Sitting south of the river in London’s Southwark lies a food lover’s paradise – Borough Market. With a history dating back over 1,000 years, this bustling market is not only one of the oldest but also one of the largest and most renowned food markets in London. From artisan prepared food to fresh organic produce, Borough Market has something for everyone.
The origins of Borough Market stretches back to at least the 12th century when merchants first started trading grain, fish, vegetables, and livestock near the riverside. Over the centuries, the market thrived and even survived an attempt by Parliament to shut it down in 1775, fearing it had become too lawless.
We’re so glad they did, as today there’s so much to love about the food being sold and served here. Interestingly, Borough Market-as-culinary powerhouse is a fairly recent development, with its current incarnation having roots in the revival of interest in artisan foods that took shape across the UK in the 1990s. The market now mainly sells speciality foods to the general public, attracting tourists and locals alike, with many of the market’s great restaurants opening up in the last few years as footfall increased and savvy restaurateurs took note.
With all that in mind, we’ve done the hard work of eating around, across, through and even over the market to bring you these; our favourite places to eat in Borough Market. Let’s dive in…
OMA
Ideal for sophisticated Greek-Mediterranean dining with theatrical flair…
If Borough Market needed further proof that it’s evolved beyond its tourist-heavy past into one of London’s most exciting dining destinations, OMA provides it in spathē. The latest venture from David Carter (the man behind Smokestak and Manteca) occupies an elegant first-floor space, where floor-to-ceiling windows offer diners (who are standing up, it should be said) sweeping views across the historic cobbles of Bedale Street.
The name ‘OMA’ – Greek for ‘raw’ – perfectly captures both the restaurant’s understated aesthetic and its culinary philosophy. The kitchen team, led by the talented Jorge Paredes (formerly of Sabor) and with a menu overseen by Greek-born Nick Molyviatis, former head chef of Kiln, orchestrates an impressive show from the open-plan kitchen, creating dishes that honor Greek traditions while embracing influences from across the Mediterranean.
The menu reads like a love letter to contemporary Greek dining, and it’s pretty impossible to resist ordering basically everything. Steady yourself, and begin with their exceptional breads – pillowy laffa flatbreads and aromatic açma verde (green-flecked Turkish-style buns) at £3.50 each, served alongside their already-famous labneh topped with rich salt cod XO sauce (a string of words we feel a little frisson reading over).
The crudo bar offers pristine seafood preparations, including a stunning gilt head bream ceviche with bright notes of green tomato and apple aguachile (£13), while the black figs with mizithra cheese and almond salata provides a perfect study in texture and balance.
The kitchen truly shines with their heartier dishes. The wild red prawn giouvetsi arrives in traditional Cretan clay pots, the orzo glistening with intense shellfish butter, while the squid ink version comes alive with punchy aioli. There’s also an oxtail rendition for the carnivores in the crew.
Perhaps the highlight of the whole meal, though, is OMA’s ingenious take on spanakopita, which transforms the classic pie into a luxurious gratin of sheep’s and goat’s cheese with spinach, accompanied by delicate malawach bread. Don’t miss the charred lamb belly either, its richness perfectly tempered by hummus and a bright shallot and mint salata.
The bar matches the kitchen’s creativity – try the Retsina Spritz with its clever combination of retsina, tsikoudia, and mint soda (£10.50), or the Chios Martini, which gives the classic cocktail a Mediterranean twist with dry mastiha.
The wine list is a journey in itself – more than 450 bottles strong and over 12 months in the making, it takes drinkers on a coastal voyage from Greece’s sun-kissed shores to South Africa’s dramatic coastline. By-the-glass options start at a reasonable £5.50 for their house pour. There’s particular emphasis on ‘island wines’ which they poetically describe as “salty, savoury, electric. Often wind-beaten and sun-reared, or smokey and volcanic.”
The list includes gems like Victoria Torres Pecis’s sought-after Canary Island wines and Frank Cornelissen’s volcanic Etna expressions. Though bottles largely sit above £40, the experience justifies the investment.
Though the colder months are in full swing, during summer the OMA terrace, with its 60 or more seats, is a fine place to sun yourself indeed.
Ideal for laid-back Greek street food with serious culinary credentials…
Below OMA’s refined dining room, AGORA offers an equally compelling but more casual approach to Greek cuisine. The space buzzes with energy, anchored by an impressive two-metre charcoal souvla and wood-fire oven whose flickering glow is visible through industrial Crittall windows, creating a seamless connection with the market’s atmosphere.
The kitchen team sources whole animals from select farms in Somerset and Cornwall, transforming them into exceptional grilled dishes and wasting not a kidney or trotter in the process. From the skewer selection (most hovering around £4-5), the pork souvlaki arrives fragrant with oregano, while whole sardines sing with za’atar. Vegetarians aren’t forgotten – the slow-cooked chickpeas with green zhoug and the chard borani topped with crispy garlic prove that meat-free dishes can be just as satisfying.
The AGORA flatbreads deserve special mention, particularly the indulgent version topped with confit lamb, spiced tomato and cooling garlic yoghurt. For the adventurous, don’t miss a creative number that calls to mind a classic Hawaiian pizza with its spicy pork sausage, spit-roast pineapple and hot honey. The rotisserie section doesn’t stop at spinning pineapples; it offers a broader study in patience and technique – the middle white pork belly and spit-roast Cornish lamb (both £17) both demonstrate the kitchen’s mastery of fire and smoke.
The bar keeps the mood light with creative cocktails all around £9, including a herbaceous cucumber and elderflower spritz and a kiwi sour that cleverly combines gin with lemongrass and white vermouth. For those seeking something with more kick, the basil daiquiri with dry mastiha offers an intriguing Greek twist on the classic.
Featured in the 2026 edition of the UK Michelin Guide, AGORA operates primarily as a walk-in venue, though their virtual queue system helps manage the inevitable wait during busy periods. Together with OMA upstairs, these two distinctive venues represent an exciting new chapter in Borough Market’s culinary story, offering different but equally compelling new reasons to visit this historic food destination.
There was little doubt that Kolae was going to be a smash. The second restaurant from the team behind the hugely popular Som Saa in Spitalfields, all the ingredients were there for a hit: chefs with some serious pedigree; a PR blitz of influencers entering the restaurant shouting about that pedigree; strong, inventive cocktails that straddle the far-flung and the familiar; and an Instagrammable, eponymous headlining dish.
And so it has turned out, as Andy Oliver and Mark Dobbie’s second act has garnered rave reviews in pretty much every national newspaper (as well as a Michelin Bib Gourmand for 2026), and for good reason; the food here, this time with a firmer focus on the flavours of Southern Thailand specifically, is laughably delicious. Really, you will be laughing, involuntarily, capsaicin-fuelled endorphins rushing over you as you drag a frilly Shrub radicchio leaf through the pungent, addictive shrimp paste relish.
Turn to the headlining dish to soothe you. Kolae is a method of grilling with origins in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim Pattani province close to the border with Malaysia, where, traditionally, chicken or seafood is marinated in a coconut and turmeric-heavy curry paste before being grilled low and slow, the curry paste catching and caramelising invitingly as more curry is used to baste.
At Kolae, the coconut cream for the dish – here most commonly done with skewers of mussel, chicken and squash – is handpressed daily, and you can taste that freshness in the final dish, which is a complex, rich, deeply satisfying affair. Pair it with the even more Instagrammable crispy prawn heads, showered with deep-fried turmeric and garlic in the style of Southern Thailand’s pla tod kamin, a salad and a stir fry, and you’ve got yourself a sharing spread that you won’t actually want to share a single bite of. And beer, of course. Plenty of beer…
Though the restaurant is spread over three floors, you’ll want to take a seat at the counter if possible, and watch the chefs working the woks and grill. Just watch out for our eyebrows while you’re here – there are some serious flames licking up. It’s all part of the fun though!
Ideal for casual yet sophisticated West African dining…
Speaking of second-acts that have recently opened in Borough Market and have already received a string of fawning national restaurant reviews, Akara has, well, done all of those things too…
Indeed, the British Nigerian entrepreneur Aji Akokomi has already tasted huge success with his inaugural restaurant Akoko, the recent recipient of a well-deserved Michelin star, and here he is aiming to shake up London’s West African dining scene further with Akara.
This new(ish) venture located in the not-quite-there-yet Borough Yards brings a casual yet sophisticated dining experience that pays homage to traditional flavours of the region while embracing modern culinary techniques. The restaurant’s namesake dish, akara – a delectable fritter made from blended black-eyed peas, seasoned and fried to golden perfection – is a testament to Akokomi’s commitment to celebrating the essence of West African food culture, and forms the backbone of the menu.
Here, the approach to akara is distinctive in that it pulls from both Nigerian akara osu and Brazilian acaraje, resulting in a crisp exterior and generous, premium fillings. The barbecued prawn akara is perhaps the highlight, a gorgeous looking thing that arrives with bun splayed open in the style of a Roman maritozzi, but instead of an obscene amount of cream, the filling is blushing red prawns, pickled pink onion petals and chives. It’s picture perfect and tastes even better than it looks. You’ll want to order several.
From the larger plates section of the menu, the picanha suya is the main draw, a blushing piece of rump steak with the kind of bark that only expert grill work can coax out, its suya rub having caught beautifully on the coals. A sweet pepper sauce soothes out the rough edges and sees the dish on its merry way. This one paired well with a glass of fresh, elegant rosé (a Volubilia Gris from Morocco), though the scotch bonnet cordial from the softs section also caught our eye. Next time, next time…
Ideal for Tehran-inspired plates in the heart of London…
The second iteration of the celebrated restaurant Berenjak remains faithful to its aim of reinterpreting the classic hole in the wall eateries lining the streets of Tehran, but somehow, this Borough Market rendition manages to be just as good (if not, whisper it, better) than the first.
Housed in the building that used to host Flor, the rooms, both upstairs and down, are gorgeous; sumptuously dressed and opulent whilst still maintaining a sense of subtle sophistication.
You could describe the food in much the same way, quite frankly. Though the kebabs that come complete with freshly grilled bread are no doubt the headlining act, it’s in the starters that the sumptuousness and opulence truly stands out. A black chickpea and walnut hummus, in particular, is so rich and silky that it could easily be mistaken for chicken liver parfait. It’s absolutely gorgeous.
Image via Beranjack Instagram
From the carnivore’s section of the menu, the chelow kabab chenjeh (marinated, barbecued Herdwick lamb fillet) is given hum and throb by a grilled garlic salad, which is the perfect foil for the surprisingly delicate meat.
Sadly, the Soho branch’s iconic baklava ice cream sandwich hasn’t made the jump south of the river, but the napeloni – puff pastry with an orange blossom custard – is a very capable finisher regardless.
This is a place we’ll be returning to, time and time again.
Since opening Borough in 2022, founder Kian Samyani has taken the brand global with outposts in Dubai, Sharjah, Doha, Lusail and Los Angeles, plus a third London location in Mayfair which is opened last month.
It’s easy to see why. There’s something about Rambutan, from it’s open fire kitchen and warming terracotta walls all the way to its intoxicating, sometimes scorching small plates, that’s just so enveloping, the heat of service and the warmth of hospitality here creating something akin to thermal energy in the dining room.
Rambutan’s menu reads beautifully, filled with punchy dishes that celebrate ingredients sourced from both Sri Lanka and Borough Market, creating a synergistic sense of place and time, of locality and authenticity, whether it’s in the already iconic creamy coconut, lemongrass and pandan dal or the piquant, pert, powerful red curry with prawn and tamarind, which hails from Sri Lanka’s north. We’re big fans of her cashew curry; a luxuriously creamy, marvellously nutty affair, and a lesson in Sri Lankan cuisine’s mastery of texture.
Image via Rambutan Instagram
Despite what a thousand fire emojis might have you believe, it’s certainly not all chilli heat here. The signature black pork curry, in fact, gets its rasping, back-of-the-throat heat from black pepper, and its intrigue from a heady roasted spice mix that features coriander, clove and much more besides. Taken just to the edge of bitterness, and visually alluring in its moody depth, it tastes both complex and familiar, the pork belly’s fat smoothing out the rougher edges.
Even more alluring is the deep fried roti with anchovy katta sambal, which eats as well as it reads, that sambal fresh and vivacious from plenty of pounded red chilli. Indeed, as you step into Rambutan, you’ll be greeted by the sound of chefs skilfully slapping roti at the open kitchen counter, with that vantage point offering a front-row stool to see the action unfolding.
Make sure you ring in several of those rotis – cooked over small, portable aduppu grills – for pulling through the silky red curry from two paragraphs prior. It’s already one of the single most satisfying bites in the city.
Cool it down with a round of Rambutan’s thoughtfully composed soft drinks (the ceylon and lime ice tea is particularly good), finish with a scoop of that delectable soft serve, and leave happy.
Idealfor the usual superlative Taiwanese small plates, with a side order of karaoke thrown in for good measure…
Bao Borough is one of only two outposts found south of the river (the other’s in Battersea) of the cult London restaurant group Bao, whose success has been founded on serving Instagrammable, insanely good steamed gua bao buns and other contemporary takes on the street food of Taiwan.
The inspiration here comes from the late night grill houses of Taiwan, with the speciality of this particular house the 40 day aged beef over butter rice, which is as obscenely indulgent and umami-rich as is physically possible in a single small plate.
This particular branch only takes bookings too, but if you do just show up, service is prompt and the food fast; as such, you’ll likely land a coveted seat pretty quickly if you walk in.
Oh, and there’s even a bookable private karaoke room, with a capacity for 14 people and plenty of delicious snacks brought to you mid-song.
Just across the road from Borough Market is El Pastor, a re-imagining of a traditional Mexican taqueria from Harts Group, the restaurateurs behind Barrafina.
This is a convivial, carnival-like space, make no mistake, and one of the best places to eat in Borough Market. The food is excellent, particularly the beef short rib and bone marrow wraps, served to be shared in an assemble-it-yourself style. If you want to walk on the lighter side of the menu, don’t miss the tuna tostadas. Mezcal washes everything down and sends you on your way a little wavier than when you arrived.
Ideal for modern British cooking enjoy from a vintage vantage point…
Visitors to London’s Borough Market should all be well trained in the art of feigning interest in the name of garnering a tiny sample of something – whether it be a truffle infused Old Spot salami, Davidstow cheddar or Forman & Son’s smoked salmon.
There comes a point though, when the legs get weary, the bluffing half-hearted and the crowds too obstructive to cultivate any sense of brio, when you’d really love someone to take the great British produce of the market and beyond, and cook you a damn good meal. Roast, housed above the market, uses the best of the country, season and location to do just that.
London Bridge’s Tapas Brindisa, open since 2004, was the first branch of this all-conquering restaurant group, and was serving up delectable, gossamer-thin slices of jamón ibérico de bellota and its iconic chorizo rolls long before London became well-versed in tortilla española, pimientos de padrón, and the rest.
Interestingly ,this inaugural Brindisa has recently started taking reservations (in line with all its other branches), but you can also enter their queue ‘virtually’ via their website, which means, if you time your arrival just right, you won’t have to wait around. If you do find yourself at the back of the queue with a spare few, there’s a pub opposite, as well as a Brindisa Shop in Borough Market itself.
Ideal for a protein-led take on Mexican streetfood…
Tacos Padre, a stall inside Borough Market slinging out some truly superb tacos, is the second most recent opening on our list, but one which has felt right at home in this corner of London right from the off.
Chef Nick Fitzgerald has some serious credentials within the world of Mexican food; he’s previously worked at Mexico City’s Pujol, consistently named the best Mexican restaurant in the world, as well as London’s excellent Breddos Tacos.
At Padre, the tortillas are made fresh daily- a must if you’re to call yourself the ‘daddy’ – with tacos generously adorned with slow-braised, super-unctuous meaty fillings (or should that be ‘toppings’? Who knows).
Yep, it really is all about the meat here, with the beef suadero spun through with aged beef fat bringing so much mouthfeel it’s a vaguely erotic experience. The pork cochinita is similarly arousing.
Though it’s a largely stand-and-lean affair at lunchtimes, with a reduced ‘taqueria’ style menu holding people upright, in the evening Tacos Padre spreads its wings a little, with tables set up outside the stall and a fuller spread on offer. Whichever time you choose to rock up, you will be fed very well here.
Ideal for a seafood extravaganza on the outskirts of the market…
Finally, you’ll find us dining with the Wright Brothers (also in Borough Market), whose dedication to seafood, and particularly oysters, marks the restaurant out in a field crowded with great dining options.
Just last November, Wright Brothers celebrated 20 years since opening their very first restaurant in the heart of Borough, and the menu is as refreshingly simple today as it was back then; a list of specials, nearly all fish, sensitively cooked with great respect for the premium product at hand. This is the only way to cook fish this fresh, and we love it.
The best seat in the house is, conversely, not in the house, but rather, out front, perched around one of the restaurant’s barrel tables, with a plate of half dozen oysters and crisp glass of Albariño balanced precariously, watching the world go by. In fact, we think we might stay here a while…
Ideal for fresh, hand rolled pasta that makes up some of London’s most iconic dishes
Step out of London Bridge Station in search of good food, and you’ll be delivered from your tube trip and into Padella’s massive queue with barely a blink in between.
The queues snaking round the block tell you two things about Padella; firstly, you can’t reserve a place at this London Bridge hotspot. And secondly, the food is worth the wait.
Counter top seating overlooks enthusiastic young cooks caressing fresh pasta and charming punters in tandem, and everything feels right in the world. The bowls, fresh and ever so simple, celebrate the pasta first and foremost, with the pappardelle with beef shin ragu a rich and ribald affair.
The signature pici cacio e pepe, a riff on the Roman classic pasta dish but here using an unusually squat version of pici, is as good as when Padella first opened, not diluted an iota by the restaurant’s continued success, though it should be noted that its price has almost doubled (a sign of the times, no doubt) in just a few years.
Anyway, that continued success has led to a second branch in Shoreditch if you can’t get a seat at the mothership. Up across the river (take the bus to Curtain Road, leaving from London Bridge Stop M, if you’re asking), they even take bookings.
The name Patong has long functioned as a warning. Among British holidaymakers especially, it conjures shorthand for chaos: neon-soaked, beer-sodden, the sort of place that exists in a permanent state of 2am.
Parents, understandably, tend to give it a wide berth. Instead they head for Kata, Kamala or somewhere else quieter on Phuket’s western coast. What they miss is that Patong, particularly its southern end, can work brilliantly for families, provided you pick the right base. The Courtyard by Marriott Phuket, Patong Beach Resort is that base.
There’s another side of Patong that you don’t often hear about, and even at sundown it’s a surprisingly wholesome scene. Walk down towards the beachfront and you will see families strolling the streets with ice cream, kids in buggies, the odd toddler grooving to music from a passing bar. It is lively without being confrontational. What happens on Bangla Road after midnight is another story entirely, but it doesn’t have to be the whole story.
Bangla Road functions as a sort of magnet for the carry-on, sucking the worst excesses into its orbit and keeping them concentrated along a single strip. Walk two streets back and you’d barely know it existed. The Courtyard sits further from the epicentre still, giving you the option of dipping in and out of the nightlife on your own terms.
And it’s not just families who’ll find the balance appealing. Couples who want to be on the periphery of the pub crawls, the disco dance and the debauchery, preferring to view it voyeuristically from a responsible distance, will find the Courtyard delivers for them too.
The Location
Part of the all-conquering Marriott group, the Courtyard sits on a 21-acre site at the southern end of Patong Bay, directly across the road from the beach. On a strip where most hotels are stacked tight against the road with barely enough room for a pool, let alone a botanical garden, that footprint is properly unusual.
