful venturing in there; it’s fucking burning piping hot, and your inner oral mucosa right off the sides of your inner cheeks. And that is a phrase we never want to see again in an article about food.
The pizza bases are exactly as they should be – light, airy and with that perfect Neapolitan chew. For dessert, their exceptional house-made tiramisu is, erm, just that; exceptional.
Ideal for trying the iconic, ambitious Brighton pizzeria…
We’ve been fans of Fatto a Mano’s just-the-right-side-sloppy Neapolitan pizzas since their (and our) days in Brighton, first as a single site on the city’s London Road back in 2015, then to their expansion into Hove, all the way to their second pizzeria opening in the Big wood-fired Smoke at the crust end of last year.
That second pizzeria is found in Covent Garden (with a third now doing their business in Bethnal Green), but our favourite of Fatto’s London lot is found ten minutes up the Piccadilly Line in Kings Cross.
Here, as with all five restaurants, the dough is pillowy and easy to manage, the ingredients top notch and light-as-you-like, and the pizza oven cranked up to the requisite 450°C, only needing around 90 seconds before it’s ready. Nope, you won’t see any caramelised cheese here; the buffalo mozzarella on the margherita buffalo is as fresh and milky as it comes, and the marinara sauce fresh and sharp rather than reduced to a metallic rust. It’s a gorgeous pizza, and once the sun has finally got its hat on, Fatto’s terrace certainly looks an inviting place to eat one.
There’s even a lasagna pizza, which sees beef ragu, creamy bechamel and smoked Provola on a classic Neapolitan base, for those who loved to be laid low by their lunch.
Of real note to all the pizza nerds out there, last May Fatto a Mano played host to one of the world’s most famous pizzas, Franco Pepe’s Margherita Sbagliata, as seen on Netflix’s Chef’s Table. The esteemed pizza chef blessed the restaurant with the secret recipe for his ‘Mistaken Margherita’, with £1.50 from every pizza going to the incredible La Scugnizzeria, a charity who offer underprivileged young people from Scampia a path into employment. Pizza and a good cause… Could there be anything better?
Ideal for once ephemeral, now enduring New York-adjacent slices…
We’ve been chasing the ephemeral, enigmatic Dough Hands from pizza pop-up to pizza pop-up in recent years, enjoying their crisp New York-style slices in Brixton Market, Bethnal Green and Homerton, and it’s been a pilgrimage we’ve never regretted, the signature ‘Jode’ (featuring nduja, hot honey and stracciatella) worth just about any hour spent with TfL, even if just for a slice.
Well colour us tricolore, because Dough Hands have now well and truly settled into their residency at the Spurstowe Arms, just seconds from Hackney Central station. With a less transient timescale billed simply as ‘for the foreseeable’, we’re so happy to have these awesome pizza slingers so close to (floury, marinara-marked) hand.
And founder Hannah Drye isn’t stopping there. Dough Hands is launching a second residency at All My Friends in Hackney Wick on 7th May, replacing the now-ended Nunhead stint at The Old Nun’s Head. The new spot will serve XL 20-inch pies alongside by-the-slice options for the first time, with a fresh menu built around regenerative flour from Shipton Mill and Wildfarmed. Two Dough Hands locations in east London? We’ll take it.
Ideal for supremely digestible, seawater spiked pizzas…
Classic Caputo 00 flour and, erm, pure seawater… It’s not quite got that ‘match made in heaven’ status that, say, San Marzano tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella and fresh basil boast. But hey, we’re up for anything, and so it is to ‘O Ver, whose use of the salty stuff, drawn from the purest areas of the Mediterranean, is very much their USP.
The first restaurant in the UK to – vocally – do so, the seawater is said to lighten the dough and make it easier to digest. We honestly can’t argue with the claim; ‘O Ver’s pizzas are incredibly easy-eating, and it’s eminently possible to take two down in a single sitting, even after you’ve had a good crack at the restaurant’s rundown of classic Neapolitan deep-fried bites. The crocche (essentially deep-fried mashed potato), in particular, is expertly conceived.
Back to those pizzas, and they hit the table puffed up and airy, the dinghy bouncing back at you when prodded and only deflating when pierced. Elegantly dressed, we huge fans to the tropea; a sophisticated affair with fior di latte, flakes of tuna fillet, the namesake onions, sun dried tomatoes and olives. It sings of summer, its sweet-salty interplay softened by a silky, ornate mouthfeel. Truly, a must-order, even if the £19.50 price tag is a clear premium, it’s easy to see why ‘O Ver is so highly regarded.
Ideal for sourdough pizzas all the way from Bologna…
We’ve been big fans of Bologna’s Berberè for years, always stealing a slice when we’re in La Rossa™. So, when these celebrated pizza purveyors touched down closer to home back in 2020, we immediately made our way south of the river and to Clapham Common in search of some action (observing all social distancing rules of course and not sharing our pizza, however much Beberè implores you to do so with their ‘sliced in 8 to stimulate conviviality’ dispatch).
Founded by Matteo and Salvatore Aloe in Bologna in 2010, the Clapham iteration of Berberè stands on the former site of Radio Alice, a pizzeria that the Aloe brothers also had a hand in. We think Berberè is even better, and not far from the dizzy heights that this pizzeria has ascended back in Bel Paese.
It’s all about the sourdough base here, whose mother has been nurtured for more than a decade since its birth in Castel Maggiore, an attentiveness that results in a super light base that’s cooked to a pleasingly crisp finish. Perfect, then, for the restaurant’s crust dippers, here a choice between spicy ‘nduja & honey, aioli, garlic butter or basil & walnut pesto. Get all four.
The pizza selection itself feels more traditional and, dare we say, demure, with a roll call of just eleven elegantly adorned affairs. The Napoli is especially good, with the imported Amalfi anchovies aggressively salty and the black olives aggressively briny, but all somehow soothed by a super sweet organic tomato sauce. To enjoy this particular pizza on a crisp base that doesn’t buckle feels perverse. Illicit, even. And we love it…
Even more illicit feeling is Berberè’s falafel pizza which should, in all honesty, be against the law. We think we might just order another Napoli… but not before one of their gorgeous montaranina (a pizza fritta of sorts).
Authenticity is the name of the game – on the first half at least – of the Battersea favourite Pizzeria Pellone’s menu; Neapolitan classics using Gustarosso tomato sauce, Caputo flour, and Buffalo Mozzarella straight from Campania. This respectful adherence to stricture has its backbone in the Pellone family’s popular pizzerias back in Naples, and you can taste tradition in every slice..
That said, it’s in that second half of the menu, the Pizze Le Pizze Gourmet, where the intrigue lies; the white pizzas here are superb, particularly the pistachio pesto and mortadella number. The Calzone Fritto, generous with black pepper and mottled with housemade salami, is a cult classic.
For those not keen to head south, there’s now a second branch of Pellone in East Finchely.
Ideal for creative late night slices and some top tunes to boot…
We’ve come this far without mentioning any by-the-slice joints, which is a little remiss of us – London does boast a commendably varied pizza scene, and we can’t fixate on Neapolitan versions forever, as much as we’d like to.
Perhaps the best slice shop in the city is late night hipster hangout Voodoo Ray’s in Dalston. Here you can enjoy a cold can of Neck Oil and a New Yorker style pizza until the early hours (this place closes at 3 AM at the weekend) and ride off on your unicycle into the night, satiated and happy.
Boasting a crust that won’t bust under the weight of its deceptively simple toppings, a good covering of Roni Cup pepperoni and wefts of grated parmesan are all you need to let you know you’re eating a New York adjacent pie over at Crisp Pizza.
Quite possibly London’s most coveted slice right now, the snaking lines outside tell their own narrative; of Londoners keen to delve deeper than the Neapolitan culinary diktat, of discerning diners seeking a slice that won’t fold so dramatically that their starched white shirts get splattered in marinara sauce.
Carl McCluskey first started slinging his thin, crispy pies from a tiny kitchen in his nan’s pub, The Chancellors, in Hammersmith back in 2021. What followed was the kind of viral success story that restaurateurs dream of: snaking queues down Crisp Road, 300 pizzas flying out on a Saturday night, a pilgrimage from Barstool Pizza’s Dave Portnoy, and just about every London pizza opening since copying the form.
Having outgrown the modest W6 digs, McCluskey has now brought his celebrated operation to the centre of town, taking over The Marlborough on North Audley Street in Mayfair in November 2025.
Support comes from the formidable team behind The Devonshire: Charlie Carroll, Ashley Palmer-Watts and Oisín Rogers, and the national reviews have been positive ever since doors opened. The queue of influencers snaking down this stretch of W1 shows no sign of abating. Whilst we’re not convinced this one is worth waiting actual hours for, it’s still a damn fine slice.
Upstairs, The Marlborough operates as a traditional pub with standing room, fitted seating and what promises to be exceptional Guinness pours courtesy of The Devonshire’s famous installation. Downstairs, Crisp takes over a speakeasy-style dining room with 50-ish covers and an outside terrace. The menu stays true to what made Hammersmith pilgrims so devoted: the Crisp W6 pie with buffalo mozzarella and lashings of pecorino, the nduja number bringing Calabrian heat, and the Vecna with its crowd-pleasing hot honey drizzle.