The land was acquired around 40 years ago by the Thai-owned Merlin Group, back when Phuket’s tourism industry was just starting to find its feet. For decades it operated as the Patong Merlin Hotel, a name that long-term Patong visitors will know well.
Some guests had been returning yearly since the early 2000s, drawn by the sheer scale of the resort and its mature tropical gardens, around 10 acres in total. Marriott took over in late 2023, soft-opening with 300 rooms before completing the full 445-key renovation by the end of 2024. We met a group of those long-timers during our stay here, grandkids in tow, and they told us the renovation had been handled sympathetically. The place, to their minds, remained as charming as ever.
Despite being so close to Patong’s legendary nightlife scene, any collateral noise is drowned out by the hotel’s thick 40-year foliage, anyway. For those who want to feel the beat of the place without being immersed in it, this location is ideal. You can sit at the bars with a drink and watch the promenade come to life as the sun drops, then walk back through the resort’s palm-shaded pathways to your room without encountering anything more raucous than a sunburnt Brit demanding Mr Brightside from no one in particular.
Character & Style
Do a lap of the grounds and you can see how lightly the renovation has trodden on the bones of the place. The building facades retain their terracotta-pink render, a colour typical of Thai resort architecture from the 1990s carried over from the Patong Merlin. Room blocks are low-rise, four or five storeys, spread wide around the central pool area in a courtyard layout. Staggered balconies jut out at geometric angles, each one giving its room a private outdoor space without the flat uniformity of a standard hotel block, with dark wood railings that contrast against the pink. It is a distinctly Southeast Asian resort vernacular, and it gives the buildings far more personality than you might expect from a global hotel chain.
The name survives in the Merlin Ballroom, a newly built event space where high ceilings meet teal louvred shutters, gilt accents and exposed wooden trusses, all seemingly lifted straight from Phuket Old Town.
Back outside, and the diversity of the greenery is impressive, where the old Merlin’s 40-year head start really pays off. Narrow lanes wind through dense tropical planting: coconut and traveller’s palms, red ginger flowers, and low hedging that softens the structural lines of the room blocks. You can’t buy this kind of mature garden overnight, and it does more for the resort’s atmosphere than any amount of interior styling could. Someone had some serious foresight all those years ago.
Walking through the grounds in the early evening, past the Chef’s Herb Garden, lush with Thai basil, lemongrass, makrut lime and more, this place has a charm absent in most Patong hotels. The low-rise layout helps too. Nothing here is overwhelming.
There is a neighbourly feel to the place, too. Families sharing snacks on their balconies, older couples reading in the last of the afternoon light, a pair splitting a beer with their feet up on the railing. It’s a scene you associate more with a residential block than a hotel, and it speaks to how comfortable people get here. This is where the hotel’s appeal for families and older couples comes into sharpest focus.
The resort is longer than it is wide, allowing for distinct hotel zones. It seems to accommodate two entirely different holidays under the same roof. Closer to the road, the energy picks up: the flagship beach club Endless Summer and the hotel’s restaurants Smokestack and Goodfellas line the beachfront strip, DJs play into the evening, and the pulse of Patong feels close enough to touch. Walk further back into the resort and the atmosphere is a different beast entirely. The pathways narrow, the canopy thickens, and by the time you reach the inner pool areas and the garden-wrapped room blocks, you could forget Patong exists at all.
You can experience this place as a family compound: kids tearing around the gardens, poolside snacks, early dinners at Goodfellas followed by a stroll through the OTOP Night Market and bed by nine. Or you can treat it as a launchpad for the livelier side of Patong. The hotel does not force you into either mode, and that flexibility is rarer than it sounds on a strip where most places pitch themselves firmly at one audience or the other.
When we visited it was nearly at full occupancy, but the Courtyard seems to be a bit of a secret that everywhere else but the UK has cottoned onto. It’s full of French, German and Chinese families who have been coming here for years. It’s time we follow their lead.
The Rooms
The Marriott renovation refreshed the interiors into something cleaner and more contemporary than the pleasantly old school exterior suggests: open-plan bathrooms with privacy blinds, day beds on the balconies, and the kind of functional, unfussy layout that Courtyard by Marriott does well across its 1,200-plus properties worldwide. Understated, comfortable, modern, and nothing to complain about.
The usual niggles of older hotel rooms don’t exist here: there’s a dedicated slot for suitcases, plug sockets all in the right places, and a layout that doesn’t trip you up at any turn. In-room amenities come from Nirvae botanicals; bergamot and tea tree for the hair, grapefruit and mint in the shower.
The geometric design of those staggered balconies pays off inside as well. Rooms with pool access feel more like a private porch than a hotel terrace, with enough separation from the walkways to give a welcome sense of seclusion. You find yourself hanging out on the balcony as if it’s your own flat.
All rooms come with 55-inch Smart TVs loaded with Netflix and YouTube, a detail that will earn its keep on rainy afternoons with restless children. We did find ours buffering badly one evening, which we suspect is a bandwidth issue when 445 rooms are all streaming at once. Might be a good idea to download a few films to cast before you head out for the day, just in case.
Nine room categories cover a wider range than you might expect from a Courtyard, starting at 31 sqm for the entry-level Guest Rooms and scaling up through Premier, Pool Access and Premier Pool Terrace options to an Executive Suite with a separate living area. The 50 sqm Family Rooms include two separate bedrooms (one king, one twin) plus a living space, which for families travelling with young children is the difference between a holiday and an endurance test. One thing to flag: Pool Access Rooms carry a minimum age of 13, so families with younger children will need to book a standard or Premier category instead.
Facilities
Four pool areas is a lot for any hotel, and on paper it sounds overwhelming, but the sprawling site absorbs them easily. The largest curves in free-form shapes that loosely reference the Andaman coastline, with two swim-up bars positioned along its edges.
For families, the thoughtfulness shows in the details: a dedicated nursery pool for the very young. The kids’ pool sits in the middle of the resort, cleverly screened by shrubs and planting so it feels like its own contained world. A waterslide and splash zone keep younger children occupied for hours. The Serene Pool is the smallest of the four, and has its own swim-up bar. It’s the quieter, more grown-up option when the main pool fills up.
Patong Beach is directly across the road, and it’s a busy but agreeable stretch. For something quieter, hire a longtail boat to Freedom Beach, a short ride south.
The facilities are more considered than you might expect from a hotel operating at this price point. The spa runs a full treatment menu, and the gym is equipped enough to cater to dedicated routines. A large covered outdoor games area with ping pong, foosball and snooker tables is positioned next to the beach bar so parents can stay in sight without surrendering their sundowners.
On the practical side, the taxi stand at the front of the hotel is worth flagging. Phuket’s taxi situation is notoriously chaotic, and having a reliable rank on-site removes one of the more persistent headaches of getting around the island.
Open daily from 9am to 7pm, The Kids Club takes children aged 5 to 12 for supervised activities; arts and crafts, balloon making, mask making, interactive games and a reading nook, with staff on hand throughout. Under-fives need a parent present, but for families with older children it functions effectively as a drop-off, giving parents a stretch of uninterrupted time by the pool. For family holidays, a facility like this changes the entire texture of the trip.
There’s a gift shop on site too, should you want a rubber dinghy for the kids or something glam to wear to the beach club. Speaking of which, the Endless Summer Beach Club is a big draw, its facade shimmering like the sea, its pool overlooking the beach. We visited on a Tuesday evening and caught DJs, a fire show and live music heavy on the Oasis covers, which seemed to go down well with the international crowd. Should you want to feel the energy of Patong’s nightlife without being swallowed whole, it’s a good option.
It earns its keep during the day as well as after dark. Sandwiches and salads make for an unfussy lunch between pool sessions, with a menu that covers several continents. It’s got some unnecessarily attractive toilets, too, with beautiful tiling and arches. The perfect excuse to order another Singha then, just for a reason to stretch your bladder…
Food & Drink
The Courtyard is home to nine restaurants and bars in total, which sounds like corporate excess until you spend a few days here and realise how well the variety works, particularly for families with different appetites and attention spans.
Indeed, the food operation at the Courtyard is, by any measure, more serious than it needs to be. Smokestack, Goodfellas and the aforementioned Endless Summer Beach Club all sit side by side on the beachfront, with ES Café tucked just behind Smokestack, forming the kind of setup where you could easily spend an entire evening without leaving the resort.
Smokestack BBQ and Grill is the headline act. Chef Christopher Tuthill, a California Culinary Academy graduate with 17 years spanning San Francisco’s farm-to-table scene and Hong Kong’s restaurant circuit, runs a wood-fired operation that produces slow-cooked beef short rib, house-rubbed brisket and grain-fed wagyu tomahawk of a quality rarely encountered in a hotel restaurant on this stretch of coast. It’s one of the best restaurants in Patong, hotel dining or otherwise.
Goodfellas earns more respect than its wiseguy branding might suggest. Chef James Gargiulo, raised in Reggio Emilia and trained in classic trattorias, turns out Italian-American-style pies from a brick oven. The marinara, stripped back to tomato, cherry tomatoes, garlic confit and oregano, is a reliable litmus test and passes it cleanly. The anchovy emulsion number hit the spot too.
The stronger case for Goodfellas, though, is made away from the pizza menu: meatballs in a deeply reduced tomato sauce, pesto pasta with a generosity of pine nuts that would bankrupt a restaurant back home, aubergine parmigiana that is carefully layered rather than hastily assembled. It’s excellent Italian food by the island’s standards. They deliver to your room, which on a lazy evening is hard to argue with.
Worth flagging too: the Courtyard offers an all-inclusive package for around £115 (5,000 baht) per night extra, and unusually for the format, it covers Smokestack and Goodfellas as well as the buffet at The Phuket Eatery. A meaningful upgrade if you’re booking that tier.
For casual dining, The Phuket Eatery serves a mix of local and international dishes, and is also where breakfast is served. Phuket specialities like khao phad saparot (pineapple fried rice) and a khanom jiin-style setup with rice noodles and green curry are worth seeking out, and the pad see ew had a noticeable wok hei to it.
Miso soup and dim sum sit alongside a salad section with yum mamuang (mango salad). There’s also a kimchi and fermented foods station, and yoghurt nearby; useful if your stomach has been feeling unsettled. Kids get their own station with potato smiley faces and chicken nuggets, as well as dedicated children’s cutlery, which will either delight or horrify you depending on your parenting philosophy. The standout, though, was a young coconut bread pudding, ostensibly for the children but colonised by the adults by mid-morning.
The egg station comes with a tick-box order card left on your table: choose your style, your additions, and your condiments, and it arrives cooked to order. The Tom Yum Goong Eggs Benedict was a highlight, a gentle aromatic kick that works surprisingly well first thing in the morning.
The pastry section is generous, and the fruit is served in brass woks traditionally used to cook coconut curries, a nice Thai touch. Outside, noodle, egg and pancake stations are set up like street food vendors, giving the whole thing a livelier feel than a standard hotel buffet. When we visited, watermelon was in season, served by the wedge and unreasonably sweet.
Breakfast at The Phuket Eatery is the only time you’ll see how busy the hotel really is. For a quieter affair (though with a little less choice), you can also take breakfast at Smokestack, overlooking the beach.
Coffee lovers will appreciate the ES Café, the resort’s Starbucks-branded space tucked into a beautifully air-conditioned corner of the grounds. It makes an ideal first stop before an early morning walk along Patong Beach, before the watersports touts and sunlounger crowd arrive.
The hotel’s restaurants are genuinely the strongest options on this particular stretch of beachfront, but walk five minutes to Phra Metta Road and you will find Mae Mee Khao Kaeng Pak Tai, a curry rice shop specialising in Southern Thai food and full of local workers at lunchtime. For late-night Isaan food, Saeb Raeng Saeng Khong on the same road is worth knowing about. Sai Kor Buffet MooKaTa Seafood is a popular locals’ choice for Thai-style barbecue.
Ideal For…
Not every hotel in Patong suits every traveller, but the Courtyard’s combination of scale, facilities and location gives it an unusually broad appeal.
Families with young children. The kids’ club, dedicated family pools, waterslide, family rooms with separate bedrooms, and children’s breakfast station make this one of the most genuinely family-oriented resorts on the island. The 21-acre site means children have room to roam without parents feeling hemmed in.
Families who want a base, not a bubble. The OTOP Night Market at the back, Phra Metta Road five minutes away, and Patong Beach directly opposite mean you can engage with the real Phuket as much or as little as you like.
Couples who want proximity to the action. The southern end of Patong Bay gives you access to the nightlife without being in the thick of it. Endless Summer, Smokestack and Goodfellas are all strong enough to anchor an evening without leaving the resort.
First-time visitors to Phuket. The on-site taxi rank, nine restaurants and bars, four pools and beachfront location remove most of the logistical friction of a first trip to the island.
Older couples or groups. The Serene Pool, Smokestack at breakfast, and the general calm of the resort grounds give adults plenty of breathing room even when the hotel is running at full occupancy.
It’s perhaps less suited to anyone looking for a remote, untouched stretch of coastline, or, conversely, to party animals wanting to roll out of the lift and straight onto Bangla Road. Patong is Patong, but the Courtyard sits at one remove from both extremes.
Why Stay?
There are more scenic parts of Phuket if what you want is a serene, empty beach. The Courtyard by Marriott Phuket, Patong Beach Resort is not trying to be that kind of hotel. It is a place with many hats: a family-friendly base with genuine space to breathe, a comfortable landing pad for couples who want proximity to Patong’s energy without the chaos, and a surprisingly characterful property whose Merlin-era bones give it more soul than the Marriott branding might suggest. The 21-acre footprint remains its greatest asset. In a town where hotels are squeezed into ever-tighter plots, all that mature tropical garden is worth the price of admission alone.
Rooms at the Courtyard start with the Guest Room 1 King, a 31 sqm room with balcony and garden views, from as little as 5,200 baht (£118) per night in low season, rising to around 10,900 baht (£247) in high season.
If you’re heading to Thailand with family in tow but find Patong too much, you might also want to consider Khao Lak. Our review of Le Méridien Khao Lak Resort & Spa covers another Marriott property two hours up the coast, where the pace is slower and the beach is quieter.
The south coast city of Brighton is many different things to many different people. A place for Pride, pebble skimming, thrift shopping, heavy partying, eccentricity, environmentalism, and a traditional British seaside holiday, all rolled into one, you can be anyone you want to be in this so-called London By Sea.
When it comes to the best restaurants in Brighton and Hove, they are thrilling places full of eclectic tastes, with just about every cuisine, price point and sense of occasion catered for. The arrival of Maré’s Michelin star in February – the first in Brighton & Hove in nearly 50 years – is proof of just how far the city’s dining scene has come, but with cafes and restaurants on just about every corner, separating the good from the great can still be tough.
Well, we’ve done the hard work, traversed the lanes and the beaches, and gained several (and lost hundreds of) pounds in the process, to bring you this; our rundown of the best restaurants in Brighton.
Bincho Yakitori, Preston Street
Ideal for some of the best yakitori this side of Okinawa…
A bright and lively Brighton road leading down to a pebble beach isn’t exactly the first place you’d expect to find a properly dark and grungy, backstreet Japanese izakaya. But then, this city never ceases to surprise you.
So, here we are; perched at a bar, sipping warm sake, and taking down plate after plate of grilled skewers. Whether the latter is Bincho’s moreish crispy chicken skins, the restaurant’s delectable cubes of pork belly, their chicken hearts, or a simple half cob of sweetcorn, you can be assured that everything off the yakitori section of the menu will have been kissed by coals.
In fact, the restaurant’s name comes from the type of coals used here and in izakayas all over Japan, binchō-tan, which is famed for its ability to burn long and bright, keep temperatures consistent, and not give off any unwanted smoke or odours.
Should you be keen to get stuck into some bits not off the grill, mind, then the specials board can always be relied upon for some treats; the tempura fried sea bream with a dollop of pert seaweed mayo is particularly good.
And once you’re done, the good news is that just opposite Bincho you’ll find one of Brighton’s best cocktail bars, Gung Ho. Kanpai!
Ideal for inventive takes on the food of the Indian sub-continent…
Not your average neighbourhood curry house, that’s for certain, The Chilli Pickle certainly raises the bar when it comes to British interpretations of street food from the Indian sub-continent.
The cooking here is precise and assertive, with the manipulating of sharp notes (from, amongst others, that namesake pickle) bringing real freshness and vivacity. This is perhaps most apparent in the superb gol gapa from the starters and small plates section, which is lifted to dizzy heights by both tamarind and coriander chutneys.
If you eat meat, you’d be a fool not to order the Nepali Chicken Wings; a cumin and salt rub gives the dish texture, Szechuan pepper creates a lingering, intriguing backnote, and the accompanying chilli sambal is nuanced and complex.
The menu here changes regularly, but if it’s on, a recent addition of beef keema is another must-order; the roasted bone marrow that arrives alongside (scoop, mix and groan) makes it impossibly hard to resist. The tandoori butter chicken, admittedly a safe bet, is, here, pleasingly nimble, with a good dose of lemon juice lightening things up.
We love this place, and judging by the queues, Brighton does too, as do the restaurant inspectors at Michelin, who awarded The Chilli Pickle a Bib Gourmand for several years on the bounce. More importantly, The Chilli Pickle has been part of our best restaurants in Brighton list for just as long.
Please note that Christmas Eve 2024 saw the restaurant’s final service – cue Nick Cave voice – on Jubilee Street. As of the start of 2025, The Chilli Pickle returned to its original home on Meeting House Lane. The menu remains broadly the same, with many of the old favourites making the journey to the new restaurant intact.
Ideal for Spanish-inspired tapas with Michelin-recognised pedigree…
When former Michelin-starred chef Ian Swainson, once of The Samling and Amarillo (RIP), joined forces with Ali and Mo Razavi (the team behind Halisco and Anakuma) to open this intimate 20-cover Spanish restaurant in late 2024, Brighton’s food scene naturally took notice.
So, it turns out, did the Big Red Guide. Just nine weeks after opening, Amari had already secured a coveted spot in the 2025 edition – a testament to the kitchen’s exacting standards and Swainson’s adaptability in hitting his stride quite so soon after landing here on Baker Street. The restaurant was also included in The Good Food Guide in early 2026.
The menu here is a focused affair of Spanish-inspired small plates designed for sharing, executed with the technical precision you’d expect from Swainson’s fine dining background but delivered in a refreshingly unpretentious setting. This is what the team calls (to be honest, we’ve heard this one a little too often recently) “fun dining rather than fine dining” – a tired but still apt description for both food and vibe here.
The croquetas are a masterclass in the form – sublimely creamy with a delicate crisp shell – while the beetroot salad with Seville orange and sherry vinegar dressing showcases a deft balance of sweet, sharp and earthy notes. Don’t miss the Manchego stuffed manzanilla olives with quince purée, a kind of riff on a gilda that we’ll be stealing for our next dinner party. With that first round of dishes, you’ll want to order the house Botivo Spritz – a non-alcoholic aperitivo with elderflower, orange blossom and tonic (though you can add Cazcabel Reposado tequila if you fancy something stronger).
It’s not all tapas and sharing. Selfish diners who hate to see that roving fork approaching ‘their plate’ will find glory in dishes like the slow-braised Ibérico pork loin with truffled celeriac purée and Amontillado sherry sauce, or the red wine braised rib of beef with chickpeas. The fried Jerusalem artichoke hearts with lemon oil are perhaps our favourite thing on the menu, providing a vegetable-forward option that’s no less enjoyable, and a flatulence bordering on the troubling.
With Swainson’s partner Justyna Maria Ciurus, formerly of Hove’s renowned Little Fish Market (appearing a little later on this list, by the way), leading the front-of-house team, the service is pitch perfect, too.
A hugely popular backstreet boozer/chef residency that makes our list of the best restaurants in Brighton is Easy Tiger at the Hampton, a pub that’s, incidentally, just a short hop from the station. Yep, Brightonians are getting seriously spoiled here!
Easy Tiger is a riff on the Great British tradition of the desi pub, where curries and pints combine to beautiful effect. The restaurant is helmed by Chef Sabu Joseph, who brings his extensive experience and passion for authentic Indian cuisine to the table.
Originally from Kerala in southern India, Sabu has had a distinguished cooking career in both Brighton and London, doing time at Brighton’s two most acclaimed Indian restaurants The Chilli Pickle and The Curry Leaf Cafe (now sadly closed, RIP), as well as a stint at the five star Jumeirah Carlton Tower Hotel in central London. Yep, that’s some serious pedigree, and it shows in Easy Tiger’s enticing, easygoing rundown of Indian streetfood classics, the perfect accompaniment to one of the locally brewed IPA beers on tap at the Hampton, a proper local boozer that has been tastefully updated while retaining its authentic charm.
Do not miss out on the Kerala Fried Chicken, a crispy boneless chicken thigh coated in garlic, ginger, spices and rice flour, before being hard fried ‘till crispy. Could there be a better combination in the world than a basket of these and a pint of Cloak and Dagger Hazy Pale? We certainly haven’t found it.
A decade after the inaugural Fatto a Mano opened on London Road, the team now boast two more pizzerias in Hove and the North Laines, and a further five in London, in Covent Garden, King’s Cross, Bethnal Green and Tower Bridge. With each branch (yep, we’ve visited them all) seemingly packed every day of the week, world domination seems the only next logical step.
Wood fired within the requisite 90 seconds at the requisite 450°C, Fatto a Mano’s pizzas are pillowy affairs. Give that canotto a prod and watch it bounce back up at you. That response promises a beautifully digestible dough, and so the pizzas here deliver it. Toppings are – on the most part – refined and reverential, with just a handful of the freshest ingredients treated sympathetically. The margherita buffalo is the finest realisation of this humble vision; a light, natural pizza that sings of simplicity.
We say ‘on the most part’ as there are a couple of more divisive pizzas in the lower reaches of Fatto’s menu. The lasagna pizza, it should be said, has split the Brighton crowd since its addition to the menu late last year. Some have cried heresy. Others have stuffed it into their faces with abandon. We fall very much in the latter camp, with the smattering of ragu well judged in its restraint, leading to a pizza that’s nowhere near as heavy as it sounds.
The name translates as ‘handmade’ in Italian, and that’s certainly the vibe here; everything is made from scratch and with love, and it shows. Even if pizza isn’t your thing, Fatto has some excellent starters and sides to keep the picky eaters satisfied; their nduja arancini, in particular, truly hit the spot.
Though all three Brighton and Hove branches are excellent, we’ve chosen the North Laines outpost for our roundup of Brighton’s best restaurants, as it’s close to the station, and super convivial. Of course, the London Road and Hove versions are ace, too.
Ideal for Brighton’s first Michelin star in nearly half a century…
In February 2026, Maré became the first restaurant in Brighton & Hove to hold a Michelin star since 1985. Arguably, it’s the speed of it is the real story: chef Rafael Cagali opened the doors in mid-2025 and had the star within nine months. You know what some restaurateurs say about their places feeling like a baby? There must be a joke in here somewhere…
Chef-patron Rafael Cagali, who holds two stars at Da Terra in London, opened the Church Road site in September 2025 with head chef Ewan Waller, a Da Terra protégé, running the kitchen day to day.
The menu draws on Cagali’s Brazilian-Italian background and borrows freely from Mexico and Japan along the way, structured around snacks, small plates and larger dishes designed for sharing. A lobster rice with ox tongue has had half of Brighton talking about it since autumn, the ox tongue stirred through fried rice in a combination that sounds odd on paper but lands with real conviction. The baba au cachaça, a riff on the classic rum baba using Brazilian sugarcane spirit, is another dish the kitchen is rightly proud of, and one Michelin’s inspectors specifically name-checked.
The dining room is pared back, with an open kitchen and a zinc bar where you can eat from a separate small plates menu if the full tasting feels like too much of a commitment. Jake Garstang, the sommelier, previously worked at Ynyshir and Restaurant Story and has put together a list heavy on smaller European producers, with several Sussex sparkling wines from Rathfinny and Langham given deserved prominence.
The tasting menu is £90. A set lunch at £55 offers a shorter route in, though availability can be patchy, so it’s worth confirming when you book. Tables have been hard to come by since the star was announced, and that’s unlikely to ease up any time soon.
Consistently named as Brighton’s best restaurant in local and national lists, though actually in Hove, chef and owner Duncan Ray has created a glorious homage to everything seafood in this small but sophisticated 20 cover restaurant. Be warned; it’s purely a dinner affair, Tuesday to Saturday, and you’ll need to book well in advance to secure a coveted seat, but the effort is well worth it.
That’s because it’s only the finest, freshest fish, sourced as locally as possible and cooked with the respect it deserves. It’s a no choice tasting at around the £85 mark, but the price tag is fair; this is a set-menu, several hour affair offering a tour of some of Britain’s very finest seafood. And if you’d like to sample the cooking here at a more approachable price tag, then the LFM has recently announced a three course lunch menu, priced at an eminently reasonable £35 a head. A proud owner of 3 AA rosettes, a Michelin star still eludes them, much to the chagrin of regulars.
And though the restaurant specialises in fish, do keep your eye out for the occasional ‘Little Meat Market’ events, where chef Ray cooks a menu of – you guessed it – meat dishes with his usual elegance and precision.
Ideal for confident, classic French cookery in the heart of Hove…
Wild Flor is one of the most acclaimed (relatively) recent additions to Brighton and Hove’s thriving culinary scene. Settling into an evening with their confident, classic French cookery and superb wine list is one of Brighton’s biggest treats; you’ll always leave squiffy and extremely well-fed.
In a city somewhat in thrall to ‘casual’ dining, it’s so refreshing to settle into a more serious spot, which has recently changed to a straightforward a la carte offering, with starters keenly priced in the early teens, and mains not topping £30.
On our last visit, we were particularly enamoured with a dish of rabbit loin, wrapped in wild garlic and gently pink, which was served with a medley of spring veg that still had plenty of bite, its mustard and hogweed dressing pulling everything together. Even better, golden sweetbreads that pulled off the tricky balancing act of being both crisp and tender within, sat beautifully with a pool of glossy chicken jus and the first of the season’s asparagus.
I don’t know about you, but spring has only truly arrived when the toilet smells of sulphur.
For the pescatarians around the table, gorgeously pert salt cod agnolotti with a sharp, lemon-spiked emulsion and sourdough pangrattato hit the high notes, too.
Wild Flor are also currently offering a spring set menu which is laughably good value at £25 for three courses. Treat yourself to the trio, as it would be criminal to miss out on the restaurant’s pastry work, the section cooking with a breezy conviction and generosity more in tune with a Paris patisserie or the bouchons of Lyon than a Hove thoroughfare. Emblematic of this sensibility and keeping with the seasonality of Wild Flor’s cooking, a spiced pear served with hazelnuts and a stout custard sounds absurdly good as that Brighton chill continues to blow.
Though you can’t walk for more than the length of a fettuccine in London without stumbling into a pasta bar, in Brighton & Hove you’ll be much harder pressed to find a place slinging freshly rolled strands of the good stuff.
In fact, to our mind, Cin Cin are the premier pasta purveyors here, and a more than capable match for any of London’s top pasta restaurants (in 2021, Cin Cin decided to test this theory, and their Fitzrovia branch opened to immediate national acclaim).
Though the restaurant’s original location in Brighton’s North Laines (and the London outpost) has now closed, the newer, the larger branch on Western Road, just seconds before you reach Church Road, is just as delicious.
Here, a horseshoe counter and a handful of barstools overlook Cin Cin’s open kitchen, where seasonal small plates, fresh pasta dishes, and a couple of grilled bits are lovingly prepared in full view of the diners. This is dinner and a show, Hove style, and if your dinner starts with an order of the restaurant’s ever-changing, always-popular arancino (brown crab on our last visit), followed by a pasta dish from the special’s blackboard, you’re sure to be calling for an encore.
Fortunately, Cin Cin’s desserts are responsive to the seasons and always stellar – whether it’s a festive panettone bread and butter pudding with marmalade ice cream or a summery Amalfi lemon tart, there’s no chance you’re leaving disappointed. The restaurant retained their Bib Gourmand award at the 2026 Michelin ceremony, a testament to their continued class and consistency.
Another belter with a blackboard, Plateau is all about pouring up the city’s best and most thoughtful selection of low-intervention wines. They just happen to serve some pretty special sharing plates made with seasonal ingredients from in and around Sussex of a largely French persuasion to complement their natty juice.
Their bread, pâté, rillettes, cheeses and pickles are particularly fine with a glass of the good stuff, but Plateau also have a light touch with fish, which is always welcome so close to the coast. On our last visit, a dish of hake, barbecued until the skin was pockmarked, came served austerely with leeks and hazelnuts; it was beautiful.
For something a little heartier but with a sense of playfulness in its soul, wild venison pierogi with fermented chilli is technically pitch-perfect, the dumplings having the much-sought after bounce, and the iron-rich venison’s flavour shining through. You also can’t go wrong with the unctuous beef tartare which is always on their ever changing seasonal menu for good reason.
All in all, Plateau is an effortlessly stylish and hip place to hang out, and with the recent addition of a few tables spilling out onto the street, is now even closer in style to a classic Parisian wine bar. Last year, it was added to the Good Food Guide, with inspectors reporting that ”for more than a decade, Plateau has been the place in Brighton for natural wines and inventive cocktails. While that still holds true, it’s now firmly established as one of the best places for creative small plates too.”
Ideal for savouring the flavour of the grill in every bite…
Pitched as a ‘a grownup hangout for Brighton’, Burnt Orange is the third restaurant from local restaurateur Razak Helala, who also presides over the Coal Shed and the Salt Room (also on this list).
The Michelin Bib bit indicates ‘good value and good quality’, and in terms of Burnt Orange, these rather prosaic, automated descriptors do the restaurant a disservice. The quality of the output, led by a huge wood fired oven and grill, is fantastic, with the menu taking on a vaguely Middle Eastern bent. Charred flatbreads, grilled prawns with herb Zhug, fire-roasted chermoula monkfish, smoked lamb shoulder cigars…. If there’s a word that indicates the wood-fired grill has been used, it’s on this menu.
The restaurant used to do a fine weekend brunch, too, further extending their welcome to the people of the city. And as everyone knows, the way to a Brightonian’s heart is through brunch. Though the dedicated brunch menu has now gone, Burnt Orange opens at midday and some of the flat bread and dip combos are decidedly brunch-y, if you’re keen to pretend it isn’t lunch.
A restaurant in the Lanes that specialises in wood fire cooking with a vaguely Middle Eastern bent to proceedings (Zhoug? Check. Labneh? Check. Dukhah? Check) and some truly excellent cocktails? With Burnt Orange just around the corner and only a paragraph previous, Brighton’s culinary cognoscenti might be forgiven for wondering whether this was all strictly necessary when Embers opened in 2023.
But scratch the surface just a little and you’ll find a very different proposition here, and one that’s refreshingly unique from its peers in close proximity. The work of two well known faces on the Brighton culinary scene, ex-terre à terre head chef Dave Marrow and former chef-patron of Isaac At, Isaac Bartlett-Copeland, here everything is cooked in a specially designed multi-rack grill which sits pretty in the centre of the dining room, bringing a touch of theatre to proceedings as its glowing embers crackle and flare up as fat and glaze drip invitingly.
It’s one fiery hell of a statement, the grill’s racks constantly being manipulated by a soot-covered chef, all controlled by a pulley mechanism in the style of Etxebarri. The huge stack of logs under the pass only serve to hammer the point home.
All of this would be a little performative if the food didn’t taste thoroughly seasoned by wood, smoke and fire, but at Embers, there’s a genuinely masterful control of the flame, and this is reflected in some truly stunning dishes, the best of which are big sharers, billed ‘centrepiece dishes’. An apt epithet, as the smoked spatchcock chicken (there’s grilled brill or mushroom parfait, too) arrives splayed and smouldering, very much making the table its bed whilst the phones come out for a photoshoot. Tear off a leg – properly blistered and burnished from those embers – drag it through the throbbing, fluorescent honey and mustard mayo, and get all caveman about things.
It feels patronising – perverse, even – to spend a paragraph or two introducing the idea of terre à terre, such is the stalwart status of the restaurant in this city. A Brighton institution serving the good stuff since the early 90s, terre à terre is arguably the premier dining spot for vegetarians in Brighton, if not the country, its menu eclectic and its vibe lively.
Though the restaurant name translates as ‘down to earth’, the only thing grounding the menu here is the vegetarian part; inspiration is drawn from all corners of the globe, with plenty of heft and punch to the dishes.
In fact, it sells terre à terre short to give it the ol’ ‘’you don’t even miss meat’’ line. You’ll eat very well here, however you define your dietary choices. Sure, the menu descriptors are pretty verbose, sometimes running into a paragraph of prose, but the flavours boast remarkable clarity and comfort.
Just last week, terre à terre was voted Best Restaurant in Brighton at the BRAVO Awards for the second time in three years, polling first out of 724 nominated venues. After more than three decades, the restaurant remains the one to beat.
Ideal for ridiculously good Neapolitan pizza and the warmest of welcomes…
The restaurant formerly known as Nanninella has a new name. At the start of April, Sergio and the team rebranded to Ventisei Pizzeria Napoletana, a natural evolution given the restaurant’s home at 26 Preston Street. Ventisei means twenty-six in Italian, and in the Neapolitan tombola the number 26 represents Nanninella, a symbol of family, protection and tradition. A rebrand, yes, but also a homecoming of sorts.
The restaurant has been through many guises in its seven years on Preston Street. From authentic Neapolitan pizzeria to takeaway-only operation, then a post-COVID pannini peddler all the way to a traditional trattoria, and now this latest iteration under its new name. What’s remained true and consistent the whole way through is the quality of the food (not to mention the reliably warm welcome from Sergio and family), with premium, imported Italian ingredients shining through in everything they do.
The kitchen is now led by new head chef Giovanni Affinito, a serious dough specialist who’s currently finalising a full menu; a temporary offering is running until then, though the core of what made this place brilliant remains intact. The pizzas are gold-standard; blistered, burnished and traditional, just as they should be. The vibe inside, all brightly coloured tiles and a view into the hot glow of the pizza oven, frames a hospitable, enjoyable place to spend time. What’s more, the staff are lovely.
Our favourite pizza here, and in the whole of Brighton, is the provola e pepe at £13.50, which uses smoked mozzarella and freshly ground black pepper to great effect. Any pizza featuring their fresh burrata is equally wonderful. Put quite simply, Ventisei is our favourite pizza restaurant in Brighton.
Ideal for a Gallic gastronomic getaway in Brighton…
Unashamedly Gallic, Petit Pois is arguably the number one purveyor of traditional French fare in the city, and one of Brighton’s best restaurants, period.
Expect, then, to be wowed by snails swimming in a pungent pool of garlic and parsley butter, followed by the famous fisherman’s stew bouillabaisse, here replete with fish, shellfish and even sea lettuce from surrounding Sussex waters.
Whilst seafood certainly feels like the right thing to do considering Petit Pois is just a pebble’s skim away from Brighton beach, our favourite dish here comes from the ‘Légumes’ section of the menu, in the form of baked Crottin du Perigord. This mini-wheel of goat’s cheese is baked until gooey and served with a salad of beetroot and candied walnuts high on the sweet notes as a perfect counterpoint to the potent cheese. It’s a smartly judged, confident salad in keeping with the poise of the restaurant as a whole.
With a popular Sunday lunch menu and an extensive wine list, no wonder Petit Pois is one of Brighton’s best-loved neighbourhood French restaurants.
To say that the opening of Palmito felt brave would be something of an understatement. Not content with setting up shop in the tough economic climate of mid-2022, the restaurant opted to do so in a space that estate agents would charitably call ‘cosy’, on a nondescript stretch of Brighton and Hove’s Western Road. They also elected to serve a menu not much tried and tested in this part of town; a kind of fusion between the coastal cuisines of India and Ecuador.
To say the risk paid off would be something of an understatement. That shoebox dining room is packed out from the moment the doors swing open at 5pm on Tuesday until Saturday’s last orders at 11pm.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Palmito has been a roaring success, the chef-owners here have both spent time at revered Brighton restaurants the Chilli Pickle (also on this list, of course) and Easy Tiger, and there’s a similar breezy charm to proceedings here, with the shellfish dishes particularly good.
For such a small restaurant, Palmito is already making big waves on the Brighton shore; the restaurant has already earned a glowing national review in The Times, and an entry in the most recent additions of both the Good Food and Michelin guides.
Interestingly, chef Kanthi, one of the main brains behind Palmito, has recently opened The Spice Circuit Kitchen in Hove, a small chef’s table that features homegrown recipes from South India and Sri Lanka. We can’t wait to check it out!
Ideal forexpertly cooked Italian food from everyone’s favourite Brighton restaurant group…
Tutto, the modern Italian restaurant that’s part of Brighton’s all conquering Black Rock restaurant group (Burnt Orange and the Salt Room from this list are also in that roster) felt like a shoo-in for success from the start.
But things didn’t quite go according to plan, with building delays and issues with the overall vision of the restaurant leading to an opening that was more fits-and-starts than firing-on-all-cylinders.
Fortunately for the pasta-loving throngs of Brighton and Hove, things have picked up considerably since those early jitters, with Tutto now cooking a freshly configured menu with confidence and precision. Unsurprisingly for a place in such close proximity to the sea, the restaurant has a wicked way with fish, the woodfired gamberi rossi with paprika the kind of dish that feels so right in late summer, ditto the grilled sardines with fried bread and salsa verde.
The theme continues into the pasta courses; a bowl of pert agnolotti filled with a keenly diced mix of lobster, crab and scallop, served swimming in a rusty bisque, is spectacularly good.
Finish with Tutto’s chocolate and hazelnut torte, served with maraschino cherries and vanilla ice cream, which has become something of a signature dish here, and, in our view, is the ideal end to this – or any – meal.
Taquitos Casa Azul, Brighton Open Market, Marshall’s Row
Ideal for Brighton’s best tacos…
For great independent vibes in a city some fear is losing its soul to chains, a visit to Brighton’s Open Market, tucked away off London Road, is a must.
While you’re here, it’s pretty much obligatory to duck into Taquitos Casa Azul, a family-run joint led by local hero Gabriel Gutierrez, and tuck into some truly superlative tacos, freshly pressed and adorned with delicately spiced, deliciously spicy shredded pork cochinita or chicken tinga. Pull up a pew at their sole table outside the shopfront and get stuck in.
Oh, and before you settle that bill, do not miss out on Gutierrez’s Salsa Chipotle which is sold on the shelves directly to the left of the till. Heady with hibiscus and dried apricot – you’ll be hooked. We add it to everything now; incredible stuff, indeed.
We end our list of Brighton’s best restaurants at Bonsai Plant Kitchen, the work of Dom Sheriff and Amy Bennett, who met while working at Brighton vegetarian institution Food for Friends. With Amy’s background as a head pastry chef and Dom’s experience as head chef, the pair decided to combine their culinary talents and passion for vegan cuisine to create Bonsai Plant Kitchen, an imaginative plant-based restaurant whose menu is broadly South East Asian inspired and always super exciting to eat.