For those mourning the loss of The Chancellors in W6, take heart: the pizza and essence of Crisp remain unchanged, just with a rather fancier postcode.
Ideal for arguably the most Neapolitan of Neapolitan pizza experiences in the capital…
Back to where it all began, with another fine Neapolitan showstopper. Everything about Santa Maria in Ealing is about tradition and simplicity; the bare, whitewashed walls, the lightly adorned pizzas, the premium ingredients imported from the motherland. It’s all sourced and cooked with a pride in the product as guiding principle, which is no bad thing in a pizza.
Next up, we’re heading to Crust Bros. Thankfully not actually bro food (does anyone genuinely want ‘grimy fries’ or ‘sordid nachos’?), these fratms do a fine trade in elegant, Neapolitan-adjacent pizzas, complete with puffy, dinghy-style crusts, proper leopard pock-marks, and pleasingly sloppy centres.
Just a few minutes walk from Waterloo and with a pizza that hits the table steaming within a minute or two of ordering, Crust Bros is the perfect place for a pitstop before catching your onward train. The place was positively heaving on a recent Friday lunchtime visit, full of suits, citybreakers and strays, a demonstration of the enduringly democratic nature of pizza.
Despite the eponymous name, it’s not the crusts that help this pizzeria stand out in a city that’s close to drowning in latticello; it’s the dippers for those crusts that are the point of difference. The lemon garlic mayo is particularly good – piquant and bracing, and bringing a perfect counterpoint to those light-as-you like crusts which seem to exhale happily as you pierce them.
Personalise your pizza or choose from a choice of around ten of their own suggestions (skirting around the fact that you might have to say “could I have the Meat Sweatz?” outloud), finish with the excellent homemade limoncello, and you’ve got yourself a speedy, satisfying lunch to propel you forward into your afternoon. Saluti!
Ideal for lush yet light New York bar style pizzas…
If you’re prowling (sorry) the streets of Marylebone for a slice of New York, then look no further than Alley Cats Pizza. First opening in 2023, this homage to the red sauce-splattered, gingham-tableclothed pizza joints of the Big Apple has already become a sensation online and, you know, physically; you may well have seen the thin, crisp pies on TikTok or the queues snaking down Paddington Street.
On the paddle is Sicilian chef Francesco Macri, who has worked at two other places on our list, Pizza Pilgrims and Santa Maria, and brings that experience to Alley Cats, though the pizza proposition here is a little different – something close to a New York ‘bar style’, characterised by an electric oven that fires out 14 inches in under six minutes, all stable crusts and well-balanced, reserved toppings.
The prosaically named ‘Vodka’ is the highlight here, a riff on penne alla vodka with its splash of cream enrichening the tomato sauce and its two mozzarellas – both buffalo and aged – furthering that sense of something truly sumptuous. Fortunately, that sturdy base is more than capable of a bit of heavy lifting.
Since the Marylebone original, Alley Cats has expanded at pace, making it one of the fastest-growing non-Neapolitan pizza operations in the capital. There’s now a second site on Chelsea’s King’s Road and a third on Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill, the latter featuring a downstairs private dining room and new menu additions including a BBQ chicken pizza and pizza fritta ‘pillows’ filled with cheesy spinach.
Idealfor arguably London’s most popular homegrown pizza…
A synthesis style of New York and ‘London’ Neapolitan pizzas, Yard Sale is one of the city’s most ubiquitous pizza brands. TopJaw approved to point that it feels like something fishy is afoot, Yard Sale’s omnipresence, in all fairness, hasn’t dampened the quality of their pizzas, with the restaurant group winning a slew of awards in recent years, including Best Value Eats in 2022’s OFM Awards London’s most-loved restaurant in Time Out’s 2016 Love London Awards.
Yard Sale Pizza started from humble beginnings with a single oven in a backyard, and has since expanded across North, East, and South London, with 15 sites now in total, plus an extensive, expansive delivery offering. Their 12″ and 18″ pizzas are perfect for solo diners or sharing between friends, with toppings sometimes eccentric and always, proudly multicultural London in their makeup. Their recent collaboration with Roti King (such London royalty they should soon be ‘Roti Emperor’, amirite?) on a rendang topped pizza exemplifies both those statements, and ends up being predictably, properly delicious.
As with quite a few London pizzerias that get a bit frivolous with their menu descriptors, you might feel like a bit of a dick ordering here – “Mr Lava Lava”, anyone?
Locations: Hither Green, Tottenham, Crofton Park, Crystal Palace, Balham, East Dulwich, Hackney Road, Leytonstone, Walthamstow, Finsbury Park, Clapton, and more.
Detroit Pizza, Spitalfields
Ideal for a square slice of caramelised cheese perfection…
Neapolitan this, New Yorker that… Well, over in Spitalfields, Detroit Pizza aims instead to bring a square of Motor City pizza culture to London. We’re so glad they did, as the pies here, characterised by a thick, square-cut base with a crunchy, fried base overflowing with delicious melted cheese are one mighty indulgence. The best bit? The frilly, caramelised cheese collar that the Detroit pizzas here wear so proudly, its frico the result of the thick, cast-iron-like steel pans that the restaurant uses.
A walk-in only restaurant, slices/squares/whatever are £4.99 while whole pies come in two sizes, regular or large, priced at around £15 or £25 respectively, depending on toppings. The latter is enough to feed four.
We’re sure you’ve heard of it by now. We wouldn’t be surprised if your feed’s been pickled in them over the last year. Perhaps you’ve even enjoyed the combination yourself, luxuriating in the sheer hedonism of it all.
Yep, the martini and fries one-two punch has become something of a cultural moment, and it’s one that looks set to continue into 2026. Dubbed the ‘adult happy meal’ by bartenders across the world (why has no one called it the Martini Supreme yet?), it’s a pairing that makes more sense with every sip.
As with all in vogue, high-low combinations, there’s an elegant logic to this one: the crisp, botanical bite of a well-made martini cuts through the richness of fried potato, while the salt amplifies the drink’s savoury depth. And if you subscribe to the theory that chips soak up the alcohol, you’re essentially breaking even.
So, get ready to clink your conical glasses to the best places to enjoy a martini and fries in London. Here we go…
Disclaimer: We’re in the UK, so chips are served instead of fries in some of our inclusions. It’s fries all the way for us, though, we’ve got to say…
Rita’s, Soho
Ideal for the NYC holy trinity and a three-martini lunch…
Rita’s brings modern American cooking to the heart of Soho, and it’s become one of our favourite spots in the neighbourhood. Open from 12pm every day, this warm and welcoming restaurant is the ideal place if you’re after a midday martini. Wet, dirty or dry, at Rita’s, it comes any way you like.
The lunch crowd here knows the score: order one at noon and you’re cosmopolitan, order three and you’re either a 1960s advertising executive or having a very good Wednesday. Sometimes, in the martini-addled mind, you can be all three things simultaneously.
Crisp, clean and wonderfully invigorating, the dry martini here is the ideal companion to a light meal. In this case, Caesar salad, a side of fries and a dry martini; a take on the NYC happy meal that’s been called the holy trinity by the Washington Post.
Images via Rita’s
The Chicken Caesar at Rita’s is the platonic ideal of the dish, to us. Copious amounts of Cantabrian anchovies and a heap of freshly grated Parmesan, topped with buttermilk-soaked, secret-spice-dredged chicken thigh… It’s a light meal, as we said. The only drink capable of cutting through it all? Do we even need to spell it out?
Should you like the idea of a three-martini lunch but can’t quite handle the pace, Rita’s serves mini martinis for just £4.25. Cheating? We think not.
The American Bar at The Stafford London, Green Park
Ideal for a martini and fries in those liminal hours…
Sometimes in that liminal space between 3pm and 5pm, you need a pick-me-up. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner – so where should one head? A hotel bar, of course.
There’s always someone drinking in a hotel bar, no matter the time of day: business travellers unwinding, tourists recovering from a day’s exploring, the lone wolf nursing something cold and strong.
Likewise, in those late-night hours after you’ve had dinner and drinks but want one more for the road (somewhere that isn’t a rowdy bar or club), a pit-stop at a hotel bar can often be the answer. Enter The American.
Images via The American Bar
Open noon to midnight on weekdays and until 1am on weekends, The American Bar at The Stafford London serves those borderland hours well. Hidden down a quiet St James’s passage, this bar has been mixing martinis since the 1930s and is something of a London institution. The walls are covered in memorabilia from regulars past and present, lending the place a warmth that feels earned rather than designed.
Whether you prefer gin or vodka, shaken or stirred, dirty or dry, whatever, the bartenders here know their way around a cocktail glass. Of course, we’re not just at The American for their martini. They also serve french fries, and offer triple-cooked chips, too, should you want something more substantial. And if you’re chasing that holy trinity, there’s a main-sized Caesar salad for £20, or a side-sized version for £8.
Sidenote: Last year, to celebrate Independence Day (how very ironic) the bar launched ‘The American Happy Hour’; buy either a Tito’s Handmade Vodka Martini or the American Bar Gin Martini, and you got a side of fries. It didn’t quite fit our liminal time angle, so we’re mentioning it here instead. Here’s hoping for the same thing again this year.