A huge part of the draw here is the cooking-over-coals philosophy that drives things forward, with several of the dishes cooked on a Binchotan grill. Accordingly, there’s a suave smokiness running through proceedings, whether that’s in the sweet potato skewers doused in miso butter, lime juice and wisps of parmesan, or the barbecued napa cabbage that arrives properly, comprehensively blackened. All of this would be overkill in the wrong hands, but here, those campfire flavours are perfectly poised. The restaurant’s excellent selection of pickles help things along and lighten the mood nicely.
The cocktails are fantastic here too, with all syrups and infusions created in house, a veritable celebration of ingredients preserved at their peak. We love it.
The Salt Room, Kings Road *as of April 2026, temporarily closed*
Ideal for a taste of the sea in spirited, sophisticated surrounds…
The Salt Room’s website claims it as ‘Brighton’s best seafood restaurant’; a bold claim, indeed, but it’s not far off. Part of a group of four – The Coal Shed in Brighton and one of the same name in London, as well as the aforementioned Burnt Orange – this is a place which ticks all the boxes for great fish cookery; sustainable sourcing and simplicity. The menu resists the urge to globe-trot, and, this time, we think that’s welcome.
It’s a surprisingly cavernous space with a good buzz and young, enthusiastic staff. The restaurant is compartmentalised neatly and cleverly, with lots of different spaces and areas helping the buzz carry through the restaurant without being acoustically intrusive.
Anyway, we’re here to talk about fish, right? The grill is used liberally and it’s all the better for it; good news for the whole fish destined to be blistered and burnished on it. Saying that, perhaps the best thing on the menu is the fish tempura with a tartare sauce flecked with seaweed; as saline and savoury as it sounds. A shared surfboard comes brimming with grilled and steamed prawns, squid, scallops and more, and the aioli alongside, whilst a little loose, is seriously good.
We look forward to seeing what the team has in store when the doors reopen later this year.
*The Salt Room is currently closed for a refresh and is expected to reopen later in spring. We’ll update this entry when they’re back.*
And with that, we’re done exploring Brighton and Hove’s best restaurants. It might be time for a sit down after all that! Or, maybe an ice cream, seeing as we’re by the sea. Here’s a guide to the best ice cream in Brighton and Hove. Mine’s a blueberry and ricotta!
First things first; Bangkok can give you the meal of your life on almost any street corner, for just a few sheets of Baht. But with a metropolis of this size, pace and pollution, eating that meal on that street corner may not always result in the most laid back of dining experiences.
Though the idea of going to restaurants and spending relative big Baht on food in Bangkok sometimes feels a little frivolous, this is one sophisticated city, with a culinary scene that’s just as comfortable dishing out multicourse tasting menus as it is pink plastic plates of spicy wonder.
From time to time, it’s nice to take that little big longer luxuriating in this city’s glorious cuisine. In an air conditioned room, back supported and upright in a chair, with a glass provided for your beer, or even, perhaps, with a glass of wine. To take stock of the country, the city and its alluring cuisine. For that, we won’t judge you.
So, with all that in mind, we’ve taken on the unenviable task of eating through Bangkok to give you, in our view, the most essential, scene-defining restaurants in the city. Here is our IDEAL 28; the best restaurants in Bangkok.
Samrub Samrub Thai, Silom
Ideal for a singular, masterful expression of Thai food both past and present…
This intimate, chef’s table experience might boast a Michelin star and 67th place (confusingly, yes) on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list for 2026, but accolade chasing really doesn’t feel like the point at Samrub Samrub Thai.
Instead, expect a deep dive into historic Thai recipes and a regularly changing tasting menu that places fresh focus on a region, season or simply a vibe with each new menu, whether that’s a celebration of a long-lost Southern Thai seafood recipe book or a whole evening of food inspired by the poetry of the Kingdom of Lanna.Though the influences are idiosyncratic, the result is a singular, masterful expression of Thai food both past and present.
At the stoves here is chef Prin Polsuk, who has some serious roots in Thai fine dining, having been the head chef at Nahm in London when it won its Michelin star, the first Thai restaurant in the world to have done so.
On the plate (and in the glass – there will be numerous gratis shots of chef Prin’s homebrewed liquor handed out!), Samrub is all about generosity, with the main sharing spread at the centrepiece of the tasting menu the perfect embodiment of Thai hospitality.
That generous spirit exemplifies the family-style nature of this brilliant restaurant, with Polsuk’s wife Mint running the front of house operations, and chef Prin happily sharing a little background on the dishes you’re eating, as you eat. An appearance on the Apple TV docu-series Omnivore in 2024 seemed to cement their position as a place that means business.
One of best menus we’ve had here was also one of the most recent, coming to a close at the end of 2025. It saw chef Prin and team celebrating the cuisine of Thailand’s Northern mountains and plateaus, and it’s one of the best menus we’ve had here, with loads of undulating chilli heat, tempered acidity and suave glazes.
A real highlight was the fermented rice dumplings in a warming, roundly acidic pork soup. Ditto the grilled and braised Thai beef, served with a bracing tamarind nahm phrik. To soothe and reset, a coconut popsicle dessert finished things off in some style.
The meal felt particularly well-choreographed this time around, with plates arriving in an increasing blaze of glory until the counter was covered in crockery. Metronomic, tight and precise, sure, but still with a pleasing looseness to the dining room that Samrub does so well. The gratis shot(s) of banana spirit certainly help with that.
For March and April 2026, the focus shifts to Eight Rains, Four Suns, a menu inspired by the food traditions of Ranong, the second smallest province in the country but one boasting incredible cultural diversity; Hokkien Chinese, Hainanese, Burmese, Isaan, Peranakan and Thai communities have coexisted here since the tin mining days, and the food reflects it. A seafood-heavy starter sequence takes in cold mullet with fried mullet roe, aged yellowtail scad fisherman salad and smoked yellow croaker in rice vinegar, before a sharing spread with a short rib curry with pineapple and jackfruit seed as a centrepiece. The menu’s name, incidentally, refers to Ranong’s famous provincial motto: eight months of rain and four months of sunshine. There’s only a week or two left to try this one, so catch it while it’s cooling down (the best temperature for a curry, of course).
This is a restaurant on form, and to our mind, the best Thai food in Bangkok and, by rights then, the world. The fact that the menu changes so regularly and so emphatically is starting to seriously worry our bank manager!
And to really keep him on his toes, the team behind Samrub have now opened a sibling restaurant and bar; Noi Samrub Bar and Eatery. It’s ace.
When is Samrub Samrub Thai open? Samrub is open from Tuesday to Saturday for two dinner servings, one starting at 5:30pm and one at 8pm. The restaurant is closed on Sundays and Mondays.
Do I need to book in advance? Booking well in advance is recommended, which you can do so on Table Check. You’ll have to pay for the tasting menu in advance, by way of a deposit.
How much should I expect to spend? The tasting menu here is priced at ฿4290 (around £100), excluding service charge and VAT.
Closest BTS/MRT? Sala Daeng BTS is a 5 minute walk from the restaurant.
Ideal Tip: Skip the add on dish, tempting as it will sound. Save your money for the local drink pairings instead which offers interesting tipples like honey mead and lao khao.
Ideal for nose-to-tail dining that celebrates Northern Thailand’s resourceful cooking traditions…
100 Mahaseth opened just off Chareon Krung Road way back in 2017. When you consider the Bangkok restaurant scene’s lightning fast evolution, that makes chef Chalee Kader’s homage to the resourceful cooking traditions of Northern and Northeastern Thailand something approaching an institution.
The restaurant’s nose-to-tail, root-to-fruit, brain to balls philosophy has certainly influenced plenty of hip openings in the years that have followed. It feels a little silly saying that, when no-waste, maximum-yield is the only way cooks in rural Thailand have played it for centuries.
The restaurant’s origin story is an amusing one. “We were supposed to open a pho joint”, Chef Chalee revealed back in 2018, “and we were sourcing so much beef and so many parts for the pho stock and we said ‘What are we going to serve for dinner? We can’t serve pho for dinner’.” This pivot, to using the whole cow and then some, led to one of Bangkok’s most celebrated and distinctive dining experiences. And they do still sometimes serve pho.
Housed in a handsome, revitalised old teak house in Bang Rak, the gorgeous setting plays off perfectly against all that offal, smoothing out the rougher notes and soothing each undulating wave of hard, rasping chilli heat. The flagstone floors feel cooling under foot, and rattan lamp shades throw warm lighting across the dining room, making the old teak wood glow. Traditional molam music plays at a volume so perfectly calibrated that it somehow confirms that everything will be seasoned just right. And so it is.
All ingredients come directly from Thai farmers, including three distinct varieties of rice from Surin province, each offering unique textures and aromas. The signature charcoal-roasted bone marrow is a proper showstopper – an enormous bone halved and roasted, its sumptuous marrow perfectly balanced by scatterings of toasted perilla seeds and slices of lemongrass shaved so thinly they’re rendered almost apparitional. Scoop it up, look for some bread, realise there’s no bread and tackle it with freshly steamed sticky rice instead.
Other must-tries include the playful Northerner’s Hot Dog, featuring a Chiang Mai-style sai ua sausage in a brioche bun with nahm prik noom jam. It’s an idea that’s been imitated many times and in many places since, both in Bangkok and back here in the UK, too. Though it’s the highest form of flattery, those chefs should’ve probably left it to Kader – the OG at Mahaseth is infinitely superior.
The addictive braised, dehydrated then deep-fried fried tripe make the perfect companion to a cold beer, and for those keen to dive deeper, the seasonal koi salad of ant larvae is a joy. Already naturally bursting (genuinely, bursting) with acidity, the larvae is seasoned with lime, toasted sticky rice and chilis. Roasted macadamia is shaved over the top to bolster the nuttiness of the toasted rice. Looking like drifts of parmesan across a risotto, it’s far more technicolour in its flavours; natural ingredients reinforced and amplified, the dish so much more than the sum of its parts.
On the flipside, those looking to eat only the exterior of the beast will find comfort in the Isaan complementary set, often featuring som tam and crispy pork skin with a Thai chimichurri, another item we keep seeing elsewhere lately. Further cold beers follow, perhaps with some skewers of beef liver and ox tongue, and the whole order repeats itself until you’re spilling out onto Charoenkrung Road, dazed, confused and feeling a little feral, thumbing Google for the best whiskey sodas in the immediate vicinity (psst; they were back there, where you left them).
If Bang Rak is a stretch to get to, then you’ll be pleased to hear that there’s a second location in Ekkamai now, featuring a more casual bar set-up, complete with turntables and a vibe that often verges on the raucous. They’ve even recently opened a New York pizza spot opposite, called Across 100, proving chef Chalee’s culinary ambitions stretch far beyond offal.
When is 100 Mahaseth open? Tuesday to Sunday, 11:30am – 10:30pm. Closed on Mondays.
Do I need to book in advance? Highly recommended; it’s a popular spot with limited seating.
How much should I expect to spend? Around ฿2000 per person, though this can vary with specials like aged steak and the amount of booze you consume.
Closest BTS/MRT? It’s a little off the direct public transport lines. The closest MRT is Hua Lamphong, or BTS Saphan Taksin, followed by a short taxi ride.
Ideal for fiery Northern Thai jungle curry in a no-frills setting…
For over four decades, this beloved local institution has served some of Bangkok’s most downright fiery Thai cuisine. Specialising in northern Thai jungle curry (gaeng pa) – from which the restaurant takes its name – this unassuming local hero has a formidable reputation amongst those in the know for its assertive, roundly spiced signature dish.
Located near Sriyan Market (been saying ‘Syrian’ for years, ffs) in a modern-ish renovated building, Gaeng Pa Sriyan features both an open ground floor dining area where fans blow with such gusto that it’s hard to keep hold of your napkin, and a second floor with air conditioning. Neither can cool the chilli heat of a seriously spicy signature dish.
You don’t need to fear hushed tones or reverent vibes here; this is a busy, no-frills local joint that serves the neighbourhood and its workers far more than the city’s tourists. Sure, there are tablecloths, but they’re not of the starched white variety. Rather, the plastic, wipeable kind, which is kind of useful when you’re lashing back a whole host of addictive sauces, soups and curries with wild-eyed and clumsy-handed enthusiasm.
It’s not a boisterous, boozy joint either. Popular with the lunchtime office crowd, the scene is convivial but calm, the food doing the talking, usually at a thrilling, chilli-induced crescendo. Despite its longevity and cult status among Bangkokians with a penchant for pain, the restaurant maintains a low profile. There’s no Insta or Facebook page. You won’t see many reels dispatched from the frontline.
In all honesty, we’re probably overdoing the whole ‘so spicy’ thing in the name of a narrative; the chilli isn’t so crushing that it’s all you can taste, all you can feel. Dishes are served at Bangkok room temperature, allowing the deft spicing and freshness of the aromatic ingredients to come to the fore.
The star of the show is, of course, the jungle curry itself, a herbaceous, fierce thing that’s also complex and nuanced. Traditionally made with wild meats and foraged vegetables from the forest, at Gaeng Pa Sriyan you can choose your protein – options include wild boar, river fish, or frog. Whichever you go for, the supporting cast bring their A-game too; young bamboo shoots, pea eggplants, grachai (fingerroot), fresh green peppercorns, and a generous scattering of herbs, all swimming in that famously spicy, earthy broth, deliver waves of bitterness, astringency, and complexity. God, this curry is good.
Beyond the namesake, other dishes shine just as brightly. The minced quail stir-fried kee mao (drunken) style is sensational, an explosion of savoury bolstered by ground quail (bones included for a crunch), both fresh and dried chillies, and fried makrut lime leaves that bless the whole occasion with a certain floral suaveness.
Southern Thai classics get a good outing, too; the goong pad kapi sator (stir-fried shrimp with stink beans and shrimp paste) is pungent and beautiful, and the green curry of fish balls is a gold-standard version. We concede the latter really was spicy.
After the fire of the main courses, cool down with their excellent durian and coconut ice cream served with sticky rice, and perhaps another round of icy Singha. Then, go back in for round two – this is addictive, intoxicating food that you simply have to surrender to.
When is Gaeng Pa Sriyan open? Monday to Saturday, 09:30am – 8:30pm. Closed on Sundays.
Do I need to book in advance? We’re not actually sure you can. We’ve always just rocked up and been seated, though do be aware that it gets busy between midday and 1pm on weekdays.
How much should I expect to spend? Extremely reasonable. Dishes typically clock in at around THB 150. Expect to spend around ฿600 per person for a generous meal and a beer or two.
Closest BTS/MRT? The closest BTS station is Victory Monument. From there, a taxi (around THB 60) or bus #14 is needed. Alternatively, MRT Bang Phlat is about 1.5km away, and MRT Bang O is 2km away.
Ideal for innovative wood-fire cooking in the heart of the hip part of Chinatown…
In a classic shophouse down Trok Panjit, one of the atmospheric alleyways of thriving Soi Nana in Yaowarat, Choen is a relative Bangkok newcomer that’s making serious waves (hmmm, perhaps not the right element here) with its singular focus on live-fire cooking. The name ‘Choen’ is derived from ‘blazing fire’ – a fitting moniker for a concept built around cooking food over charcoal flames.
Opened in December 2023, this intimate 10-seat restaurant is the creation of Chef Geravich ‘Mew’ Mesaengrilverakul, who previously worked at Nahm in its glory days under David Thompson, and as one of the founding members of Charmgang (also on this list).
His concept – ‘Contemporary Cuisine from Fire x Wood’ – might read like a weird modern classical playlist on TIDAL, but there’s nothing pretentious in chef Mew’s masterful control of of the grill. Clearly inspired by Etxebarri, he manages to coax a similar nuance (no higher compliment) in both flavour and texture from the smoke and flame. The main man even crisps up his pork belly – from start to finish – on the barbecue. It’s pure wizardry, and we’re not sure we’ve seen it done so well, so precision-perfectly, anywhere else on the planet.
There’s nothing brutish about the application of smoke at Choen. Nothing acrid or amaroidal. That’s all down to the use of five different types of wood in the cooking process, including eucalyptus, longan, and lychee, each imparting specific aromatic qualities to different dishes. Traditional Thai cooking equipment, including grills, smokers, and taos (traditional bucket-like clay burners), add further judicious complexity. It’s all admirably thought out and deliberate – an interesting counterpoint to the unpredictability of the medium.
The seasonal tasting menu changes regularly, showcasing Chef Mew’s skill at balancing traditional flavours with refined presentation. Signature dishes include the giant river prawn curry with coconut buds, flambadou river prawn and shampoo ginger salad, and smoked beef cheek with galangal and pickled lotus root. Even desserts receive the fire treatment, with the coconut ice cream featuring burning longan wood to add smoky notes, and a little crispy pork crackling for a little showmanship. That dessert is mind-blowingly good.
The setting itself is a study in contrasts, with the historic shophouse dramatically transformed into a modern, concrete-clad space within. Sometimes, when flames are licking high and there’s sweet smoke wafting about, you don’t want any more visual distraction.
In many ways, Choen defines what’s best about Bangkok’s contemporary dining scene; modern and forward-thinking, sure, but also rooted in traditional, age-old techniques, with something of the elemental thrown in for good measure. It’s our favourite recent opening in the city, make no mistake.
When is Choen open? Open for dinner Wednesday to Sunday, 7pm to 10pm. Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Do I need to book in advance? Essential. Given the intimate setting and tasting menu format, reservations are a must.
How much should I expect to spend? The 9-course tasting menu is priced at ฿3500 (around £80).
Closest BTS/MRT? MRT Wat Mangkon is the nearest station, and is just a 5 minute walk from the restaurant.
Ideal for precise, Kingdom-spanning plates from one of Thailand’s most exciting young chefs…
Winner of Tatler Best New Restaurant In Asia in 2024, Khaan represents the next step in chef Sujira ‘Aom’ Pongmorn’s impressively precocious culinary journey. Having earned her stripes (or should we say stars) with a Michelin-starred tenure at Saawaan, the Young Michelin Chef 2021 winner has created something rather special here: a Thai fine dining restaurant that feels both fresh and worthy of a special occasion.
While new Thai tasting menus that ‘elevate’ the world’s most satisfying street food dishes into fiddly little bites are ten-a-penny in Bangkok these days, Khaan is in a different class to the vast majority of them. There’s real skill and craft emanating from the glass-panelled kitchen, visible as you pitch up Soi Som Khit, a young team working away with both precision and beaming smiles. It looks like an agreeable place to work, which is always reassuring when you’re settling in for the evening.
The name ‘Khaan’ – meaning both ‘tiger’ and ‘proclaim’ in Thai – feels apt for a restaurant that roars with such confident delivery. In a sumptuous, red velvet-clad room, Chef Aom serves an 11-course tasting menu that changes regularly, but rather than focusing on one region, each dish aims to celebrate a different element of Thailand’s rich culinary diversity. It’s ambitious, but it pays off.
This is immediately apparent in the opening quartet of snacks that traverse the country, with South, Central Plains, North and East all represented. Though dainty, they pack a proper punch, particularly the genius crab and egg yolk curry that arrives as a single spoonable bite in an egg shell – assertive with chilli heat yet tempered by its decadence. It’s a fine way to start any meal.
Considering the variety of techniques and ingredients that span from northeast to deep south, the menu maintains admirable cohesion despite its geographical breadth – a testament to chef Aom’s delicate touch.
The menu progresses thoughtfully, with an Andaman tiger prawn with homemade pickled lime and tomalley cracker setting the tone early. Designed to reflect familiar tom yam flavours in an interesting way (mission accomplished), it gives way to the meal’s highlight – rice paddy crab with sticky rice. Peel back the grilled banana leaf to reveal smoky rice within, perfect for swiping through a relish of paddy crab presented in its tiny shell. It’s a rich, luxurious, complex affair where rice somehow still manages to be the star of the show, just as it should be.
The tom kha with Barron point and Surat Thani oysters masterfully balances coconut cream’s (and the oyster’s) inherent richness with sharp, aromatic elements, whilst the headlining Khao Yai duck with Paka-Um-Pun rice and five spice curry arrives dexterously seasoned, its rectangle of blushing meat sporting perfectly lacquered skin. A sausage of the duck’s offal underscores chef Aom’s no-waste philosophy. It’s a triumph.
Indeed, sustainability and zero-waste practices are central here (keep an eye out for Plearn, Chef Aom’s casual eatery opening soon which will repurpose surplus ingredients from Khaan). In a neat bit of cyclical theatre, the petit fours revisit the opening snacks in another country-spanning quartet, again highlighting Thailand’s distinct, diverse (and delicious) regionality. It’s a difficult balance to strike, but one that’s achieved with real panache here.
For those keen to forgo any autonomy and just enough the ride, the thoughtfully curated wine pairings (available in both four and six-glass options) and the unique tea pairing programme offer well-judged accompaniments to this culinary sashay across the Kingdom.
When is Khaan open? Khaan is open exclusively for dinner service, from 5pm onwards, every day except Monday, when it’s closed.
Do I need to book in advance? Booking in advance is recommended.
How much should I expect to spend? The 11-course tasting menu is priced at ฿3,850 (around £85).
Closest BTS/MRT? Phloen Chit BTS is a short walk away.
Ideal for whole roast suckling pig, designed for sharing…
Right in the heart of Chinatown, just off Yarowat Road, is an old school institution that’s stood here for more than a century…
…I mean, there are probably hundreds of places that could follow-up that introductory sentence and feel perfectly at home doing so, such is the history and culinary clout of Bangkok’s most food-focused neighbourhood.
Not all of those century’s old institutions in Bangkok’s Chinatown are doing quite such an iconic, photogenic, banquet-worthy dish as Tang Jai Yoo, though. Specialising in Teochow cuisine and famed, more specifically, for its suckling pig, this is a dish (and restaurant) that it’s almost criminal not to try when visiting Yarowat. The fact it deserves a party of six to take it down shouldn’t be considered an obstacle; it’s a sociable place on the streets here, so crack open a beer, make some friends, and bring them along for the ride.
Or, you could simply tackle the whole piglet – splayed open, bronzed and burnished – solo, and then die happy. Either way, it’s one of Bangkok’s must-try dishes, and has a real sense of ceremony to it.
Once ordered (in the past a pre-order was necessary, but no longer), a suckling pig – splayed on a spit – is brought from the kitchen and out to the front of the restaurant, where the charcoal is already burning in a drum. A chef spins the spit frantically over raging hot charcoal, brushing it with oil using what looks like a rag on a stick. Even if you don’t eat here, it’s quite the spectacle to watch as it progressively crisps and crackles.
It’s then brought back inside palanquin-style to audible gasps from the dining room – each and every time. A skilled chef then proceeds to deftly remove the crackled skin with a cleaver before portioning it into bite sized pieces and adding it back onto the pig, like a comprehensive, successful skin graft. It’s all very theatrical and just a little bit macabre; we love it.
By Thiradech via CanvaBy thaloengsak via Canva
The whole pig is then placed in the centre of circular banqueting tables, aboard a lazy susan alongside pancakes, cucumber, green onions and hoisin sauce, the harsh lighting of the dining room only serving to illuminate the main event and hammer home that this is an old school sort of place.
The idea is to wrap only the crisp skin and its suggested adornments in the pancakes. Once those pancakes have been eagerly dispensed with and the skin finished, the suckling pig is then taken back to the kitchen, where the flesh is chopped up into cubes and stir fried with chilli and garlic.
What a glorious affair this all is, but there’s plenty of other bits on the menu to get excited about too, including oyster omelette (arguably better than that version), black olive fried rice, deep-fried mantis shrimp and an intriguing selection of complex, reviving soups. Singhas and whisky flow freely, as if the deal needed anymore sealing.
Closest BTS/MRT? Tang Jai Yoo is a 3 minute walk from Wat Mangkon MRT.
When is Tang Jai Yoo open? Tang Jai Yoo is open from 11am to 2pm for lunch, and 4:30pm to 10pm for dinner.
Do I need to book in advance? You can make a reservation over the phone only, which requires Thai or Chinese to be spoken. Alternatively, you can pitch up and still get a table – the restaurant has rows of chairs set up outside for customers waiting their turn. Those tables, despite the convivial nature of the place, get turned fast.
How much should I expect to spend? Right now, the whole suckling pig and its accouterments is ฿2500 (just north of £50). It’s well worth the money.
Ideal for an ultra-modern Thai dining experience anchored in tradition and family…
Close to the Rajamangala National Stadium in Bang Kapi, Baan Tepa is one of Bangkok’s most exciting – yet also comforting, soul-nourishing – restaurants. We say restaurant, but Baan Tepa is billed as a ‘culinary space’, home to a chef’s table, a larger dining room overlooked by an open kitchen, a tea experience, and an organic culinary garden of which much of the 9 course tasting menu is built around (ask for a tour; it’s a fascinating living library of herbs, flowers and spices).
Enough of the fluff. Under the pioneering stewardship of chef Chudaree “Tam” Debhakam, the world’s first Thai female chef to be awarded two Michelin Stars and named Asia’s Best Female Chef 2025, the menu at Baan Tepa is a celebration of organic, small batch Thai producers and the country’s rich biodiversity, an ethos inspired by chef Tam’s time spent at the legendary Blue Hill at Stone Barns.
Expect highly intricate but ultimately satisfying dishes, each telling a story of chef Tam’s extensive travels across Thailand and beyond. Highlights of our recent meal here included a reimagining of classic Issan chicken liver skewers and jaew, here presented as a smooth parfait but still boasting the heady, earthy flavours of white pepper, garlic and coriander root that makes up the traditional marinade. Alongside, an incredible sourdough brioche whose starter is made from wild rice was complex and crisp. Gorgeous.
Later on, a show-stealer; the signature ‘anatomy of a river prawn’ featuring a whopper sourced from Ayutthaya and its smoked head juices, which was brought back to the street with possibly the best nahm jim seafood we’ve ever encountered. It’s this anchoring of ultra-modern technique with recognisable, faithfully delivered elements that makes Baan Tepa so captivating.
As with several of the restaurants on our list, there’s a personal connection to the space, too; chef Tam’s family grew up here, with the space owned by Chef Tam’s grandmother, Lady Suwaree Debhakam. The space still retains many of its original features, and its warming, welcoming soul. When combined with some of the most innovative expressions of Thai food you’ll find anywhere on the planet, it’s a highly alluring experience.
When is Baan Tepa open? Baan Tepa’s tasting menu experience is dinner only, available from Wednesday to Sunday in two sittings each evening, one at 6pm to 9:30pm, and one at 7pm to 10:30pm.
Do I need to book in advance? You’ll likely need to book at least two weeks in advance.
How much should I expect to spend? A sprawling 7 course affair is ฿7300 (£170). This price is exclusive of service and VAT. You’ll have to pay for the tasting menu in advance, by way of a deposit.
Closest BTS/MRT? There are no BTS or underground stops close to Baan Tepa. Best get a taxi to this one!
Opposite Democracy Monument, step into the gently faded grandeur of Methavalai Sorndaeng and you’ll find the essence of traditional Thai fine dining celebrated with a grandiosity reminiscent of the nation’s royal heritage.
An iconic restaurant if ever there was one, and now in its seventh decade, the dishes here are delicately presented but full of flavour, with the coconut curries particularly well balanced. Despite its luxurious ties to regal splendour and sophistication, Methavalai Sorndaeng offers an accessible dining experience.
Though once Michelin-starred (they inexplicably lost theirs in the 2024 edition of the guide) The prices are surprisingly modest, with most main courses not exceeding 500 THB (approximately £12), and a selection of others priced even more kindly. The wine is presented with an easy-going charm – a straightforward choice between red or white, always served by the glass – underscoring the exceptional value. The nightly live 80s Thai music seals the deal.
When is Methavalai Sorndaeng open? Methavalai Sorndaeng is open every day from 10:30am to 10pm.
Do I need to book in advance? Though the restaurant can usually squeeze you in, it’s wise to book a day in advance for this one.
How much should I expect to spend? You can eat very well here and drink very merrily, ordering from the a la carte menu, for around ฿3500 (£75) for two people.
Closest BTS/MRT? Sam Yot MRT is a 15 minute walk from the restaurant. Alternatively, owing to the restaurant’s position close to the Chao Phraya river and canals (khlongs), you can shimmy up to the restaurant via Bangkok’s waterways. The closest canal stop is Panfa Leelard Pier. The closest ferry terminal (along the Chao Phraya) is Phra Arthit.
Ideal for soigné Southern Thai cooking that doesn’t hold back…
The impossible-to-book restaurants keep on coming, but Sorn is probably – still – the most coveted table in town. Chef Supaksorn Jongsiri’s culinary love letter to the farmers, fishermen and producers of Southern Thailand was the first Thai restaurant in the world to win 3 Michelin stars in 2024 (retaining it for the 2026 edition of the guide), but that doesn’t mean you’ll find flavours tempered to suit an international clientele.
Instead, ingredients and spice levels remain resolutely ‘Southern’ to their soul, with unfiltered fish sauce, premium quality shrimp paste and, yes, mouse-shit loads of chilli all present and correct on the expansive tasting menu.
Though it’s a no-choice tasting menu, the dishes do evolve both with the seasons and following the team’s research trips to the South. The latest menu sees several new dishes added since the two-star days, all representing refinements that no doubt helped push the restaurant into three-star territory: an opening gambit of abalone and young mangosteen soup that’s so much more than its prosaic description; an extravagant crispy omelette – all puffed up and lacy like an Elizabethan ruff – that’s filled with poached lobster; and cockles grilled in the golae style were three recent highlights.
Fear not; the signature ‘gems on a stick’ is still here and better than ever, and still served with its accompanying complex soup of freshly pressed coconut milk and melinjo leaves and crab oil. And there’s still an exquisite curry and the flakiest of roti, all enjoyed in a sprawling, messy family style spread that feels almost subversive at this level. Yep, this latest iteration of Sorn is looking even better (and certainly more luxurious) than the last – and that’s saying something!
For those keen to try the team’s cooking at a fraction of the price, chef Supaksorn’s more casual Southern Thai eatery Baan Ice has several outposts across the city, and is ace.
When is Sorn open? Sorn is open for dinner only every day except Saturday, with service starting at 6pm.
Do I need to book in advance? At Sorn, reservations can be made a month in advance as announced on our social media platforms. Getting a table requires precision planning and setting your alarm. Check their socials for more information.
How much should I expect to spend? The full tasting menu is currently priced at ฿7200 (£162), tax and service excluded. With the third star recently dropping, we expect prices to rise somewhat in the near future.
Closest BTS/MRT? Phrom Phong BTS is a 15 minute walk from Sorn.
Ideal for a faithful Roman trattoria experience in the heart of Bangkok’s business district…
Of course, modern day Bangkok’s culinary scene is also home to some of the region’s best international restaurants, and if you’re after Italian food in the Thai capital, then you should look no further than Appia.
Standing as a tribute to the authentic Roman trattoria experience, since opening in 2013 on the bustling Sukhumvit Soi 31 (where you’ll find a couple of the other restaurants on our list, incidentally), this heartfelt homage to Rome has been packed out every night of the week, with diners seeking solace in the iconic Big Four pasta dishes that are synonymous with the Eternal City, as well as the everpresent porchetta that turns slowly on a spit in the window, beckoning diners inside. You’ll find us thoroughly beckoned at the counter more often than we’re proud to admit.
When is Appia open? Appia is open everyday, for lunch and dinner, with the restaurant open all day on Saturdays and Sundays.
Do I need to book in advance? Booking in advance is highly recommended, which can be done over phone, email or Line.
How much should I expect to spend? A bowl of pasta at Appia is ฿450 (£10), a glass of house wine is around ฿300 (£6.50).
Closest BTS/MRT? Phrom Phong BTS is a 15 minute walk from Sorn.
Ideal for one of Bangkok’s most acclaimed dim sum lunches…
Located in the Eastin Grand Hotel Sathorn Bangkok (and with two other outposts in the city), Chef Man is one of the city’s most popular joints for fans of the food of Southern China.
Master Chef Wai Yin Man, a Hong Kong native, brings his expertise and passion for Cantonese cuisine to the forefront here, his meticulous Peking duck preparation the restaurant’s obvious centrepiece (more than 30’000 have been served across the city since Chef Man pitched up in 2011) but certainly not the only reason you should head here.
For us, the dim sum at Chef Man is the real highlight. Served from 11am every day, this is our favourite brunch spot in Bangkok. The ha kao shrimp dumplings are plump and squeaky fresh, and the signature yam cake – appearing looking a little like a deep-fried coronavirus – reveals an oozing salted egg yolk centre. It’s a real indulgence, with the frenetic energy of the broad open kitchen only adding to the fun. An extensive tea selection is also available.
Arguably the city’s most popular dim sum spot, you’ll want to book well in advance for this one.
For reservations, call Chef Man (the restaurant, not the actual fella) on 02 212 3789, 02 212 3741 or email [email protected]
When is Chef Man open? Chef Man is open everyday for lunch and dinner, from 11am to 2:30pm, and 6pm to 10pm, respectively.
Do I need to book in advance? Reservations a few days in advance are necessary, which can be made via phone or email.
How much should I expect to spend? A dim sum feast for two, with tea, will set you back around ฿1000 (£22) per person.
Closest BTS/MRT? Surasak BTS is just a 2 minute walk from the restaurant.
Ojo is the crowning jewel of Bangkok’s tallest skyscraper, the King Power Mahanakhon, a Mexican restaurant that somehow lives up to its lofty billing with a fully-flavoured, tastefully opulent dining experience. Helmed by chef Francisco Paco Ruano from the acclaimed Restaurante Alcalde in Guadalajara, the restaurant takes its name from the word ‘eye’ in Spanish, and it’s an apt epithet, seeing as the dining room casts its gaze over Bangkok so seductively.
Drag your eyes away from the skyline and into the dining room, which straddles a real sense of glam with something more tastefully refined; the work of designer Ou Baholyodhin, whose sense of suave and drip seemingly knows no bounds. On the plate, things are equally beautiful, with dishes clearly crafted to taste as good as they look. All of this adds up to a sense of narrative and unity that manages to be totally satisfying rather than shallow. At 76 floors up, you’d certainly hope it wouldn’t be the latter.
When is Ojo open? Ojo is open everyday for lunch and dinner, from 11:30am to 2:30pm, and 5:30pm to 11:30pm, respectively. The sunset slot, around 6pm onwards, is highly recommended!
Do I need to book in advance? Reservations can usually be made on the day.
How much should I expect to spend? Ojo isn’t cheap, with starters between ฿500 (£11) and ฿1000 (£22), and main courses in the region of ฿2000 (£43). Wine is equally lofty.
Closest BTS/MRT? Chong Nonsi BTS is just a 2 minute walk from the restaurant.
Ideal for a bookish, beautifully rendered spread from ‘the godfather of Thai food’…
Inspired by the Thai cookbook authors of the 1940s and 1950s, Aksorn takes pride both in its location on Charoenkrung Road, an area that once buzzed with retail and entertainment and is now home to some of the best restaurants in Bangkok, and in its setting, once a former bookshop.
The restaurant’s menu is a celebration of Thai culture and heritage, offering a regularly changing, single-set selection of dishes that reflect the remarkable transition from a rich Siamese past to modern Thailand.
David Thompson, considered by many as the world’s leading authority on Thai cuisine, is at the stoves here (quite literally, on the night we visited last year), drawing inspiration from historical archives and his profound expertise for a menu that offers both comfort and a few surprises. See; the first bite of sardines on toast; heaving with white pepper and adorned with gossamer thin slices of shallot and coriander leaves, it seems to bridge the city and the chef’s disparate elements poetically.
There are more recognisably Thai dishes, too. Expect expertly conceived, highly-seasoned curries that sing with freshly squeezed coconut cream and Thai aromatics at their peak, as well as sweet and salty desserts that are surely some of the very best in town. Thompson is known for his sweet tooth, and this is just the place to indulge in the glorious marriage and sweet and savoury that Thai food is so celebrated for. Pair it all with a chilled, slightly sweet (of course) Australian Riesling, and you’ve got yourself one of the most well-rounded spreads in the city.
When is Aksorn open? Aksorn is open everyday for dinner, from 6pm to 9:30pm.
Do I need to book in advance? Reservations can usually be made on the day, though you’ll want to book in advance for the weekend.
How much should I expect to spend? The set menu at Aksorn is currently priced at ฿4150 (£97) per person.
Closest BTS/MRT? Saphan Taksin BTS is a 10 minute walk from the restaurant.
Ideal for Thai drinking food and creative cocktails…
Err is the brainchild of the dynamic chef duo Duangporn ‘Bo’ Songvisava and her Australian-born husband Dylan Jones. Both chefs are renowned for their commitment to preserving Thai food heritage, with the pair’s globally renowned restaurant Bo.lan considered one of the world’s top Thai restaurants in its pomp.
The couple bring their expertise to Err in Thonglor, focusing on Thai drinking food classics and traditional dishes with a twist. The deep-fried whole chicken skin is unmissable, arriving still fully formed and needing nothing more than a little house sriracha sauce for dipping. It’s one for the ‘gram, sure, but it’s also bloody delicious.
Even more lip-smackingly good with a cold one is Err’s take on fermented pork, neam. A Northern Thai classic, here sticky rice-cured pork arrives wrapped around skewers, its gnarly edges grill-marked and caramelised, its body juicy, rich and full of savour. It’s a truly glorious take on one of our favourite foods in the world.
Of course, Thai drinking food needs drinks, and some serious thought has gone into Err’s. Go for The Laabtini, a unique cocktail blending tequila with laab spices. Created by the team’s no-waste cocktail bar Wasteland, it’s already a classic.
When is Err open? Err is open 11am until late On Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays, and 5pm until late on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. The restaurant is closed on Wednesdays.
Do I need to book in advance? Err is walk-in only.
How much should I expect to spend? The majority of snacks and dishes here are priced at around ฿250 (£5.50).
Closest BTS/MRT? Thonglor BTS is a 5 minute walk from Err.
Garima Arora, the Mumbai-born culinary genius behind Gaa, is the first Indian female chef to be awarded a Michelin star, with a historic second following in late 2024.
Having already honed her skills at Copenhagen’s world famous Noma, in 2015 she moved to Bangkok to work as a sous chef at Gaggan, the highly creative Indian restaurant run by Gaggan Anand that has topped the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list several times, its most recent iteration once again occupying the number one spot for a record fifth time last year (it’s not down the third, but who’s counting?).
With the blessing of the big man, Arora struck out on her own, opening Gaa in Bangkok in 2017, with the aim of blending ingredients and cooking sensibilities from the Indian subcontinent with the odd Thai flourish, reflecting her diverse culinary experiences to dramatic, alluring effect.
Having recently moved to a new location close to BTS Thonglor and just round the corner from the aforementioned Err, the restaurant is going from strength to strength, capped off by that second Michelin star in the 2024 Guide. We can’t wait to see where they go next.
Ideal for a thoughtful, forward-thinking reflection of Bangkok’s Chinatown…
Standing slap bang in the middle of Bangkok’s Chinatown, Potong pays homage to the city’s rich tapestry of Thai-Chinese heritage through its innovative cuisine. This avant-garde restaurant is the work of Chef Pam, named the World’s Best Female Chef last year, who has skillfully woven her family’s century-old recipes with a modern twist, creating an unforgettable gastronomic journey.