They say you should never go into a meal hungry – ruins your judgment, apparently. Kit Kemp’s Firmdale Hotels have the solution. Every day between 5pm and 7pm, Brasserie Max at the Covent Garden Hotel offers Martini Hour: any martini from their extensive menu plus a bowl of chips for £14.
Images via: Brasserie Max
And extensive is the word. Beyond the classic, there’s a Saketini with Hayman’s Old Tom and Lillet blanc, a wasabi-spiked Samurai, and the Down Under made with Papa Salt gin. Given that Firmdale only has hotels in London and New York, it makes sense they’d embrace a trend born in Manhattan.
It’s the ideal aperitif if you’ve got dinner reservations elsewhere – the gin sharpens the appetite while the fries take the edge off, leaving you in that sweet spot of pleasantly peckish rather than ravenous. Just as it should be.
Ideal for adding Parisian flair to your martini and frites experience…
Cafe François is an all-day Parisian-style brasserie that does the martini and frites union with appropriate Gallic flair. The fries here are, of course, French – thin-cut, twice-fried and served in a silver serving bowl with béarnaise alongside, if you like. They also do truffled frites should you be of a decadent disposition, though for us, the béarnaise brings the requisite indulgence, and the duo is perfect just the way it is.
Their martini list runs to several variations, but we like to stick with their Martini de la Maison, if only for fear of paradox-of-choice-paralysis. That’s Beefeater gin or Mikolasch vodka with dry vermouth and verjus, if you’re asking.
Images via Cafe François
You can, of course, just get your martini and frites fix and stop there. We have ours perched at the bar solo sometimes. But if you’re feeling hungry, upgrade to the Cafe François’ classic steak frites: a perfectly blushing bavette, crispy golden (really golden; they’re lovely) fries, and a rich, peppery sauce au poivre for that extra indulgence. Or, go for moules marinière with frites, their much-lauded rôtisserie chicken, or even lobster if you’re feeling flush. There’s a Caesar salad too, naturally, despite this being France. Sorry, London. Erm, confused now.
Back in the room, and Cafe François is a comfortable, convivial affair. Whether you’re dining solo or with a group, this is one of the best places in London for martini and fries. Keep an eye on their seasonal promotions too, like the Bartender Happy Meal (martini and fries for £10).
Ideal for happy hour martini and fries with a view…
Oblix East was one of the first bars in London to catch on to the ol’ New York Happy Meal trend and created a dedicated happy hour menu pairing martinis with fries way back in 2024. It would be wrong not to mention them, then.
Images via Oblix
While that specific menu has since moved on, at Oblix East Sunday through Thursday you can take advantage of sundowners from 5pm to 7pm – iconic cocktails at half price, including their martini. An attractive deal, no doubt, made more so when you learn that they serve truffle and parmesan fries with béarnaise sauce. That said, with a martini we like our fries plain and purely salted, but that’s just us.
Thirty-two floors above London Bridge, Oblix East offers martinis with a view that stretches to Kent on clear days. The dirty martini is everything that you want from this classic drink – just enough olive brine to make the salt cravings kick in, lending it a cloudy pour that mirrors the London sky around you.
No list of London martini destinations would be complete without The Connaught. With 16 appearances in the World’s 50 Best Bars list (that’s every year of the list’s existence) and counting, the headline act is undeniably the bar’s signature bespoke dry martini. The famous trolley service, where your martini is mixed tableside from a gleaming chrome cart, remains one of the city’s great theatrical drinking experiences. You’ll choose your gin, your vermouth ratio, and your bitters from a selection that rotates seasonally, and then you’ll settle in for a damn fine sip. We like the Connaught Bar martini, made with their house-distilled artisan gin.
Images via The Connaught Bar
The result is a martini calibrated precisely to your preferences, served in a frozen glass that fogs the moment it leaves the trolley. Too fancy for a serving of fries on the bar menu, you’ll have to order tactically here for a true Martini Supreme experience; their sandwiches are served with chips, so we figured it makes the cut for our list. We’re pretty sure they’d let you order a bowl as it is, if you asked nicely.
Those sandwiches don’t come cheap, mind you, starting at £30 for the vegetarian club sandwich. It’s likely the most expensive version of this combination you’ll find in London, but arguably the most memorable.
Ideal for neighbourhood vibes and no-nonsense cocktails…
We’ve been fans of Three Sheets for as long as their martinis let us remember. We love their Dalston venue and love even more their spot in Soho. Owned and run by brothers Max and Noel Venning, they know what the people of London want.
The Dalston original sits at number 13 on the UK’s Top 50 Cocktail Bars list, and it’s also picked up trophies at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards. The Soho outpost carries that same pedigree into a moody, narrow space of flickering candles, dark green booths and soft teal leather. Their approach is refreshingly unpretentious: approachable, well-made cocktails and reinvented classics that people actually want to drink.
Images via Three Sheets
Some say you shouldn’t mess with something that’s as perfect as a classic martini. But we’re glad Three Sheets put their spin on it. In our humble opinion, they serve up one of the crispest, cleanest dirty martinis in town. What’s their secret? Belvedere, koseret tea, olive oil, picpoul and sea salt, apparently. You can even get a bump of caviar with your martini for an extra £8, though we’re personally looking forward to caviar ‘bumps’ going out of fashion. Just sayin’.
The fries here are actually mustard chips; British Maris Piper dusted with mustard powder, served with aioli and their house-made Guinness brown sauce. It’s a traditional bar snack done the Three Sheets way. They’re the ideal thing for soaking up some of those martinis if you don’t want to give in to the wind too early, quite honestly.
Cool and oh-so-chrome, this Shoreditch seafood spot has made the martini part of its identity. The interior, designed by Harry Nuriev of Crosby Studios, is unapologetically futuristic: exposed high ceilings, stainless-steel surfaces, weighty pipes doubling as architectural pillars, and an intentional hyper-industrial aesthetic that feels like dining inside a glamorous construction site. It’s monochromatic, metallic, and very Shoreditch, but it works. We’ve always thought martinis had the texture and taste of silver, if that makes sense, and our synaesthesia is certainly stimulated by drinking one in this room.
Images via Noisy Oyster
As any seafood bar worth their Maldon flake would tell you, oysters and martinis have long been natural companions. Adding fries to the equation creates something approaching the perfect bar snack trifecta (sorry, Caesar salad). Wait ‘til you hear about those fries; thin-cut and crispy, served with aioli and prawn head salt, which is very addictive, indeed.
Go for olives instead of lemon and your martini comes with a briny edge that echoes the shellfish. More decisions to make; you can choose from an array of gins and vodkas including Nikka Coffey gin or Grey Goose vodka. Ours is the latter.
Ideal for beef dripping potatoes and pre-dinner fortification…
Hawksmoor built its reputation on steak, but their dedicated martini bar at St Pancras is where it’s at for the classic drink and a side of fries.
The bar menu features the restaurant’s beef dripping hash browns, and if you’re feeling fruity, they’re a fine pairing for a cocktail. But if you ask nicely you can get a bowl of fries or those legendary (for good reason) triple-cooked chips: fluffy inside, shatteringly crisp outside, and seasoned with beef dripping and rosemary salt. We’re salivating thinking about them. Hold on, just need to wipe down our keyboard…
…Where were we? Oh yeah, martini. If you’re after that whole New York martini experience (isn’t that why we’re here?), this is probably one of the best places in London to get your fix. The Martini Bar sits within the St Pancras hotel, Sir George Gilbert Scott’s Grade I-listed gothic revival masterpiece, and the room is nothing short of spectacular: soaring decorative ceilings, Gothic arches, ornate carved stonework, mosaic floors and stained-glass windows. Every surface is lavished with gilded stone carvings and intricate paintwork. It might just be the most beautiful bar in London.
Images via Hawksmoor
No matter how you take it, a menu of martinis is dedicated to variations. We like their Steakhouse Martini – green peppercorn tincture and olive brine give it a splendidly savoury edge, while chardonnay adds a creamy finish. It’s shaken rather than stirred, so comes with a touch more dilution and a slightly softer punch. And that’s just fine by us.
Oh, and they sell a Little Caesar with Cantabrian anchovies for £8, if you’re looking for that magic number again. Oysters too.
The martini and fries combination works because it refuses to take itself too seriously while still demanding quality on both counts. A badly made martini won’t be saved by excellent chips, and perfect fries deserve better than warm gin and too much vermouth. London’s best versions understand this balance.
With Hawksmoor still on the mind, we’re checking out London’s best steaks next. Care to join us? Of course you do.
14 miles south of Bath, Frome punches well above its weight in Somerset’s food scene. A former wool-trading market town that fell into post-industrial decline, it has spent the last two decades drawing in savvy independent operators who have decamped from London and Bristol in search of a slower pace, all without abandoning their professional ambitions.
The change has been profound. The Times named Frome the ‘sixth coolest town in Britain’ back in 2014, the Sunday Times has crowned it ‘Best Place to Live in the Southwest’ three times since 2018, and property prices have responded accordingly (bit of insider trading from a Times editor, perhaps?). Swanky Babington House is up the road, Bruton’s gallery scene is a short drive away, and a whole host of tedious types in waxed gilets have made Frome their weekend base.