The ambiance of Potong is a seamless blend of the past and present, with decor that reflects the elegance of Shanghai in the 1920s, yet pulses with the contemporary beat of Bangkok. It’s a match made in heaven.
Exciting news for 2026: Chef Pam has now opened Khao San Sek. This new venture celebrates the five pillars of Thai cuisine – rice, chili, coconut, fish sauce, and palm sugar – reimagining these foundational ingredients with her signature precision. Following the success of her Michelin-starred POTONG, Chef Pam’s latest restaurant promises a fresh perspective on Thai culinary heritage.
When is Potong open? Potong is open Thursday to Monday, for dinner service only, 4pm to 11pm.
Do I need to book in advance? You will need to book a table for Potong, via Chope, several months in advance.
How much should I expect to spend? Potong’s new 5 senses, 5 elements ‘revolution’ tasting menu is priced at ฿6300 (£150) per person.
Closest BTS/MRT? Wat Mangkon MRT is a 5 minute walk from Potong.
Ideal for elite soba noodles you’ll have to set your alarm for…
You better set your alarm bright and early if you want to sample a bowl of some of Bangkok’s best soba noodles. Not because No Name Noodle – suitably mysterious in its moniker – opens early doors, but because you have to pre-book your bowl (one of only 35 made each day) in a kind of Glastonbury T-day scramble for one of seven stools and a satisfied slurp. Only furthering that comparison, it happens to be 9am every Sunday that the chaos unfolds online.
It’s well worth hammering that F5 button; chef Shinichiro Kondo is a master of his craft, with every bowl given immaculate care and attention, a glorious blend of innovation (there’s some sous vide work here) and respect for tradition.
The menu has expanded a little since the early days, though the spirit remains the same. Alongside the original Tokusei Shio Soba and Kombusui Tsuke Soba, there are now lunch sets and a signature Matsuri Gozen that lets you sample both of the house’s main broths in one sitting – you’ll want to do that, as it’s impossible to pick a favourite between them, both boasting jaw dropping depth and precision.
The seasonal menu rotates every few months, with chef Shin using it as a canvas for ingredients at their peak. Dishes are crafted with over 30 ingredients, and you can genuinely taste that love and attention in the final product.
Regardless of which bowl you go for, the soba noodles are the star of the show here, a labour of love that boast just the right amount of bounce, chew and earthy grounding. There are fewer more satisfying bowls in a city full of them.
When is No Name Noodle open? Wednesday to Sunday, 11am to 4:30pm. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
Do I need to book in advance? Oh yes, and it’s one hell of a process.
How much should I expect to spend? Lunch sets are priced from ฿980 to ฿1,280 (£21 to £28), or from ฿680 (£15) a la carte.
Closest BTS/MRT? Phrom Phong BTS is a 20 minute walk away.
Ideal for a modern curry and rice restaurant that’s really so much more than that…
Bangkok’s historic Talat Noi neighbourhood, sitting pretty on the outskirts of the city’s Chinatown, is one of the most thrusting in the city, where seemingly not a day goes by without a new cocktail bar opening or an art installation popping up.
Charmgang, now in its seventh year, exemplifies this new sense of cool in the area, a restaurant that’s both traditional and forward-thinking in its approach, and one of, quite simply, the best places to eat in Bangkok.
Conceived by a trio of ultra-ambitious chefs – Geravich ‘Mew’ Mesaengnilverakul, Aruss ‘Jai’ Lerlerstkull, and Atcharaporn ‘Aew’ Kiatthanawat – who met at world renowned Nahm, the restaurant is nominally a ‘curry shop’, and true to this billing, the curries here are gorgeous, a skilful blend of Thai culinary tradition and the occasional modern technique, all to be enjoyed in a tastefully furnished, artistically minded dining room that shares its energy with the open kitchen which overlooks it.
Yep, you’ll hear the clatter of the wok and the pok-pok of the pestle and mortar while you eat, the perfect seasoning for a graceful, elegant spread. Do not miss the beef cheek panang curry, a celebration of fresh coconut milk as much as it is of chilli and perfectly braised, surrendering beef. Desserts are fabulous, too, so do try to save room.
The team’s success with Charmgang led to the late 2023 opening of sister restaurant Charmkrung just up the road. Taking over the top floor of a nondescript office building (the night-time views of twinkling Bangkok on high are stirring), this natural wine bar and small plates restaurant sees chef Jai eschewing the by-the-book Thai cooking he champions so brilliantly at Charmgang for a more playful approach, focusing on small bites and medium-sized mains that riff on aaharn kap klaem (Thai drinking foods). As the chef himself puts the difference between his two restaurants; Charmkrung “goes with drinks,” Charmgang “goes with rice”.
Highlights on the menu include Jai’s take on kanom krok, here filled with a silky chicken liver pâté and topped with pomegranate seeds and a little wedge of boiled egg, and an exquisitely balanced smoked and pickled tomato salad, adorned with satisfyingly complete batons of crab leg and a load of crunchy stuff.
The fish curry with a pleasing slab of pomfret is served with raisin-studded roti, a nod to the chef’s Southern Thai heritage, while the deceptively simple but flavour-packed grilled cabbage follows a recipe taken from his school canteen. All are matched brilliantly with an inspired drink list, ranging from cocktails that incorporate Chinese herbs and spices to funky natural wines from small-scale labels that are hard to find elsewhere in Bangkok.
The space is playful and fun, with both tables and bar counters making the restaurant equally suited to large groups, dinner dates and solo diners perched at the counter watching the kitchen at work. A refreshingly undogmatic wine list completes the package, mixing both traditional styles and regions with more progressive and experimental wines, while always keeping a keen eye on the wines’ ability to match the complexity of contemporary Thai cuisine.
Three years on from opening, and it’s clear Charmkrung is another winner from a team who have an inimitable grasp of what Bangkokians want from a modern Thai restaurant. Praise the lord, then, that the prolific team opened a third restaurant late last year, this time named Charmkok. We can’t wait to check it out!
When are Charmgang and Charmkrung open? Charmgang is open daily for dinner, from 6pm to 10:30pm. It opens for lunch, too, on Saturdays and Sundays. Charmkrung is open from 6pm to midnight daily. Do be aware that the kitchen closes at 11pm.
Do I need to book in advance? Reservations for Charmgang are highly recommended, and usually required for a week or two in advance. Charmkrung is a more sprawling, casual space, and bookings are less essential but certainly still recommended.
How much should I expect to spend? A full spread of curries, soups, salads, relishes and the rest at Charmgang will set you back around ฿3000 (£65), before booze is added. At Charmkrung, small plates range from ฿90-290 (£2-6.50), with larger dishes between ฿190-720 (£4-16). Genuinely interesting glasses of wine are available from around ฿300.
Closest BTS/MRT? Hua Lamphong MRT is a 10 minute walk away from both. It’s just a couple of minutes walk between Charmgang and Charmkrung if you fancy tackling both in one indulgent night.
Ideal for perfectly poised marriage of Mexican-Indian cuisine from one of the world’s most recognisable chefs…
Even those not conversant in Bangkok’s culinary landscape might recognise chef Gaggan Anand, perhaps having seen him on Chef’s Table, or on a a TikTok reel traversing Bangkok via tuk tuk with Ed Sheeran or, you know, having read the entry on Gaa just a few paragraphs previously.
At Ms. Maria and Mr. Singh’s, chef Anand tells the culinary story of a ‘’love affair between a Mexican hometown girl and an Indian city boy’’ via a perfectly poised marriage of Mexican-Indian cuisine that the restaurant has dubbed ‘fantasy cuisine’, realised here by the two head chefs Hernán Crispín Villalva and Roshan Kumar. Trust us on this one; it works.
Here, diners can savour Anand’s signature crab curry, which is now ingeniously paired with Goan poee bread, ideal for pulling through the intricate sauce. The menu also features keema paneer quesadillas, bursting with the robust taste of mutton and toasted spices, followed by pork vindaloo tacos accompanied by a tart pineapple salsa, striking an intoxicating yet strangely comforting balance of flavour and texture.
Both are part of the latest tasting menu, offered at an attractive price of 6000 THB (£130) for two, and served in the fresh setting of the second floor of the eponymous Gaggan Anand restaurant. The atmosphere is laid-back and whimsical, with the interior design drawing inspiration from both Oaxaca and Jodhpur, creating a lively and colourful ambiance.
Echoing this playful spirit, guests are greeted by a bright neon sign as they step into the restaurant, boldly stating that “love should never be mild.” The dishes served here not only match this bold statement but also reflect Chef Anand’s continued passion for creating food that’s as spirited and joyous as ever.
And this just in; Ms Maria & Mr Singh placed 27th on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026, comfortably their highest ever showing and a startling leap for a restaurant whose whole concept is based on a frivolous flight of fancy. That it’s now ranked alongside the continent’s most serious fine dining establishments is one of the more heartening results on this most recent edition of the list.
When is Ms Maria and Mr Singh open? Ms Maria and Mr Singh is closed on Mondays, and open for just dinner (6pm to 11pm) from Tuesday to Fridays. The restaurant also opens for lunch at the weekend.
Do I need to book in advance? Reservations are highly recommended, and usually required for a week or two in advance.
How much should I expect to spend? The tasting menu for two here is priced at ฿6000 (£130)
Closest BTS/MRT? Phrom Phong BTS is a 20 minute walk away.
Inspired by Japanese izakaya style dining, Aunglo by Yangrank is a paean to the grill (‘aunglo’ is a type of charcoal grill in Thai), expressed via a procession of blistered and burnished sticks of seafood, meat and root vegetable that are as delicious as any aunty’s moo ping you’ll find outside any BTS station. And that’s the highest praise we could bestow on a place…
The counter bar here faces an open kitchen where chefs glaze and rotate a series of skewers, all whilst maintaining a decent side of conversation and good cheer, the intermittent licking of flames the perfect clarion call that the glaze is doing its job. Not exactly harming things in the flavour department, that glaze is often a thick, reduced coconut curry, a massaman-coated, barbecued squash a delicious case in point that demands re-upping several times.
Sure, you’ll have to factor in leaving absolutely humming of smoke, but it’s well worth it for the delicate kiss of charcoal that every dish at Aunglo by Yangrak has received, even the desserts.
When is Aunglo by Yangrak open? Aunglo by Yangrak is closed on Tuesdays, and open every other day for both lunch and dinner.
Do I need to book in advance? You can book a spot via direct message on their Instagram, but it’s not often full.
How much should I expect to spend? The big feast of skewers, sides and beers for two won’t top ฿3000 (£65)
Closest BTS/MRT? Saint Louis BTS is a 10 minute walk from Aunglo by Yangrak.
Ideal for neo-Indian fine dining with genuine green credentials…
Billed as Thailand’s first urban farm and zero-waste restaurant (a bold claim that’s a little tough to verify, perhaps), neo-Indian fine dining restaurant Haoma certainly wears its sustainability chops proudly on its sleeve, with a biophilic dining room that merges the outdoors and in succinctly, and a tasting menu built around on-site hydroponically grown produce (you’ll get a tour of the fish ponds and gardens when you arrive) and organic ingredients sourced from their sister farm in Chiang Mai.
It’s an approach where each discipline of the restaurant – the food, winelist, ambience and hospitality – feeds into the next, creating a homogeneous, self-sustaining feel that you can’t help but admire. Both a Michelin star and Michelin green star for sustainability have followed.
That’s not to say that this is purely branding; Chef Deepanker Khosla certainly puts his money where his mouth is. Following a hugely successful, altruistic pandemic project called the #NoOneHungry campaign that has given more than 500’000 meals to those most in need in Bangkok, the chef has now opened Bangkok’s first permanent soup kitchen. Legend.
On the menu back at Haoma, just two choices; a tasting menu of meat and seafood or a vegetarian version, and 15 courses or 11. In the lean, green spirit of the place (smells like green spirit?), we went for the shorter vegetarian option at Haoma, but certainly didn’t feel short changed. This is a precision procession of loosely Indian, pretty-as-a-picture plates that felt both clean and indulgent, avant garde but anchored, the storytelling behind each dish helped along by a series of postcards and artefacts that rest on your table as you eat.
At 3500 THB (around £75) for the ten courser, Haoma also represents an absolute steal for a restaurant that’s surely due a second star in the coming years.
When is Haoma open? Haoma is closed on Mondays, and open for dinner (5:30pm to 11pm) Tuesdays to Fridays. At the weekend, it’s open for lunch too, from midday to 2pm.
Do I need to book in advance? You can usually book a table at Haoma the day before.
How much should I expect to spend? The Chefs Tasting menu of 10 courses is currently priced at ฿5500 (£130).
Closest BTS/MRT? Asok BTS and Sukhumvit MRT are a 15 minute walk from Haoma.
Ideal for a meticulous meeting of the Med and the Chao Phraya…
When it was announced that a globally celebrated chef would open a fancy French restaurant in a 5 star hotel on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok’s culinary cognoscenti could have been forgiven for wondering if another such place was really necessary.
But such is the quality of Côte by Mauro Colagreco, and the unique skills of head chef Davide Garavaglia, that those doubts died down almost as soon as the restaurant had finished its first service, with the spot now arguably the city’s destination fine-dining restaurant for those not in the mood for Thai (fools).
Of course, the pedigree here is undeniable. Mauro Colagreco, whose illustrious career’s highlight is the three Michelin-starred Mirazur on the French Riviera, has brought a slice of the Mediterranean to Bangkok, with a tasting menu that imbues traditional French technique with the odd Thai flourish to great effect. Here, it’s a nine course tasting menu (there’s also a shorter lunch affair) which see the diner put complete trust in the chef.
Whilst we wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise here, the restaurant has a wicked way with seafood, a dish of local sea urchin and textures of cauliflower landing as one of the best dishes we’ve enjoyed in the city, a perfect marriage of sense of place and the chef’s own idiosyncrasies. The panoramic river views certainly do no harm.
In the 2025 Michelin Guide for Thailand announcement, the consistency and quality of Côte was further underscored by Michelin’s awarding of a second star. Whilst we hate to be ‘that guy’, a third feels kind of inevitable at this stage.
When is Côte open? Côte is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and open for both lunch and dinner Wednesday through Sunday.
Do I need to book in advance? You can usually book a table at Côte the day before.
How much should I expect to spend? The full nine course tasting menu is currently priced at ฿7800 (£184). The shorter four course lunch menu is ฿3300 (£78).
Closest BTS/MRT? Saphan Taksin BTS is a 15 minute walk away.
Ideal for Thai comfort food given a respectful, ridiculously delicious reinvention…
The dynamic chef duo Napol ‘Joe’ Jantraget and Saki Hoshino are responsible for some of Bangkok’s most genuinely enjoyable upscale restaurants, from their work at the innovative 80/20 just up the road to their more recently opened celebration of Central Thai food at Nawa.
You’ll find that innate sense of hospitality at Samlor, too. Meaning ‘tricycle’ in Thai, it’s a name that hints at the more homely vibes this place exudes, complemented by its bare bricks interior and chalkboard specials menu.
The signature dish here is without doubt the Samlor omlette, an obscene looking thing with a soufflé-like rise, crispy top and runny centre. Served simply with a little fish sauce and chilli, it’s no doubt a knockout, but certainly not the only dish that deserves your attention (of useful note; it can be ordered in a smaller, more manageable version for a third of its usual price).
Even better, we think, is the slow-cooked wagyu beef krapow. Perfumed with deep-fried holy basil leaves, it’s an absurdly satisfying riff on Thailand’s favourite comfort food, which pretty much sums up the restaurant’s strongest suit, we think. Pair it with that omelette in place of your usual frilly fried egg, and you’ve got yourself a pretty perfect meal. As long as there’s plenty of jasmine rice to hand, of course…
…but to order so conservatively would be to miss out on some of the other highlights, including smoked pork ribs with jaew and a genuinely exciting take on the Laotian salad naem khao tod.
With a local craft beer (of which Samlor has a fine selection) this order will give you change from 1000 THB (£21). That’s some serious value.
When is Samlor open? Samlor is closed on Tuesdays, and open for dinner only (6pm to 10:30pm) on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. At the weekend, it’s open for lunch, too, between 11am and 1:30pm.
Do I need to book in advance? You’ll want to book Samlor a week or two in advance, via their Instagram.
How much should I expect to spend? The omlette and pad grapao are priced at ฿300 (£6.50) and ฿400 (£9), respectively.
Closest BTS/MRT? Saphan Taksin BTS is a 20 minute walk away.
Ideal for Bangkok’s most acclaimed omakase experience…
This exclusive traditional omakase sushi bar is the work of Chef Masato Shimizu, a culinary virtuoso whose journey began in Japan and soared to new heights in New York City, where he became the youngest chef to be honoured with a Michelin star at the tender age of 29.
Sushi Masato, tucked away off Soi Sukhumvit 31 (there it is again) behind an unmarked door, brings the chef’s meticulous craft from over 20 years of experience to the forefront, showcasing both his skills and his impeccable sourcing directly from the fish markets of Tokyo to a first-floor chef’s counter. Though that first floor is chef Shimizu’s domain, for a more laid back, languid experience, head upstairs to Raw Bar Masato, where you can order a la carte sushi of the same premium quality as the full experience below.
Securing a reservation at Sushi Masato requires some effort; seats are released on a month-by-month basis, precisely at 00:00 hrs on the 15th of every month for the following month. Amazingly for a restaurant of this pedigree and poise, there’s a takeaway menu of sorts at Sushi Masato; via their website, you can order a bespoke mini omakase box to be delivered to your door for the princely sum of 2500 THB.
When is Sushi Mataso open? Sushi Mataso is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and is open for both lunch (midday to 2pm) and dinner (5pm to 10pm) Wednesday through Sunday.
Do I need to book in advance? Yes, indeed, and it’s something of a scramble On the 15th of every month at midnight, new seat slots for the following month are released.
How much should I expect to spend? The lunch omakase is ฿4000 (£87), the dinner ฿6000 (£130).
Closest BTS/MRT? Phrom Phong BTS is a 10 minute walk away.
Ideal for refined, contemporary German cuisine in a serene villa setting…
In a city so steeped in exceptional Thai food that fish sauce dapples your pores when you do finally come up for air, Sühring offers something a little different: a refined, contemporary exploration of German cuisine, masterfully executed by twin chefs Thomas and Mathias Sühring. Born in East Berlin and trained in three-starred kitchens across Europe, the twins bring an intoxicating mixture of technical mastery and nostalgia to each bite of their sprawling, 15-course tasting menu.
Sühring opened in 2016 with the backing of renowned chef Gaggan Anand, who said soon after, when the accolades started shimmering: “It sounds capitalistic, but I actually bought my own competition.”
That backing represented something of a risk as, interestingly, the brothers had never cooked German food professionally before, instead spending their formative years immersed in the rigid world of French classical cookery. But with memories of their grandmother’s cooking and a desire to show a different side of an often-maligned German cuisine to the world, the restaurant got famous fast, picking up a star at the inaugural Thailand Michelin Guide in 2017, and a second just a year later. And, finally, at the end of 2025, they won their third – rejoice!
Perhaps it shouldn’t come as such a surprise that a German fine dining restaurant was such a success from the off in Bangkok. In fact, Thailand represents something of a captive audience for the cuisine. As acclaimed chef Andy Ricker writes in his excellent book Pok Pok, when discussing the Thais love of pork knuckle: “this seemingly incongruous Thai dish is actually a fine example of sanctioned fusion food. Germans have been coming to Thailand for many years. Thais love to drink beer – matter of fact, much of the beer in Thailand is based on German brew… So the German beer garden concept has really taken hold here. German food, too.”