Don’t be put off by that. The same forces also brought serious cooks looking for affordable rent and a customer base willing to pay for quality. The alumni list is telling: chefs from Moro, Monty’s Deli, Quo Vadis, to name but a few. The result is a food landscape that, pound for pound, punches well above what you’d expect from a town of 28,000 people.
Here are the best restaurants in Frome.
The High Pavement
Ideal for Moorish tapas, sherry and charcoal-grilled meat…
This family-run Moorish tapas restaurant on Palmer Street requires reservations a month or two in advance, a lead time that would raise eyebrows pretty much anywhere in the country, in this economy, let alone this mellow corner of Somerset.
Yet that’s how long you’ll have to wait for a meal at The High Pavement. But once finally ensconced in the buzzy dining room, you’ll be in safe hands. Stuart and Aimee have run the place for over a decade, originally opening only Friday and Saturday evenings with a weekly changing menu, before expanding to Thursdays and shifting to the tapas format that better suits their style of cooking and the huge demand for a taste of that cooking.
The kitchen works a charcoal grill for dishes like barmarked curls of Cornish squid with zhoug and nicely barked venison with a sticky Pedro Ximénez reduction, alongside cold plates of muhammara with Turkish pepper paste and pomegranate molasses, white bean hummus with a truly pungent confit garlic alioli, and deep-fried goat’s cheese with date syrup and almonds. There’s a careful balance at work between sweet and savoury in each of these dishes, with a judicious use of acidity keeping things light and lively. Only a couple of plates top a tenner, too, which only furthers the appeal.
The sherry list runs to around 20 bottles, and the terraced garden (fitted with a sail for inclement weather) provides unexpected outdoor dining in the heart of town. The locals-know-locals atmosphere means half the restaurant often recognises the other half, which adds to the party feel on busy nights, as copitas are clinked across tables by ruddy-faced regulars.
The Good Food Guide describes this French bistro-with-rooms on Catherine Street as ‘Gallic to the core, a real blast from the past’, which captures the intentional throwback quality of Bistro Lotte pretty succinctly.
The restaurant runs from an Edwardian townhouse whose high ceilings and panelled walls suit the opulent ambition, with the open kitchen adding theatre to the ground-floor dining room without so much bluster that you can’t hear your dining companion groan. Outside tables and a glass-frontage catch the sun from dawn to dusk, ideal for your first coffee of the day or a French 75 before dinner.
For breakfast, it’s beautifully laminated pastries. Then, it’s croques, galettes, tartiflette and crêpes for lunch, before dinner rolls out the big guns; escargots, boeuf bourguignon, steak frites and confit duck leg. The cherry clafoutis and dark chocolate mousse with Chantilly cream continue the theme for dessert. A coronary episode is your petit four. That’s the vibe here and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
There’s a carefully sourced quality amongst all the richness. Meat comes from neighbouring Cayfords Butcher (literally next door, sourcing from local farms), sourdough is baked daily, and your resplendent plateau de fruit de mer has been furnished by the good folk at Kingfisher Brixham (available to preorder when the season is right). Keeping things inclusive, the wine list arrives in keenly priced carafes. Bottles of Wignac cidre rosé offer something different, a move we’d highly recommend.
Bar Lotte, a few doors up Catherine Street, extends the offer with cocktails and live music from local jazz and blues acts twice weekly. Ten guest rooms above the bistro make it a practical overnight option, especially when you’re getting carried out in a stretcher, food coma (or, perhaps, too much of that cider) having rendered you legless.
Owen Postgate opened Frome’s original Rye Bakery in 2017 with a clear philosophy: affordable food focused on flavour and responsible farming, realised in the milling of their own heritage wheat from local Somerset farms. It pays off; Rye have built a reputation as one of the country’s best bakeries.
This, their café, sits prettily in a converted Victorian chapel on Frome’s Whittox Lane, complete with retained church organ, original pews upstairs, and the kind of vaulted ceiling that makes eating a bacon sandwich feel vaguely ecclesiastical.
Images via Rye Bakery Facebook
The café menu is built around seasonality and a stated commitment to ‘ecologically minded farming’: heritage sourdough, sausage rolls with a heavy pelt of black pepper rolled into sweet pork mince, seasonal Danish pastries (a recent festive redcurrant number was bliss), and savoury options like pig cheek and ham hock stew for those hanging around ‘till close at 4pm.
It’s not all they do, though; the Rye operation has expanded considerably since those early days…
Rye’s second site at Station Approach now houses the main bakery operation, complete with an in-house mill and a custom-built wood-fired oven installed in 2022. It functions as bakery, shop and pizzeria.
Pizza nights go down Thursday to Saturday from 5pm, with wood-fired bases and toppings like nduja with hot honey, glassy red onions, fresh ricotta and fior di latte. The wine bar attached places a heavy onus on natural wines from smaller suppliers and the outdoor seating area fills on summer evenings when DJs and live acts perform.
Images via Rye Bakery Facebook
The broader Station complex also incorporates Owen’s Sausages and Hams (their weekly-changing ‘silly sausage’ hot dog pulls crowds), South Indian specialists Lungi Babas (pre-order thalis and masala dosas via their website to guarantee availability), and cheese specialist The Cheese Lord, whose raclette station keeps Frome fat every Friday through winter. The whole space functions as something between food hall and outdoor festival when the weather cooperates, and is a lovely place to hang out.
Ideal for seasonal British bistro cooking and bold wine…
The Frome outpost of Bath’s Walcot Group arrived in April 2024, occupying a split-level site at the foot of cobbled Catherine Hill. Billing itself as a neighbourhood restaurant, Little Walcot’s kitchen credentials are perhaps a little more serious than that: menus developed by Stephen Terry (Great British Menu winner who earned his first Michelin star aged 25) and Piero Boi, with day-to-day operations handled by Jack Stallard, formerly of The Pig near Bath.
The Walcot Group also runs Green Street Butchers in Bath, which supplies the dry-aged beef that appears across the menu (their sandwiches have led to us naming the butchers one of Bath’s best places to eat).
On looks and paper, so far so good. We’re pleased to report Little Walcot is successful in its delivery, too, backed up by a cooking style that’s seasonal British executed with professional precision: hand-rolled pasta, home-baked bread, sustainable seafood arriving direct from boats.
The group also owns Solina Pasta in Bath, so a dedicated pasta section makes sense. Solina sends over the pasta fresh, and the team work their magic with it on site. A recent pappardelle with pork and fennel ragù was a winner, a reassuring presence on a cold winter’s evening.
Indeed, comfort food is the register here. A Blythburgh pork chop arrives pleasingly mi cuit, covered in its cooking juices alongside a hard baked, off-bitter apple sauce, whilst roast monkfish comes with a shellfish and butterbean stew, cavolo nero and datterini tomatoes. The latter was as good as it sounds.
The restaurant has a great looking dining room – beautifully low-lit, plump burgundy banquettes, booths and chairs, bare wood tables and brick walls. The burgundy trim seems to echo the seriousness of the wine list, of which a house Gamay – the Walcot Group’s own collaboration with Beaujolais producer Christophe Pacalet – is a highlight at £11.50 a glass or £46 a bottle.
Downstairs works as a neighbourhood bar: morning flat whites, after-work Guinness (they claim – quite rightly – the best pour in Frome), cocktails taken seriously. The Sunday roasts pack out the upstairs dining room and of course, come sponsored by Green Street Butchers. As if the whole ‘all bases covered’ thing wasn’t yet obvious, they also host regular music nights.
Part bottle shop, part tap room, part cheese counter, Palmer Street Bottle is run by the same team behind Bath’s Kingsmead Street Bottle and festival favourite The Whole Cheese, so the priorities are clear.
Ten taps rotate through craft beer served by key keg, with breweries like Kernel, Sureshot and Vault City making regular appearances, alongside natural wines and local ciders. The food exists to accompany the drinking, which is exactly as it should be in this setting. Sourdough toasties ooze with Ogleshield, the rarebit arrives with a great little coleslaw and plenty of cornichons, and the sausage rolls (meat or veggie) do the job, too.
Cheese boards and charcuterie provide more substantial grazing if you’re settling in for the afternoon. Which, as it happens, is one of our favourite things to do in Frome. It’s a small room – three tables at the front, a few more at the back – but the kind of place where staff will talk you through what’s pouring with genuine enthusiasm rather than just listing ABVs.
If you’re keen to keep the party going after close, a refill station lets you take beer or wine home by the bottle, and the deli counter sells cheese to go. Cheese and wine party back at yours, then?
Frome’s first coffee house, opened in 2002 by Jude Kelly at the end of medieval Cheap Street where a leat (a small channel carrying water from the river) still trickles down the middle of the road. The building is one of Frome’s oldest, spreading across multiple levels including an upstairs dining area and outdoor seating for watching the foot traffic on market days.