You won’t find any tough, over-salted pork knuckle at Sühring. Forget any preconceived notions of heavy, rustic fare; here, traditional German dishes are reimagined with elegance, precision, and a lightness of touch that transcends borders.
The tasting menu – or ‘Sühring Erlebnis’ – is a journey. Signature dishes like their spätzle (soft egg noodles), served with aged parmesan or seasonal truffles, were once the talk of the town, and are still just as delicious. The Brotzeit bread service showcases their dedication to craft and a sense of old school generosity – homemade sourdough and soft pretzel is served with spreads including Oldenburger butter, schmalz, and obatzda cheese dip, accompanied by pickles and dry-aged beef. You could leave happy after this course alone, quite frankly, but to do so would be to miss out on Grandma’s Eggnog, served in miniature bottles based on their grandmother’s recipe and just delightful.
That sense of the familial is peppered throughout an evening at Sühring. Set within a beautifully restored 1970s villa, dining here feels like being welcomed into a very stylish, food-loving German home (and one that charges you several hundred pounds just as you’re getting up to leave). The villa itself is actually an integral part of the experience, offering four distinct dining spaces. After something intimate? Get yourself in the Living Room. Something sun-drenched for you, sir? The Glass House is where you should head. Or, if you don’t like talking to your partner, the Kitchen offers counter seating where you can watch the chefs tweezering with studied silence.
Service is bright and knowledgeable, with dish explainers that you actually want to listen to rather than stab your eyes out with your knife. That knife is a serious business, it should said; a whole selection of blades is presented for your meat course, for diners to choose from. It’s a nice performative touch.
All in all, Sühring is quite possibly the best ‘European’ fine dining experience in the city, and that third star feels well deserved.
When is Sühring open? Sühring is open for dinner service from Wednesday to Sunday, 5:30pm to 10pm, with lunch available Thursday through Sunday from 12:30pm to 2:30pm. The restaurant remains closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Do I need to book in advance? Absolutely essential, this is one of Bangkok’s most sought-after reservations.
How much should I expect to spend? The tasting menu is priced from ฿4,800 for lunch and ฿7,800 for dinner.
Closest BTS/MRT? Chong Nonsi BTS or Lumphini MRT are the nearest, but a taxi is recommended for the final leg into Yen Akat.
Ideal for consistently brilliant Southern Thai food…
‘Do you like spicy?’. The familiar question fired at a farang upon ordering. Sometimes it’s more of a warning: ’very spicy’, or words to that effect. Here, the waiter’s words of caution were conspicuous in their absence; when you come to Khua Kling Pak Sod, you know what you’re letting yourself in for. This is Southern Thai food and as such, unashamedly pungent, ferocious and, best of all, delicious.
The namesake khua kling – a dry pork curry – is unreal. And hot. Abundant ‘rat shit’ chillies are used as garnish and are as forthright as their nickname. All this bravado shouldn’t detract from how good the food is though – it’s brilliant. The blue swimmer crab yellow curry is just masterful. Make sure to order lots of rice to smooth out those rough edges, and you’re set. In a city with new Southern Thai restaurants seemingly opening daily, Khua Kling Pak Sod still stands out as one of the very best.
Ideal for unapologetically traditional Southern Thai cuisine…
In a city approaching Southern Thai saturation point (somewhat ironic to say so straight after Khua Kling), Janhom sets itself apart not through a ‘refined’, ‘elevated’, or any other neutering of the form, but rather through a sheer, unwavering dedication to the traditional way of doing things, both in technique and seasoning.
For over two decades, chef Poonsri ‘Auntie Baew’ Sarikarn has been serving up some of Bangkok’s most uncompromising Southern food from this modest but totally perfect restaurant in Wang Thonglang. We’re loath to say there’s an ethos here, to ponder a ‘culinary philosophy’ as the Chef’s Table strings crank into life – just a commitment to doing things right. So, that’s absolutely no sweetening to accommodate what many Southerners might consider the more tentative tastes of the capital. Instead, Auntie Baew’s versions remain steadfastly true to their Surat Thani roots – bracingly sour, properly salty, and with a chilli heat that’s spicy, sure, but also fruity, exacting and invigorating.
Auntie Baew’s daily ritual of hand-pounding the restaurant’s curry pastes might look labour-intensive in a city increasingly predisposed to the blender or tub, but it provides a depth of flavour and ’roundness’ that simply can’t be replicated with commercial alternatives, forming the backbone of the restaurant’s signature dishes.
The gaeng leung (sour yellow curry) here is as good as it gets (both the dish and life). Have yours with chunks of barramundi, poached in the curry on the bone, and coconut shoots, which have the remarkable ability to soak up all that broth whilst retaining crunch and structural integrity. It’s one of the best curries in the city – assertive but complex, and with enough chilli heat to dust off the very worst of Bangkok hangovers.
The restaurant’s gaeng tai pla (fermented fish guts curry) serves as another benchmark dish, a heady, moody bowl that’s seasoned with the deftest of touches. Forget the fifth taste – Auntie Baew seems to have coaxed out a new form of flavour in her gaeng tai pla, somewhere between earthy and sweet that has my head spinning everytime I eat it.
Something neutral, a crisp counterpoint, is required here, and it comes in the form of the pla tod kamin (deep-fried fish with crispy turmeric and garlic) and the pak liang pad khai (stir-fried melinjo leaves with egg), both of which soothe the most bracing notes of the other dishes orbiting the rice. When all paired together, it’s such a harmonious spread, it grips you and pulls you in, not letting up until the final, gratis chilled watermelon hits the table to cleanse everything that’s just happened.
Do we even need to say that the dining room is fairly basic, or that the beers stand on one of those little stainless steel trolleys next to a bucket of ice, or that the menu is vast, laminated and wipeable? It’s that kind of place, and with all the turmeric involved, the stainless steel, the wipeable menus, and the laid back vibe, are all an absolute necessity. Need we say more?
When is Janhom open? Janhom is open every day from 10am to 9pm.
Do I need to book in advance? The restaurant is large enough and far enough from the city centre that bookings aren’t usually necessary. During weekend lunch service, you might want to, just to be safe.
How much should I expect to spend? ฿500 or so per person, representing exceptional value for such meticulously prepared food.
Closest BTS/MRT? The nearest station is Airport Rail Link – Ramkhamhaeng Station, though not within walking distance. Janhom is somewhat out in the sticks (relatively speaking), so take the opportunity for a well-earned snooze in a taxi to wherever you’re going next.
It’s nearly impossible to talk about seafood experiences in Bangkok without Somboon coming up. Founded in 1969 in a shophouse near Chulalongkorn University, it was here that pu pad pong kari, the fried curry crab that has since become one of the city’s most essential dishes, was made famous. Now sprawling across eight branches, the Surawong Road branch, which opened in 1990 and remains the largest and liveliest of the lot, is the one to visit.
The crab curry is every bit the headliner it’s cracked up to be. Big chunks of white crab meat come smothered in a thick, eggy, turmeric-gold curry sauce, rich and bordering on sickly, but landing just the right side of indulgent. The sweet batons of spring onion do a lot of work here, it has to be said, bringing respite and contrast. You’ll keep going back to it, long after you’ve convinced yourself you’re done. It is, unquestionably, the reason you’re here.
But Somboon is more than a one-dish destination. A raw mud crab salad brings a welcome hit of sharp, bright acidity to cut through all that richness, while the stir fried morning glory, wok-charred and garlicky, does its usual dependable thing. Blood cockles, served simply, are briny and bittersweet. And though the table hardly lacked for richness, deep fried strips of pork neck feel somehow essential, arriving golden and crisp at the edges, salty and yielding within. A table full of food for two, ample cold beer obligatory, and the bill barely caused a wince.
The room itself seats 200-odd and has a canteen-like buzz to it, tour groups and Thai families filling the tables in equal measure. It’s loud, it’s brightly lit and the service moves at a clip. There is nothing remotely pretentious about Somboon, and that’s exactly as it should be. This is a restaurant that has been doing its thing with total conviction for over half a century. The crab curry alone is worth the trip to Surawong Road, but the rest of the menu makes a strong case for ordering widely.
When is Somboon Seafood open? Somboon Seafood (Bang Rak) is open daily from 11am to 10pm, with last orders at 9:30pm.
Do I need to book in advance? It’s not essential, but during peak dinner hours the wait can be significant, so booking ahead is a good idea.
How much should I expect to spend? A generous spread for two with beers comes in surprisingly reasonable – expect to pay around ฿1,500–2,000 (£33–44).
Closest BTS/MRT? Sala Daeng BTS or Sam Yan MRT, both around a 10 to 12 minute walk.
Camberwell has never been the easiest place to get to. No tube station, buses that seem to take the scenic route, and a general sense of being just off the beaten track. But that’s part of its charm, and today this corner of south London has become one of the capital’s most exciting places to eat. Time Out recently named it one of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world, and once you’ve experienced the Camberwell Church Street dining scene (affectionately dubbed the ‘Camberwell Riviera’ by the same magazine), you’ll understand why.
The presence of Camberwell College of Arts means there’s a creative energy here that’s reflected in the food: bold, experimental yet (at its best, anyway) decidedly unpretentious. Even the Michelin Stars come without airs – when The Kerfield Arms on Grove Lane was awarded one in February 2026, the team promptly announced that nothing would change, not even the £12 lunch deal. It’s that kind of place.
From hand-pulled Xinjiang noodles to British gastropub classics, Kurdish kebabs to Ethiopian feasts, Camberwell’s restaurant landscape is refreshingly diverse. Here are the best restaurants in Camberwell.
Zeret Kitchen
Ideal for sharing enormous platters of Ethiopian food with friends…
Zeret Kitchen serves Ethiopian food the way it’s meant to be eaten: in large groups, from shared platters, using torn pieces of injera – floppy and featherweight – to scoop up various stews, relishes and sauces. The spongy sourdough flatbread has the right texture and that distinctive sour tang from fermentation, thin enough to be pliable but with enough structure to hold the food. The food here is beautifully traditional, bright, and distinct, and it’s all carried forward in handfuls of that wonderful injera.
The stews themselves are beautifully balanced. The misir wot, a red lentil dish with berbere spice, brings warmth without overwhelming heat. The doro wot features chicken that’s been simmered in a rich, complex sauce built with layers of flavour. Everyone’s hands get messy, everyone reaches across the table, and the shared format creates an instant sense of both occasion and connection.
Ideal Tip: Order the Zeret surprise – a sharing platter for two which features a good array of must-try dishes. It’s just £29.99.
Ideal for reminding yourself why British gastropubs are having such a moment…
The Camberwell Arms is a gastropub in the best sense of the increasingly over-used term: serious cooking happens here, but the atmosphere stays relaxed and the pretension stays at zero. The menu shifts with the seasons, though certain dishes have become fixtures because locals won’t let them go.
The scotch bonnet pork fat on toast is both Insta and, you know, dining room-famous, delivering exactly what it promises: rich, porky, spicy, and completely satisfying on a thick slice of good bread. It makes you wonder why more places don’t serve food this direct and objectively delicious.
Everything here is cooked with care and confidence. Fish gets treated with respect (a recent barbecued whole brill with Bearnaise was a showstopper), meat gets cooked to the right temperature (the Sunday lunch beef and bone marrow sharing pie is as good as it gets), and vegetables actually taste of themselves, the ground, and their careful seasoning.
The room buzzes with conversation, the wine list offers plenty by the glass, and the beer’s kept well. Don’t overlook the cocktail menu here – on a previous visit, a horseradish gibson delivered a real kick, which was just what we needed on a particularly grim Sunday hangover, quite frankly. They do a mean martini too. What more could you want?
Book ahead, especially for weekends when the whole of London seems to descend. It’s one of the finest meals you’ll get in the whole of London, let alone just in Camberwell.
FM Mangal sits directly across from the Camberwell Arms and has built its reputation on quality Turkish cooking with a focus on the charcoal grill – just as it should be. Unsurprisingly, then, the grilled meats are excellent, as you’d expect from a mangal, but there’s one item that’s become even more legendary among regulars.
That is the FM special onion dip. Here, complimentary flatbread is painted with spices and MSG, and comes to the table warm with a bowl of charred onions swimming in pomegranate molasses. It’s an incredible combination of sweet, savoury, smoky and umami that sets the tone for everything that follows. If you only order one starter, make it this.
The lamb dishes showcase meat that’s been marinated and grilled with real skill. Everything has that charcoal char and the kind of dusty, gently rasping seasoning that makes you immediately reach for another bite. The Adana kebab – fatty minced lamb that’s been hit with what initially feels like too much salt but quickly becomes addictive – is our go-to here.
Service has that inimitable Turkish hospitality where you’re made to feel looked after from the moment you walk in. It gets busy on weekends, so advance booking is sensible.
Ideal for a Michelin Star that still comes with cask ale and a £12 lunch deal…
In February 2026, The Kerfield Arms became only the second pub in London to hold a Michelin Star, joining the Harwood Arms in a very small club. It had been open for less than nine months. The team’s response to the news was telling: nothing would change, not even the £12 midweek lunch special, which might just be the cheapest Michelin-starred meal in the country.
The pub occupies the old Crooked Well site on Grove Lane, a big corner building full of natural light, stripped back and painted a muted racing green. It’s the second venue from Adam Symonds and Rob Tecwyn, whose first pub, The Baring in Islington, sits at 17th in the Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs. Chef Jay Styler, previously head chef at The Baring, leads the kitchen here.
Taramasalata with fried pizza dough has become a signature, and rightly so. Beyond that, the menu moves with the seasons: tempura mackerel with hen of the woods and dashi one week, grilled octopus with chorizo, pink firs and mojo verde the next. Mains are generously proportioned and not absurdly priced, hovering around £30 on all occasions – beef, Guinness and oyster pie with smoked mash; Rhug Estate venison with smoked beetroot and walnut ketchup; Cornish pollock with Jerusalem artichoke and warm tartare sauce. You get the picture.
On Sundays, roasts come with flamboyantly blossomed Yorkies, and a Highland sirloin for two at £78 anchors the table. Chips and garlic mayo are on every menu. There’s a rhubarb and custard doughnut for desserts at the moment.
The wine list is European-leaning and thoughtful, with glasses from around £7.50 and some genuinely interesting bottles beyond that. Keeping that inclusivity thing going all the way to the end of the entry, half the room is kept for drinkers and walk-ins – cask ales on the handpumps, a blackboard of specials – so you can come for a pint without a reservation. If you want to eat, book ahead.
Ideal for sandwiches during the day and something more interesting at night…
An absolute stalwart of TikTok, you’d think that Cafe Mondo only existed in reel form. But it’s here, it’s genuine, and it’s actually damn good.
The place shifts identity as the day progresses. During daylight hours, it’s all about the sandwich operation: quality ingredients between bread, coffee that’s been made with care, and a steady stream of locals popping in for lunch. The fish finger sandwich has rightly earned its reputation. It’s not trying to be clever or deconstructed; it’s just a very good version of exactly what it claims to be. Sadly, it was recently, unceremoniously culled from the menu, but we’ve got our fishfingers crossed for its return.
Come evening on Thursday to Saturday, the place becomes something more like a neighbourhood bar that happens to serve excellent food. The patty melt is outstanding: two thin beef patties, melted cheese, caramelised onions, all pressed between buttered, griddled bread until everything melds together. The MSG martini is exactly as described and unsurprisingly delicious. There are mini martinis for the indecisive, Murphy’s on tap, and Bailey’s slushies for those feeling bold or simply hot.
The whole operation has a relaxed confidence that comes from knowing what they’re doing, and it actually lives up to the hype, which is a mean feat in and of itself.
Ideal for experiencing fine Xinjiang cooking from one of London’s most cult restaurants…
When Silk Road closed briefly in 2023, Camberwell’s denizens were worried. That worry was assuaged in early 2024, when it finally reopened just down the road on the same ol’ Church Street, with a refreshed space but the same commitment to Xinjiang cuisine that’s made it a south London favourite for years.
The hand-pulled noodles are mesmerising to watch being made: the dough gets stretched, folded, stretched again, slapped against the work surface, then suddenly you’ve got dozens of strands ready for the pot. Once cooked, they have a bouncy, substantial texture that cheap machine-made noodles can’t touch. There’s something about that slapping sound that turns us into Pavlov’s dog, to be quite honest…
But the real signature dishes here are the dapanji (big plate chicken) and the lamb ribs. The dapanji features tender chicken pieces in a sauce rich with Sichuan peppercorns and dried chillies, served over thick belt noodles or potatoes. The lamb ribs come heavily spiced with cumin and chilli, fatty in the best way, and charred from the grill.
The lamb shish skewers off the charcoal grill are equally essential, well-seasoned and generous. Order a mix of dishes, get some noodles, maybe add some dumplings, and you’ve got a feast that’ll cost much less than you were braced for, helped, of course, by the fact it’s BYOB.
Ideal for Kurdish home cooking that feels warm and welcoming…
Pary Baban runs two Kurdish restaurants in Camberwell, with the Church Street Nandine site offering the full evening experience and one on Vestry Road that’s more coffee-focused. The cooking draws on Pary’s experiences travelling through Kurdistan after being displaced in the 1990s, and the food has the confidence that comes from deep knowledge of a cuisine.
The Kurdish dumplings are unlike any dumpling experience in the area. Kubba feature a crispy rice exterior wrapped around spiced mutton, whilst tirshak sit in a spinach, tomato and split chickpea broth, topped with fried leek and garlic aioli. Both demonstrate real technical skill and deliver comfort in different ways. We could eat the tirshak every day, ad infinitum and never get bored.
For larger plates, the chicken shish at £21 is generously portioned: charcoal-grilled, seven-spiced chicken skewers, served over flatbread with blackened vegetables alongside. It’s a whole meal, and is strikingly good value when you see the size.
Staff are helpful in explaining dishes; they tend to recommend you order either one kebab and one small plate per person, or go for two to three small plates. There are cocktails with Kurdish influences, some interesting wines from Lebanon, Turkey and beyond, and plenty for vegetarians and vegans to savour.
Theo’s Pizzeria is run by Theo Lewis, who previously honed his skills at Pizza East, the popular Shoreditch pizzeria whose cornicione game is unmatched in the capital.
The pizzas at Theo’s demonstrate exactly the kind of skill and attention you’d hope for, with all the classic Neapolitan markers: blistered, leopard-spotted crusts with a dinghy for a crust, high-quality toppings that don’t overwhelm, and that balance between chew and crispness that only comes from good dough handling and a very hot oven.
But here’s the move: come at lunchtime and order a panuozzo. These filled pizza dough sandwiches cost just £7 and are incredibly satisfying, basically giving you all the pleasure of pizza in a handheld format. They’re stuffed with quality Italian ingredients and grilled until everything’s molten and unified. There’s no better lunch in the immediate orbit of Theo’s, which is actually saying something when you consider just how stacked Camberwell’s restaurant scene is.
If you’re settling in for the evening, don’t sleep on the burrata and mortadella sharing plate, which comes with crescentine, those little fried dough pieces that seem designed only for scooping up creamy burrata. A couple of beers facilitated by charming Danny out front seal the deal.
Every neighbourhood deemed one of the world’s 39 coolest needs a reliable spot for inexpensive, ultra-gratifying food, and in Camberwell it’s Falafel & Shawarma. The operation is straightforward: falafel and shawarma, a little mezze and a few fruit juices, done well, without fuss.
The falafel has a pitch-perfect crust-to-interior ratio, staying crisp on the outside whilst remaining light and fluffy inside. It comes in flatbread with plenty of salad, pickles, and tahini. You can add extras like spicy potato or aubergine to bulk things up. Standard wraps start under a fiver, with larger options and mezze platters reaching the lofty heights of £7.50.