The draw beyond the smooth, satisfying coffee is La Strada’s ice cream side quest. Here, ‘Senso’ gelato is made in-house from organic Ivy House Farm milk from nearby Beckington (the same farm that supplies Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and Harvey Nichols), and flavours mix permanent options (pistachio, rich chocolate) with seasonal rotating choices (jasmine and honey, Pimms sorbet in summer).
It’s seriously good ice cream, whatever the weather.
Not a restaurant, admittedly, but impossible to omit from any eating guide to Frome. This monthly street market takes over the town centre on the first Sunday of each month from March to December, closing streets across the entire town centre to accommodate over 200 traders and drawing around 80,000 visitors annually. The operation is managed by a team of four Frome residents and staffed by local event workers; the not-for-profit structure feeds money back into the community.
The food offering is split between the Somerset Farmers’ Market section (cheese, cider, local produce from established growers) and the street food traders, where quality varies but the best stalls justify the crowds. It’s a regularly changing roster, so we won’t play favourites here.
The flea market and designer-maker sections provide distraction (as if you needed it!) between eating, live music stages dot the route, and the atmosphere tilts closer to festival than farmers’ market. Parking fills early; the park and ride from the health centre is the sensible option. Arrive before 11am to beat the crowds, or after 2pm when stalls begin discounting.
A short drive south of Frome, up into the Mendip Hills, The Holcombe sits at the highest point of a village that recorded just eight households in the Domesday Book. The views across to Downside Abbey are predictably lovely, and the nearby church doubled as a Poldark filming location, which gives you a sense of the prestigious landscape.
Alan Lucas and Caroline Gardiner, both trained chefs who spent 30 years running catering and events companies in London, took over the pub in November 2019. The timing was (their words, not ours) terrible – they spent most of their first year redecorating rather than serving customers. But the result is an 11-bedroom restaurant-with-rooms that’s picked up 2 AA Rosettes since reopening, which is no mean feat.
The kitchen works from an on-site garden and polytunnel, which supplies much of the seasonal produce for Lucas’s contemporary British cooking. It’s a genuine garden-to-plate operation rather than a marketing flourish: the gardening team and chefs collaborate on planting schedules, and anything not used on plates goes into stocks.
The dining room centres on a double-sided log burner, with a terrace for summer evenings. Note the limited opening hours. Wednesday to Sunday only, with lunch service restricted to Friday through Sunday. That said, the Holcombe is very much worth planning for; a destination meal away from the Frome crowds that’s one of the best in Somerset. What a lovely place this is.
Despite what the Monopoly board might have you believe, not everyone riding through Mayfair in a mini Kurtis Kraft is made of money. Neither are they silly little top hats made of pewter, but that’s another story…
…Anyway, for the vast majority of folk who find themselves in this most luxurious of London locales, dropping several hundred notes on supper is going to feel pretty frivolous. Fortunately, for those keen for a Mayfair-standard meal at, say, Pall Mall prices, there are plenty of set lunch options ready to satisfy the brief.
With that in mind, here’s our rundown of the best value set lunches in Mayfair. We think we’ll (free) park the Monopoly references now…
Noble Rot Mayfair
Ideal for a demure, delicious meal that’s the best lunch deal in Mayfair…
Noble Rot Mayfair has only been open for the best part of a year, but it’s already settled into a rhythm in the agreeably lowkey Shepherd’s Market. That should come as no surprise if you’ve been to the first two iterations of this impeccable restaurant; this is clearly a restaurant group (can we call them a group yet?) who have mastered a kind of discreet, demure hospitality and straightforward but intense cooking style. It’s an aesthetic that’s just so welcome in this gaudy side of town.
The Mayfair branch is spearheaded by head chef Adam Wood along with the usual overseeing from executive chef Stephen Harris of the Sportsman, with the two promising a seasonally reflective menu with an indulgent focus, retaining the trademark warmth and fine cooking of its predecessors in Soho and Bloomsbury.
On a recent visit, the set lunch menu (the best value in the neighbourhood at £26 for 3 courses) featured a pearlescent, flaking poached cod with fennel and orange salad that was so refreshing on a particularly balmy August day.
The confit duck leg and braised lentils that followed felt a little more autumnal, admittedly, but no less delicious. A hazelnut and brown butter cake rounded things off in some style, a textural delight.
Of course, Noble Rot is as much about the wine as it is the excellent food, with a ‘shrine to vine’ mantra that we don’t quite understand but an approachable, inclusive wine list that we very much do. To have several wines by the glass for under a fiver, in Mayfair, in this economy, is a lovely touch, even if they are only 75ml ‘tasters’. That said, the ubiquitous, totally drinkable ‘Chin Chin’ Vinho Verde is just £5 for a proper glass. A Don Tinto Tempranillo 2022 is the same price.
Not only do the guys at Noble Rot want to feed and water you without bankrupting you, there’s always an agreeable inclusivity to proceedings, which certainly isn’t always the case in Mayfair. Yep, this is the best set lunch in Mayfair, we think.
When: The set lunch menu is available from 12pm to 2:30pm everyday except Sunday (when they’re closed), with two courses for £22 and 3 for £26.
There’s nothing like a long lunch. Make a late booking, kick back for a lazy afternoon and know you won’t be eating anything else all day. Noting that the Ambassadors Clubhouse takes lunch bookings until 3.00, we’re in. Turning up there’s a pretty terrace, which would be just the job on a summer’s afternoon, but we’re looking for something a little more immersive. Pushing open the heavy door we’re met with sensory overload – a gold domed ceiling, dark wood, glittering lights, portraits of Punjabi princes. The door closes. We’re inside the jewel box.
The owners are JKS Restaurants – the very same crew behind Gymkhana, Brigadiers and Hoppers so we’re expecting something special. The Ambassadors Clubhouse is based on the historic ‘party mansion’ of the founder’s grandfather, an actual ambassador. That must have been quite the place. Deep down in the basement are discreet private dining rooms and a dance floor where on the weekend the DJ fuses Punjabi dance with contemporary Euro grooves until 2.00 am. You could have a good time down there.
Kicking off, the cocktails are some of the best we’ve had for a long time – Bhang Rickey with gin, passion fruit and mint is to die for. With them arrive spicy papads and chutneys. The hari aam chutney is an electrifying green, sweet and spicy at the same time. We have to ask for the recipe. We’re let into the secret – it’s all about generous but judicious use of unripe mango.
Choose the set lunch – at £35 you won’t find better value for such an opulent spread. Names of dishes may be less familiar than those at the local curry house but the enthusiastic waiting staff are eager to explain. The highlight is the haryali rabbit keema cheela, the flavourful minced rabbit wrapped in bronze pancakes. The properly smoky reshmi chicken tikka is charred to perfection.
Lamb shami bun kebabs arrive next, sitting up self importantly like the best mini burgers served at the ambassador’s reception. After something of a meat feast we welcome the amritsari aloo gobhi kulcha. Like naan? Like potato and cauliflower curry? Stuffing one inside the other is an inspiration. Even better when served with dark, richly spiced chick peas on the side. Room for a little dessert? Both the jalebi and the gulub jamun bring some serious sweetness, best tempered by a double espresso.
We emerge blinking into the late afternoon sun, a little heavier but our spirits lighter.
When: The set lunch menu is available everyday from 12pm to 6pm. One course is £21, two is £29 and 3 is just £35.
Ideal for deceptively simple, satisfying plates of Italian seasonality…
No. 1 Park Lane. Could there be a more prestigious sounding address in the city? Originally the site of 145 Piccadilly, it was once the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth II. Since 1975, it’s been the Intercontinental Hotel, its enviable vantage point offering stunning views of Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace, making it a favourite among royalty and celebrities on their jaunts in the Big Smoke.
One of those celebrities has been plying his trade in the bowels of the Intercontinental for close to two decades. Chef Theo Randall, famous for earning the iconic Hammersmith restaurant the River Café its first Michelin star and for his patient vibes in the face of Matt Tebbutt on Saturday Kitchen, equally.
In a soothing but clinical basement dining room (it’s used for the hotel’s buffet breakfast, too) of faded greens and dusty pinks, there’s a worry Randall’s robust, faithful Italian cooking will be buried under the weight of the hotel.
Not so. Service is gentle and breezy down here, allowing light, precise plates of premium produce that’s been refreshingly un-faffed with to shine. To kick things off, a towering, salty chunk of focaccia arrives alongside a pleasant slice of bruschetta with semi-dried tomato, everything tasting as it should. My wife thinks it was deliberately presented to look like a boot, representing Italy. I’m not so sure.
Starters are light, bright and wholly appropriate for the heatwave outside, with beautiful bar-marked vegetables, a satisfying stress ball of good mozzarella, and aged balsamic all coming together into a cohesive whole.
Another starter saw thinly sliced fennel salami served, pleasingly, at the correct temperature – a rare thing in the UK. As in, warm enough so its pearls of fat are beginning to melt ever so slightly. It’s the kind of attention to detail that you expect from a chef of Randall’s quality.
Unsurprisingly, Randall’s signature beef, Chianti and San Marzano ragu is a highlight. It’s a wonderfully light affair, the tomatoes shining through just as much as the slow-cooked beef. A ragu at lunchtime is often a dangerous game to play, with the hotel rooms upstairs looking tempting for an afternoon nap to recover, but here, it’s expertly judged. Do we even need to add that the fresh egg pappardelle is perfect?
It all ends with a delicate slice of Amalfi lemon tart, the one that’s so iconic at The River Café, and, having eaten both, is just as good here. On our visit, the big man was present, working his mantecare to glossy perfection. We’re told he does so most services.
Do be warned; though the set lunch is great value, it can quickly add up if you intend to have a drink; a pinot nero bianco Saint Valier for £14 a glass and a Moscato d’Asi for £12 quickly sent things skyward. If you’re planning to stick to the water to keep prices below £100 for two all-in, then be careful not to get stung on the sparkling water. Regardless of the fact you’re in Mayfair, £7 for a San Pellegrino is a lot.
Take care with your drinks ordering, though, and Theo Randall at the Intercontinental is one of Mayfair’s best set lunches, no doubt about it.
When: Available 12pm to 2pm, Tuesday to Friday. 2 courses are currently £28, 3 are £33.
Though the prestigious Dorchester plays host to a 3 Michelin-starred, Alain Ducasse-led (in name at least) restaurant, it’s not here that we’re enjoying one of Mayfair’s best set lunch deals.
Instead, we’re settling into one of the most handsome dining rooms in the capital, where deep red leather booths and a striking ornate ceiling provide the backdrop for confident, classical British cooking. The Grill has been feeding well-heeled Londoners since the hotel opened in 1931, and while chefs have come and gone, the room’s sense of occasion remains unchanged.
The current kitchen, led by culinary director Martyn Nail alongside head chef Jacob Keen-Downs, delivers a set lunch that leans into comfort without sacrificing finesse. A chicken liver parfait arrives silky and rich, lifted by an intriguing but not wholly unwelcome waft of saffron and (totally welcome) pear chutney, while the Welsh rarebit crumpet offers a playful nod to the British classics this room has always done well.
Mains hold few surprises but execute them impeccably: a short rib and ale pie with mash is the kind of dish you want on a grey London afternoon, its pastry shattering into deeply savoury filling. The grilled sea bream with braised coco beans and gremolata provides a lighter counterpoint for those with stuff to do in the afternoon.
Puddings keep things appropriately old-school. A sticky toffee pudding with whisky ice cream is exactly as indulgent as it sounds but doesn’t tip over into bruising territory, while a lemon posset with blood orange and shortbread offers bitter-sharp relief. The Stilton with pretzel brioche and honey butter makes a compelling case for the savoury finish.
At £38 for two courses or £42 for three, this represents serious value for a room of this calibre. Yes, the wine list can send things skyward quickly, and that steak and fries carries a £15 supplement, but stick to the set menu and a glass of something modest and you’ll leave having eaten extremely well without the credit card taking too severe a hit.
When: AvailableMonday to Friday, 12pm to 2:15pm. 3 courses are £42.
Ideal for a fun and frivolous, mostly vegan tasting menu…
Of course, you needn’t endure a bout of imposter syndrome in a luxury London hotel to get your hands on a set lunch deal that’s worth your hard earned cash. At Tendril, just a few moments into Mayfair from Oxford Circus, the vibe feels decidedly more bespoke.
Sitting pretty on the ground floor of an elegant looking Georgian townhouse on Princes Street, Tendril offers an elegant contemporary twist on ‘mostly vegan’ dining (their words, not ours).
Founded by Rishim Sachdeva, who boasts experience at The Fat Duck and Chiltern Firehouse, the concept evolved from a pop-up to a permanent fixture through a successful crowdfunding campaign, and we’re so glad they did, as Sachdeva’s skill in using bold Asian and Middle Eastern flavours to shine the best light on prime vegetables is undeniable.
Image via @tendril_kitchen
£27 is a lot of fun for a meal deal that’s more often a simple three course affair; this one is a sometimes elegant, sometimes in-your-face succession of seven or so dishes, with the grilled oyster mushroom skewers a real highlight from a recent visit. Blistered and burnished from licking flames, and topped with rounds of green chilli for a little extra fun, these guys were properly punchy. More mellow but no less enjoyable, the cauliflower massaman was ace too, its slices of gently pickled plum a lovely balancing act against all that coconut sweetness and heady spicing.
Glorious stuff indeed, though without wishing to repeat ourselves, the bill here can add up fast if you’re not cautious with your drink selection. Though the descriptor of ‘Drinking Vinegar’ might make readers wince, the Utopia vinegar, wild cherry & elderflower cordial (£7) is a gorgeous drink, and a fine pairing against the fattier, smokier notes on the plate.
When: Served from Tuesday to Friday, between 12pm and 3:30pm. The set ‘discovery prix fixe’ tasting menu is £27 for around 5 courses.
Ideal for enjoying a Michelin-starred, four course menu in under an hour…
Meanwhile, over in Hanover Square and back into the cold, clammy arms of a 5-star hotel (this time, the Four Seasons) for our lunch, Pavyllon at has quickly risen to prominence in London, earning a Michelin star within its first year of tweezering, sous-vide-ing and cryoconcentrating.
The work of – in name, at least (we see a theme developing here) – decorated chef Yannick Alléno, whose innovative, technical take on French cuisine has earned him 16 Michelin stars across the globe, Pavyllon’s set lunch will be catnip to the ‘here for a good time, not for a long time’ crowd, promised to be done and dusted in just 55 minutes (is. that. good?).
For when it’s wham, bam thank you ma’am but the hotel room isn’t booked for a fumble, this set lunch menu will do the business for you, with the four course affair clocking in at £55.50. That’s got us wondering how it would play out in other restaurants across London if the price matched the time it takes to eat a meal – if I can dispense with a whole Ikoyi 15-courser in 10 minutes, can I pay just a tenner?
Not one for the loose, languid and leisurely, this one feels like it’s aimed at an incredibly specific niche, But for those wanting to eat a multi-course Michelin-starred meal in under an hour, it’s here to serve. Still, there’s no denying the quality of the food on that menu. Dainty but with real depth, dishes like poached obsiblue prawns served with watercress and yuzu ponzu jelly, are sufficiently light not to give you indigestion as you wolf them down with one eye on the ticking stopwatch.
Weirdly for a place that wants you to smash your meal real fast and then fuck off, the dining chairs here are absurdly comfortable, their undulating padding ironing out just about every kink our back has ever endured, even those kinks yet to come. The soothing mauve colour scheme further advances that sense of sedation. Perhaps they don’t want us to leave after all.
When: Lunch is served from 12:00 to 14:00 daily. The four course menu is £55.
Ideal for serious, seasonal British cooking without the à la carte commitment…
Charming, illustrious chef Richard Corrigan opened his Mayfair flagship back in 2008, and while the London restaurant scene has spun through countless cycles since, Corrigan’s has remained remarkably constant. The room has the feel of a place that knows exactly what it is: leather banquettes, dimmed lighting, a certain clubby warmth without the stuffiness.
The Menu du Jour changes with the seasons, and this winter’s iteration leans into comfort without losing its edge. Starters run from a spiced parsnip velouté with celery, hazelnut and onion fritter (excellent) to sliced ox tongue with sauce gribiche (even better), the kind of dishes that remind you Corrigan cut his teeth on classical French technique. A poached Chalk Stream trout with buttermilk, horseradish and beetroot offers something lighter.
Mains follow suit: a smoked eel omelette with spinach, bacon and café de Paris butter; slow cooked porchetta with green lentil fricassee and kalettes; roast Cornish pollock with celeriac, cavolo nero and wild mussels. For the committed who haven’t quite understood the offer of a set lunch, a Hereford beef tournedos with foie gras and mushroom carries a £36 supplement, steep, but this is Corrigan doing Rossini – a match made in heaven – and is not to be missed.
At £34 for two courses or £38 for three, the Menu du Jour represents genuine value for cooking of this calibre. A £38 wine pairing sweetens the deal further if you’re in the mood to let someone else do the thinking.
When: Menu du Jour available Monday to Saturday, 12pm to 2:30pm. 2 courses are £34, 3 courses are £38.
It’s official; London has gone crazy for matcha. Once consumed mainly in small, formal tea ceremonies, TikTok and Instagram have rocketed this vibrant green tea into the stratosphere, a trend that shows no sign of abating. Gen Z are shunning the pre-flight pint for matcha green tea, according to the Guardian, a trend we respect rather than want to replicate, admittedly, and the ubiquitous Blank Street even dropped ‘Coffee’ from its name in a rebrand that felt decidedly matchacore.
Yep, matcha is everywhere, and its distinctive earthy sweetness has captured the city’s imagination. However, all over London you’ll find spots serving over-sweetened milky drinks that may or may not actually contain matcha (more likely batcha). So how does one find the best matcha drinks and treats in London?
We’ve done the hard work and nearly turned ourselves a Shrek colour of green in the process. From dedicated matcha bars and flaky, matcha-loaded croissants to luxury hotel matcha cocktails and more, here are the best spots to get your fix of matcha in London.
We should mention that, worryingly for enthusiasts, talk is brewing of a worldwide matcha shortage, so consume your matcha mindfully, just as it was originally intended.
Sumi, Notting Hill
Ideal for possibly the best matcha mille crepe cake in London….
It’s impossible to claim that anything is definitively the best in London, but we reckon Sumi’s matcha mille crepe cake comes close. The origins of this particular creation remain debated, but the marriage of French patisserie with Japanese culinary meticulousness makes perfect sense. At Sumi, that union is faultlessly executed.
Earthy and sweet, the cake arrives as a bright and beautiful stack of delicate crepes layered with whipped cream and flavoured with savoury matcha. The colour alone is striking – that deep, almost mossy green signalling quality powder rather than the lurid hue of lesser versions. Each bite is light and airy without losing structure, the cream between them restrained not cloying. The balance here is everything: the gentle bitterness of the matcha tempers the sweetness, and as you work through each forkful that distinctive earthy flavour just develops further.
Topped with a dollop of creme fraiche and finished with a shower of matcha powder, cutting through those layers is deeply satisfying – there’s a quiet pleasure in watching your fork glide through that precise geometry. A mainstay on the menu since the restaurant’s opening, and one we hope never comes off.
Ideal for experiencing 100% ceremonial grade matcha…
Husband-and-wife duo Claudia and Otto Boyer founded Jenki after growing frustrated with matcha being an afterthought on London menus. They went to Uji, Japan’s birthplace of matcha and benchmark for quality, to source the best, learned the art of making matcha, then opened their first bricks n mortar store in Spitalfields in 2021. Jenki comes from the Japanese word “genki”, meaning full of life, and they’ve certainly breathed new life into London’s matcha scene.
Skip forward a few years and Jenki has just been awarded Matcha Brand of the Year 2025 at the European Coffee and Hospitality Awards in Berlin, which definitely speaks for something given all the shops selling subpar matcha. Now with five locations including a recent Canary Wharf opening, Jenki serve thousands of matchas daily across the city. The Canary Wharf site, designed by Studio Rain Wu, features floor-to-ceiling glass and sustainable surfaces made from upcycled materials. It might just be our favourite of the lot.
Only 100% ceremonial grade matcha from Japan is used in their drinks and everything is whisked to order. The Flat Green (their take on the flat white) is a bestseller and if you only come here once, this is the one you should try. It has less milk than a matcha latte, meaning a more concentrated flavour, allowing the tea’s earthy notes to shine.
Seasonal specials are worth a return visit – their winter immunity smoothie combines ginger and turmeric for warmth and anti-inflammation, matcha for sustained energy, and manuka honey for its antibacterial, soothing qualities – colds beware.
Since you’re in London, not Japan, the JENKI London Fog – Earl Grey Matcha Latte is another must try. A homemade syrup of black tea with notes of bergamot and citrus, and vanilla bean is stirred into your milk of choice and topped with ceremonial grade matcha for that extra punch. It’s quite possibly London’s best matcha drink.
If you’re a banana bread fanatic, pick up a slice of their Matcha Banana Bread. It’s baked fresh in-house and made with JENKI Matcha, dark chocolate, and perfectly ripe bananas, all of which lend it a spuriously healthy air. If you further want to legitimise its consumption – you’ll need to replace those calories you’ve just burned standing in line for 30 minutes.
Chef Masaki Sugisaki’s Chelsea restaurant continues to push boundaries with its fusion of Japanese techniques and European ingredients. The setting – a converted Victorian building off Walton Street, once an artist’s studio – features a striking quartz bar, an elegant Victorian fireplace, and an intimate mews courtyard for al fresco dining. But it’s the dorayaki that brings matcha lovers here.
These Japanese pancakes take weeks to develop; the batter alone required three weeks to perfect in the r&d phase. The result is impossibly light and fluffy, a cloud-like vessel for some thoughtful fillings. The Matcha and Jasmine Dorayaki is a thing of quiet beauty. Velvety matcha and jasmine tea white chocolate ice cream sits between ethereal pancakes, finished with kuromitsu Chantilly and genmai white chocolate crunch.
Don’t be heartbroken if that particular Dorayaki isn’t on the menu though. Things change with the seasons but the craftsmanship remains constant. A previous favourite featured white chocolate matcha ice cream with plum wine compressed strawberries and Okinawa shikuwasa dango mochi.
For those wanting to extend the experience, there’s a fine tea selection including the Organic ‘Green Velvet’ Matcha, vibrant green with a bold aroma. This is matcha with refinement.
Ideal for sweet treats from a 155 year old teahouse legacy…
One of the oldest matcha brands in the world, Tsujiri has been crafting green tea since 1860 when founder Riemon Tsuji dedicated himself to the art in Kyoto. Fast forward 166 years and that heritage has landed in London, with outposts serving ceremonial grade O-Matcha from Uji alongside a parade of Instagram-worthy desserts. It’s a heady combination.
They know how to make a destination-worthy treats. The matcha soft serve sundaes draw queues at all three of Tsujiri’s sites, piled high with red bean paste, mochi and crispy toppings in various combinations. The Matcha Bubble Sundae is a particular highlight: chewy tapioca, crunchy cornflakes and smooth, creamy matcha ice cream creating a riot of textures in a single glass.
Bring a friend who shares your obsession and order the matcha crepe cake too – soft, delicate layers filled with perfectly balanced matcha cream that dissolves gently on the tongue. The matcha basque cheesecake offers that same melt-in-the-mouth quality, while the matcha tiramisu latte brings something a little different to beloved Italian classic. In warmer months, the warabi mochi and shaved ice desserts come into their own.
Before you leave, browse Tsujiri’s retail selection: matcha powder, Tsujiri Matcha Nama Chocolate and matcha madeleines all available to take home, making this a one-stop shop for the matcha-obsessed. There are branches in Camden and Westfield Stratford, but it’s the flagship store in Soho’s Chinatown we love most.
Ideal for slowing down and savouring that matcha moment…
Katsute means ‘once’ in Japanese – a word that represents nostalgia, history, and moments in time. It’s a fitting name. The original Angel site sits among the antique dealers of Camden Passage, all floral wallpaper and vintage pendant lighting with Japanese touches woven through. Once you’ve tried what they do here, you’ll find yourself weaving through again and again – the name becomes less about the past and more about that first, formative taste while losing yourself in the moment.
At the Brick Lane branch, you’ll need to remove your shoes to sit in the traditional tatami-style space downstairs. Don’t miss the matcha mille crepe cake, which has become something of a cult favourite across the capital: layers of delicate crepe encasing lightly whipped matcha cream, executed with the kind of precision that makes you pause mid-bite. It’s our second favourite in London after Sumi, and if you’re properly smitten, you can buy a whole cake to take home.
You’ll also find matcha hot chocolate, matcha affogato, and a superb selection of loose-leaf teas imported from smaller Japanese producers – the sort of carefully sourced leaves that reward slow steeping and close attention. Beyond Angel and Brick Lane, you’ll also find outposts inside Uniqlo in Covent Garden (complete with a roof terrace) and at Broadway Market. Katsute, you’re really spoiling us.
Named after the famous tree-lined avenue in Tokyo where the original shop gained cult status, Omotesando Koffee now has outposts across the globe. Luckily for London, the Fitzrovia branch brings Japanese minimalism just a few doors off Oxford Street. It’s a world away from the chaos just outside.
Coffee is the main attraction here, and thank goodness: their signature blends, made from beans sourced worldwide, are exceptional. But the matcha latte has earned its place at the table, made with high-grade powder from Uji and served with the same precision as those coffees.
The matcha latte itself is a study in balance – grassy and vegetal with a gentle bitterness that lingers, the milk softening the edges without masking the tea’s complexity. For those who crave a creamier finish, there’s the Matchaccino. This is matcha for the connoisseur; not at all sweet, just rich, earthy and silky. Pair your drink with their signature kashi – a baked custard cube with a caramelised crisp exterior and gloriously gooey centre.
The light wood interior feels contemporary and effortlessly cool, the kind of place where you can feel quietly smug about your excellent taste. It’s small, with just a handful of window-bar seats, so come prepared for standing room at peak times. There’s sometimes a queue, there’s no toilet, but none of that seems to matter when the sip is this ethereal.
Next time you’re on the Elizabeth Line take a detour toTottenham Court Road and exit via Dean St – it’ll drop you practically on the doorstep of Omotesando Koffee. Thank us later.
Since Gen Z caught on to matcha in a major way, a line is almost guaranteed outside How Matcha!. But long before the hype, this community-driven cafe has become one of London’s most beloved matcha destinations, a Marylebone mecca for all things matcha. The ceremonial grade matcha is sourced directly from farms in Kagoshima and forms the base for inventive creations like the Wasabi Matcha Shot, the Dirty Matcha (a celebrity favourite, we’re told), and the Immune, blending matcha with cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, black pepper, bee pollen and honey.
At the Marylebone branch, DJ pop-ups and events happen; it’s certainly a scene. Baristas wear shirts that don’t quite match the energy of a tea ceremony with slogans like ‘F*** Coffee, Drink Matcha’ and ‘Will you Matcha Me’. That said, the baristas love their craft and have a very chill vibe, talking passionately, and always eager to show you the process and recommend drinks to suit your tastes. The menu can seem a little overwhelming, but if you’re as indecisive as we are, you can’t go wrong with the Spanish Blossom iced matcha.
The original Marylebone site built such a devoted following that they expanded to a three-floor flagship on Ledbury Road in Notting Hill, complete with oak-panelled walls, a basement Kintsugi Room for rituals and quiet moments, and a sun-drenched courtyard garden. It’s pretty and serene.
Ideal for matcha desserts and a quiet escape in Covent Garden…
This independent Japanese patisserie has been putting out some of London’s best matcha pastries for years, all made with decadent, pure green tea from Kyoto.
The matcha Swiss roll is the one to beat – light sponge wrapped around gently whipped matcha cream and dotted with sweet red bean, each slice restrained and assured. The matcha croissant, topped with a grassy ganache, runs it close.
But don’t stop there. WA’s matcha tiramisu layers sponge dipped in intense matcha syrup with light mascarpone cream, all set on a chocolate sablé base that stops it tipping into cloying territory. And the matcha milk roll – soft, swirly bread with rich matcha dough, baked until creamy and scattered with crunchy almond slices – lingers in the mind long after. It’s still lingering there now, come to think of it. For special occasions, whole matcha rolls and 16-inch matcha tiramisus are available to preorder.
Sure, most come for the desserts, but the savoury options mean you can make a meal of it at WA Café. We’re particularly taken with the homemade vegetable Japanese curry wrapped in soft dough, coated in breadcrumbs and baked until golden.
Indicative of the success of matcha across the city (and, as with many of the entries in our rundown), there are now several branches of WA Café across London. The Covent Garden branch on New Row offers a calm retreat from the crowds, while the Ealing Broadway original has a loyal local following. A newer Marylebone site has extended their reach further.
Arrive early for the best selection – popular items sell out by mid-afternoon. Before you leave, pick up a pot of their matcha rusks: crisp, delicate biscuits made from the edges of their signature milk loaf and infused with that same fine-grade Kyoto matcha.
Tab x Tab, the husband-and-wife-run brunch cafe on Westbourne Grove, has become a west London institution. Industrial-chic interiors and a seasonal menu draw weekend crowds for dishes like truffle scrambled eggs, loaded avocado toast, and French toast with grilled peach, lemon thyme mascarpone and orange blossom syrup. But the drinks are where our attention falls today.
Premium loose-leaf teas from Lalani & Co form the base for their matcha, served hot or iced with precision. They sit alongside specialty coffees, making this an excellent destination for those who cannot quite decide between caffeine camps.
Come summer, the Floral Fizz is worth seeking out: osmanthus green tea with refreshing tonic, topped with a creamy matcha foam. Everything here feels considered, right down to the gorgeous crockery. A place to linger.
Can earthy green tea powder make a ceremonial-grade cocktail? The answer, it turns out, is yes. The five-star Marylebone hotel Nobu has partnered with Jenki to create what they claim are the world’s first matcha cocktails. Served on their summer terrace, they’re proof that matcha has ambitions well beyond the teacup.
The Yuzu Jenki Punch blends Roku Gin with ceremonial grade matcha, yuzu, vanilla and coconut water. It’s light and refreshing, vibrant and zesty, with a delicate vegetal sweetness that complements the citrus rather than fighting it. The vanilla arrives as a subtle surprise at the finish, rounding everything out.
Those avoiding alcohol should order the Minted Matcha, mixing matcha with mint, shiso, lime and soda to crisp, clean effect. They serve a matcha latte too, for the semi-purists, but the cocktails are the real draw here.
The collaboration extends beyond drinks. The terrace menu includes a selection of mochi, including a Raspberry Jenki Matcha, alongside their Kakigori – traditional Japanese shaved ice in strawberry and matcha as well as the usual cantaloupe and watermelon. Perfect for warmer days spent watching Marylebone drift by.
For afternoon tea, expect matcha scones with raspberry shiso jam, yuzu curd and clotted cream. It’s a refined setting for what might be matcha’s most glamorous outing in the capital.
The French-Japanese concept born from fashion brand Maison Kitsuné has been a matcha pioneer since it first opened in Paris in 2014. Café Kitsuné’s London outpost – the UK’s first – occupies the ground floor of the Pantechnicon, a striking Grade II listed building in Belgravia that houses five storeys of Nordic and Japanese dining and shopping. The matcha is sourced directly from Uji, and the space itself feels calm and considered amid the polish of Motcomb Street.
The matcha latte is excellent, made even better when you dip the brand’s signature fox-shaped cookies into it (kitsune translates as ‘fox’ in Japanese). The iced strawberry matcha latte is worth seeking out too; sweet, slightly tart and dangerously easy to drink. But it’s the pastries that really shine.
The double-baked matcha croissant is exceptional. It’s shatteringly crisp on the outside, the layers giving way to a mellow, creamy matcha frangipane laced with caramelised lemon and topped with flaked almonds and a dusting of powdered sugar. The matcha and raspberry cookie is generous and satisfying: buttery with a soft, cakey texture, the matcha subtle rather than overpowering, the raspberry adding a gentle tartness. A matcha and lemon marble cake rounds out the selection.
Order from the small hatch on the ground floor and collect your drink before finding a seat – there’s more space upstairs on the first floor.
Ideal for matcha tiramisu and rooftop drinks with a view…
Sharing the Pantechnicon building with Café Kitsuné, SACHI offers a more refined kappo-style dining experience blending Japanese and Nordic influences.
The dessert section features a matcha tiramisu that has become something of a signature and is a must-try. Beautifully light vanilla mascarpone cream sits atop matcha-soaked savoiardi biscuit, the bitter-vegetal notes of the green tea playing off the creamy richness. It’s darn delicious. Pair it with the Ura Gasanryu Koka Honjozo, a clean, restrained sake whose dry finish cuts through the cream without competing with the matcha’s earthy bitterness. This rooftop bar provides panoramic views and draws on Japanese garden aesthetics for a contemplative setting to really think about those flavours.
Come just for dessert and cocktails or make a meal of it. Executive Chef Chris Golding, formerly of Nobu and Zuma, oversees an ambitious menu that spans sushi, robata and tempura. Lookout for specials like their matcha soba noodles with ikura, shiso and a creamy bottarga butter sauce.
Ideal for a morning pick-me-up and health-conscious matcha fans…
When healthy fast-casual chain The Salad Project opened its Notting Hill site at 110 Westbourne Grove last October, it came with an unexpected addition: a dedicated matcha bar. It serves hot and cold matcha classics alongside playful creations inspired by their signature salads – think miso maple walnut matcha, hot honey matcha, and a spritzy green goddess. Light breakfast bites turn the space into an all-day destination, making it a welcome addition to W11’s neighbourhood dining scene.
The popular Marylebone bakery Boxcar generates real enthusiasm (both actual and virtual) for its matcha croissant. Head chef Zisis Gkalmpenis and executive pastry chef Liza Kermanidou oversee the pastry programme at both the original Baker & Deli on Wyndham Place and the newer Bread & Wine in Connaught Village, turning out hand-laminated pastries fresh each morning to the denizens of W1.
The matcha croissant has become something of a cult classic- and one look tells you why. It’s a circular swirl of hand-laminated pastry, the golden layers rippling around a vivid green centre of delicious creamy high grade matcha pastry cream. The shape alone has earned it viral status, but the eating is just as good: flaky, buttery pastry giving way to a soft, yielding matcha-filled heart that’s sweet without being cloying. It sits alongside other standouts from the morning selection – cinnamon rice pudding danish, orange blossom brioche – but this is the one people queue for.
Pair it with a matcha latte and find a seat facing St Mary’s Church in Bryanston Square. The interior is cosy and sleek, and there’s a no-laptop policy at weekends, making this a place to luxuriate in your own company.
P.S. At the Bread & Wine venue in Connaught Village, stay into the evening for their Matcha Margarita – tequila, matcha and agave, unexpectedly good. A neighbourhood bakery done right.
Ideal for Japanophiles who want it all under one roof…
London’s largest Japanese food hall occupies a prime spot just off Leicester Square, and for anyone who wants to combine their matcha fix with a proper browse through Japanese groceries, snacks and homeware, this is the place.
The Japan Centre’s basement depachika-style layout – modelled on the beloved food halls found beneath Japanese department stores – wraps around open kitchens and a central courtyard where you can sit and eat. And if you’re here to eat matcha, you’re in for a treat.
The in-house bakery turns out matcha roll cakes, matcha muffins and matcha custard-filled dorayaki alongside seasonal specials like sakura-dusted doughnuts. Head to the Mochi Donut Bar for hand-decorated matcha and raspberry mochi donuts paired with fruity bubble teas, or grab a matcha latte from the ground floor counters – look out for seasonal specials like the adzuki matcha latte.
For the full experience, the supermarket stocks an impressive range of premium matcha powders, Japanese teas and matcha-flavoured snacks you won’t find elsewhere – perfect for stocking up before heading home. It gets busy at lunchtimes, so arrive early to grab a table.
London’s matcha scene has matured well beyond the basic latte. Whether you want ceremonial grade whisked to order, a boundary-pushing cocktail, a gorgeously laminated pastry, or simply a budget-friendly drink to nurse on your commute, the capital now has options across every price point and neighbourhood. Kanpai!