The shawarma is equally good; well-seasoned grilled chicken packed into a wrap with generous accompaniments. Nothing here is trying to reinvent the wheel – it’s just executing the fundamentals with clarity, consistency and a deft touch with the spices. Sometimes – quite often, in fact – it’s all you need.
If you want to sit and eat rather than grab and go, the mezze plate option gives you a spread of dips, falafel, salad, pickles and bread for not much more money. The space itself is basic, but that’s fine. Sometimes the best restaurants are the ones that know exactly what they are. Because who needs some gold-plate cutlery, brass plates and ornate glassware to enjoy a gold-standard falafel wrap and some mint lemonade, anyway?
Ideal for coffee, lunch, and then a pleasant time admiring the fresh produce…
Gladwell’s is technically a greengrocer, deli, butcher and bakery rather than a restaurant, but you can eat exceptionally well here so it deserves inclusion. The morning sees laptop workers and book readers settling in with excellent coffee and pastries. By lunchtime, the focaccia sandwiches and daily soups draw a different crowd.
The produce on display is genuinely beautiful. You find yourself genuinely admiring vegetables, thinking about seasonal cooking, and building elaborate fantasy dinner party menus that may never materialise. The focaccia sandwiches use those ingredients from the deli counter and are substantially filled. Soups change based on what’s in season and are consistently hearty and well-made. The big wooden tables create a communal dining area that has a lovely continental feel, and the flat whites are taken seriously. It all feels so right.
But the real pleasure of Gladwell’s is the browsing. The shelves hold interesting bottles, unusual ingredients, and the kind of deli staples that make you want to cook something ambitious. It’s a place that encourages you to think more carefully about what you’re eating and where it comes from.
Ideal for Xinjiang food as good as you’ll find anywhere in London…
Lao Dao opened in late 2023, from Tim Pan of Silk Road fame, occupying the Grade II-listed former Kennedy’s sausage shop on Walworth Road. The restored Art Deco interior, with its original tilework and neon glow, is now home to Xinjiang cooking that carries the same DNA as its Camberwell sibling, but with Pan’s own spin and, notably, a natural wine list. The restaurant has been getting steadily busier as word spreads, but it hasn’t yet reached the point where booking far in advance is mandatory.
The cooking is bold and intensely flavoured, showcasing the distinctive spice profiles of the region. Lamb ribs come coated in a spice mix that makes you immediately reach for cold beer, specifically Tsingtao, which is kept ice-cold and pairs brilliantly with the rich, spiced meat. The hand-made noodle dishes show the same expertise you’d expect from someone trained at Silk Road, with excellent texture and generous portions.
Nothing here is precious or over-refined. Regional cooking executed with skill and integrity, the kind of food that satisfies deeply without needing to be fancy about it. The place won’t stay under the radar forever, so get there whilst booking is still relatively easy.
The idea of biological age has well and truly entered the public discourse recently, with farcical stories about tech tycoons spending millions trying to reverse it. But fortunately, for those without quite such deep pockets, there are still things that can be done to tackle the ageing process.
Biological age is a concept that defies the traditional age-measuring system, presenting a more accurate reflection of an individual’s true physical age. The concept measures how quickly our bodies are ageing due to various lifestyle factors, genetic predispositions, and environmental factors, all of which can inform us on how to live a more healthy life.
With that in mind, here are 10 affordable, effective ways to reduce your biological age.
A Balanced & Nutritious Diet
The first and foremost step in reducing your biological age is to adhere to a balanced, nutritious diet. Antioxidant-rich foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds delay the ageing process by fighting off free radicals that cause cellular damage. Include lean proteins, whole grains, and omega-3-rich foods that nourish your body, enhancing the regeneration process.
While there isn’t a specific food that can directly reduce your biological age, a healthy diet can contribute significantly to overall health and longevity which could in turn impact your biological age. These include:
Fruits and Vegetables: They are rich in antioxidants and phytonutrients that help protect cells from damage and support cellular health and repair.
Omega-3 fatty acids: Foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids like oily fish, flaxseeds, and walnuts help reduce inflammation, a key contributor to ageing.
Whole Grains: They are high in fibre, which aids in digestion and heart health.
Lean Protein: Foods like fish, chicken, tofu, and beans contain essential amino acids needed for cell repair and maintenance.
Legumes: Beans, lentils, peas and chickpeas are full of fibre, protein and antioxidants.
Nuts and seeds: They are a rich source of healthy fats, fibre and antioxidants.
Green Tea: It is high in antioxidants, which can protect against cell damage and inflammation.
Fermented foods: Foods like yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, and kimchi, support gut health and immunity.
Blueberries: These are high in antioxidants known as flavonoids, which may delay brain ageing and improve memory.
Turmeric: Its active ingredient, curcumin, has been shown to have significant anti-inflammatory effects.
Dark chocolate: It is rich in antioxidants like flavonoids.
Olive oil: Known for its heart benefits, olive oil has been shown to lower risk of chronic diseases.
An active lifestyle is vital to reduce biological age. Regular aerobic exercise, strength training, and flexibility workouts keep your body agile and your biological age low.
Though it is recommended that adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of high-intensity exercise every week, along with muscle-strengthening activities on two or more days a week, it should be mentioned that even incorporating moderate activities like walking, cycling, or yoga into your daily routine can have a significant impact on your biological age.
If you’re looking for structure without the cost of a personal trainer, apps like Nike Training Club offer free guided workouts across strength, mobility and cardio, making it easier to hit those weekly targets consistently.
Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting has gained significant attention for its potential anti-aging benefits. This eating pattern alternates between periods of eating and fasting, which may trigger cellular repair processes and activate pathways that could slow aging. Research suggests that intermittent fasting can improve metabolic health, reduce oxidative stress, and promote autophagy – the body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells to regenerate newer, healthier cells.
Popular approaches include the 16/8 method (fasting for 16 hours and eating during an 8-hour window) or the 5:2 approach (eating normally for 5 days and restricting calories for 2 non-consecutive days). Unlike expensive anti-aging treatments, intermittent fasting is free to implement and can be adapted to suit individual lifestyles and preferences.
Tracking apps like Zero can help you stay consistent by logging your fasting windows and showing trends over time, taking the guesswork out of building a sustainable routine.
Adequate Sleep
Sleep is a fundamental restorative process for the body, allowing cells to regenerate, which is crucial for maintaining overall health and slowing the ageing process. Lack of quality sleep can lead to elevated stress hormones and inflammation, accelerating cell ageing and contributing to health issues often associated with ageing.
On the flip side, a good night’s sleep is a powerful anti-ageing tool. It allows your body to refresh and repair itself, playing a crucial role in reducing your biological age. Establish a regular sleep schedule, ensure your sleeping environment is peaceful and dark, and avoid screens before bedtime to enhance your sleep quality.
Red light therapy has also emerged as a promising tool for improving sleep. Exposure to red and near-infrared wavelengths before bed can support melatonin production and help regulate your circadian rhythm without the disruptive effects of blue light.
Cold Exposure Therapy
Regular exposure to cold temperatures – through cold showers, ice baths, or winter swimming – may have significant benefits for biological aging. Cold exposure activates brown adipose tissue (brown fat), which burns energy to generate heat and may improve metabolic health. It also triggers a mild stress response that can strengthen cellular resilience through a process called hormesis.
Studies suggest that cold exposure can reduce inflammation, improve immune function, and enhance mitochondrial health – all factors that influence biological age. Starting with just 30 seconds of cold water at the end of your regular shower can provide benefits without any financial investment.
For those who prefer their cold exposure on the move, taking your runs outside through autumn and winter is another accessible route in. A decent thermal base layer keeps your core temperature stable, and wearing proper running gloves helps you maintain warmth in the extremities, so you can stay out longer and reap the cardiovascular benefits alongside the cold-induced ones.
Alcohol overconsumption and smoking significantly increase your biological age. These habits lead to oxidative stress, promoting inflammation and accelerating the ageing process.
Limiting alcohol intake and eliminating smoking from your lifestyle can considerably reduce your biological age.
Regular Health Check-ups
Routine health check-ups can identify any potential health problems at an early stage. Regular assessments can provide crucial insights into your biological age, which can be beneficial in designing preventative measures to slow down the ageing process. There are also targeted biological age tests currently available, but their reliability is still debated in scientific communities.
The importance of social relationships for longevity is often underestimated. Research consistently shows that people with strong social connections live longer and healthier lives. Chronic loneliness and social isolation increase stress hormones and inflammation, potentially accelerating biological aging.
Making time for meaningful social interactions – whether through community activities, regular family gatherings, or maintaining close friendships – can have a powerful impact on biological age. This could be as simple as scheduling weekly video calls with distant loved ones, joining community groups based on shared interests, or volunteering. These activities typically cost little to nothing but yield significant returns for both mental and physical health, potentially adding years to your life.
Stress Management
Chronic stress can speed up the biological ageing process in several ways:
It can cause our protective chromosome caps, called telomeres, to shorten faster, affecting cell lifespan.
It can lead to inflammation which can damage healthy cells and organs.
It can cause an imbalance in hormones that can lead to health problems.
It weakens our immune system, making us more vulnerable to diseases.
It can lead to unhealthy behaviours, like poor diet and lack of exercise, which contribute to ageing.
In short, chronic stress accelerates ageing at a cellular level. It’s crucial to incorporate stress management techniques like meditation, deep breathing exercises, yoga, and mindfulness into your routine. Regularly practising these techniques can help control your stress hormone levels, thus reducing your biological age.
Wearables like the Whoop band can also help by tracking heart rate variability, sleep and recovery metrics, giving you a clearer picture of how stress is affecting your body day to day and whether your management techniques are actually working.
Mindful Living
Mindful living encourages a holistic approach to health, fostering better mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. Paying attention to your body’s needs, staying positive, and maintaining healthy social relationships can lead to a meaningful, fulfilled life, thus reducing your biological age.
*This article is not intended to replace medical advice, diagnosis or treatment given by a qualified mental health professional. Instead, this article only provides information, not advice. For any medical enquiries, always consult your GP first*
Heading off on holiday? Your jewellery collection deserves just as much consideration as your wardrobe. Yet packing jewellery often becomes one of those last-minute tasks that causes unnecessary stress. A tangled necklace, a missing earring back, or a scratched bracelet can quickly dampen your holiday spirit before you’ve even left home.
The good news is that with proper planning and the right techniques, travelling with your favourite pieces can be completely hassle-free. Here’s your comprehensive guide to packing, protecting, and styling your jewellery for any getaway.
Plan Ahead: Avoid The Panic Pack
If you’re like most travellers, jewellery packing tends to be relegated to those frantic final hours before departure. You’ve spent days deliberating over which shoes to bring, yet your jewellery selection gets tossed together in a rush. This panic packing inevitably leads to poor decisions—bringing eight pairs of earrings when four would suffice, or cramming everything into the bottom of your suitcase where pieces can tangle, scratch, or disappear entirely.
Instead, plan your jewellery selection alongside your outfits. Lay everything out a day or two before you travel, allowing time to make thoughtful choices rather than impulsive ones. This approach ensures you pack purposefully rather than desperately.
Match Pieces To Your Holiday Wardrobe
They say the less you pack, the less you have to untangle later…
The golden rule of travel packing applies to jewellery too: less can indeed mean more. However, this doesn’t mean limiting yourself to just basic studs and a simple chain. After all, accessorising your holiday outfits is one of the pillars of smart packing.
Rather than following generic advice to pack only “versatile basics,” consider your actual holiday itinerary. Are you planning beach days, evening dinners, cultural visits, or adventure activities? Each occasion may call for different pieces. The trick is striking the right balance – bringing enough variety to enhance your outfits without overpacking.
A word of caution – it’s all about balance when it comes to styling. Go with one hero piece to set off an outfit and style around it with smaller pieces so as not to distract. That said, accessorising for holidays should be fun and freeing, so wear what makes you feel good.
Say It With Souvenirs…
Consider this – when choosing what to bring, could that fourth pair of earrings be replaced by something special you discover during your trip?
Remember that packing light leaves room for souvenirs and spontaneous purchases. There’s always a charming market somewhere selling beautiful jewellery pieces that capture the essence of your destination.
Jewellery, we think, makes the best souvenir for several compelling reasons. Unlike clothing that may not suit your home wardrobe or trinkets that gather dust on shelves, jewellery becomes part of your personal story. Every time you wear that pair of silver earrings from Morocco or the delicate bracelet from a Tuscan artisan, you’re transported back to those precious holiday memories.
Moreover, from a practical standpoint, jewellery travels well, takes up minimal luggage space, and rarely has customs restrictions.
Embrace Holiday Jewellery Trends
There’s no such thing as being overdressed on holiday. When else will you have the perfect opportunity to wear those statement coral hoop earrings or that bold snake bracelet you’ve been saving? Holiday jewellery has a distinctly different energy from everyday pieces – it’s your chance to be more adventurous with your style choices.
Current trends favour maximalist approaches, making holidays the ideal time to experiment with layered necklaces and statement pieces. Double-strand necklaces with elegant charms offer an effortless way to elevate beach attire, whilst chunky bead necklaces and bracelets perfectly complement the bohemian aesthetic that’s particularly popular for warm-weather destinations.
This year marks the year of the snake in fashion, and serpent-inspired jewellery has made a powerful comeback. Snake bracelets, in particular, offer the perfect blend of ancient symbolism and contemporary style. Traditionally associated with protection, rebirth, and transformation – feelings that resonate perfectly with the holiday mindset – these pieces channel a distinctly Hellenistic aesthetic that feels both timeless and thoroughly modern.
Pearls are also having a major moment this year, but not in the traditional sense. Modern pearl designs are breaking away from classic string formations, instead appearing in unexpected asymmetrical arrangements, bold baroque shapes, and mixed-metal settings. Pearl earrings in particular are making a statement – think oversized baroque pearls, mismatched pairs, or contemporary designs that combine pearls with gold or silver elements. These pieces bring sophistication to holiday looks whilst feeling fresh and current.
Don’t overlook the power of dramatic earrings for holiday styling. Whether you choose shell-inspired designs for coastal trips or geometric shapes for city breaks, statement earrings can instantly transform a simple outfit.
Jewellery requires careful handling during travel. Simply tossing everything into a single pouch is asking for trouble – you’ll likely arrive at your destination with scratched metals, tangled chains, and potentially broken clasps.
A compact travel jewellery case with individual compartments is essential. Look for soft-lined organisers that prevent pieces from knocking against each other. If you’re travelling with a luxury jewellery collection, invest in a sturdy, padded case designed to shield delicate pieces. Investing in proper storage is a simple step that offers peace of mind and keeps your finest accessories in top condition.
Preparation Is Key
Before packing, take time to clean your jewellery properly. Daily residue from lotions, perfumes, and natural oils can cause tarnishing if left unaddressed during travel – nobody wants to arrive looking like they’ve been wearing their necklaces in a chemistry lab! This is particularly important for silver pieces, which have an unfortunate tendency to throw tantrums and oxidise at the first sign of neglect.
Fasten all necklace clasps before packing to prevent tangling. For longer chains, consider threading them through small pieces of cardboard or using individual pouches – think of it as giving each piece its own first-class seat rather than cramming them all into economy together. Pack a lightweight polishing cloth for quick touch-ups during your trip – this is especially valuable in humid destinations where metals react more readily with moisture in the air.
Extreme temperatures and humidity can affect certain materials. Research your destination’s climate and pack accordingly. Some gemstones and metals are more sensitive to environmental changes than others – they’re basically the divas of the jewellery world.
Salt water and chlorine can be particularly harsh on certain metals and gemstones. Pack pieces specifically chosen for water activities – think waterproof options or inexpensive alternatives you won’t mind exposing to harsh conditions. Save your precious metals for evening wear.
Security Considerations
Never pack expensive or sentimental pieces in checked luggage. These items should always travel with you in your carry-on bag, where you can keep them secure and monitor their whereabouts. If you’re planning on bringing wedding rings or other pieces with significant emotional or financial value, this is non-negotiable. A small zipped pouch tucked into your hand luggage is far safer than the unpredictable journey of the hold (though you may well be wearing them, of course!).
Airport security can be a bit of a faff when you’re laden with jewellery. Make life easier for yourself (and the security staff) by keeping your metal pieces in an easily accessible pouch. If you’re channeling your inner Elizabeth Taylor with multiple statement pieces, consider removing them before you reach the scanner – nobody wants to be that person holding up the queue whilst frantically removing seventeen bangles.
For your valuable pieces, double-check that your travel insurance actually covers jewellery – you’d be surprised how many policies have sneaky exclusions. A quick photo session before you travel isn’t just good for the Instagram memories; it’s solid documentation should you need to make a claim. Think of it as a jewellery passport!
The Bottom Line
Your jewellery should enhance your travel experience, not complicate it. With these strategies in place, tangled necklaces and lost earrings will become a thing of the past, leaving you free to focus on what matters most – enjoying your well-deserved holiday.
Until recently, Britain’s favourite seaside town (don’t @me Blackpool) wasn’t exactly blessed with fantastic pizza restaurants. With the popularity of fish’n’chips on the pebbles permeating every lunch and dinner choice, the humble pizza was marginalised, pushed to the back of the inappropriate fan ovens of Pizza Hut, Papa Johns et al.
Fortunately, that’s changed. Brighton now boasts some of the best pizza restaurants around, with wood fired ovens at 500°C churning out authentic Neapolitan style pies in just minutes. New Yorkian ‘by the slice’ joints are also enjoying some well deserved popularity in the city.
So, if you’re looking for the best places to get your pizza fix, whether it’s Neapolitan, Roman or New Yorker, and are wondering where to eat the best pizza in Brighton and Hove, then read on; here are the best pizza restaurants in Brighton & Hove.
Wild Flour Pizza, Ovingdean
Ideal for highly digestible dough, inventive toppings, and a seriously scenic alfresco dining spot…
Now that the weather’s warming up, one of our favourite things to do on a lazy, languid weekend in Brighton is to take a coastal walk out of the city centre, stopping to peruse the marina and fantasise about living on a houseboat, before strolling the striking Undercliff Walk a while. Then, we cut inland and uphill along Greenways in Ovingdean, all before looping back down into Brighton, with all the sweeping views of the city and sea tha entails. Heaven.
If that walk culminates in a seat on the picnic tables at Ovingdean’s Wild Flour Pizza, then it’s an even better day. We’re reluctant to call this place a ‘hidden gem’, as it’s hugely popular and rightly so, but its position outside of Brighton proper does help these premium pizza slingers retain an air of exclusivity.
Whisper it; this is one of Brighton’s very best pizzas, with a light and digestible dough that has enough structural integrity to hold up to the generous, sometimes inventive toppings deployed here. Significantly sturdier than their Neopolitan cousins, there’s still a lightness of touch at play here which we adore, the dough a labour of love and learning from owner Chris that has culminated in pure magic on the pizza paddle.
This is exemplified in the sometimes weekly special The Lebanese One, which sees a traditional tomato base and mozzarella given heft and funk from aromatic braised lamb and a lively, sharp chilli sauce. It’s a beautiful balancing act and a lesson in restraint; at no point does this pizza (which has already earned cult status in the city) get too heavy. If it’s on – there’s that air of exclusivity again – order it.
Don’t sweat if you pitch up and it’s not; the ever-present Island One is arguably even better, boasting marinated anchovies, capers and olives, and all that salty piquancy that the best pizza Napolis do. As you breathe in the sea air in this beautiful space, there’s no pizza – or place – that feels more appropriate. Heaven.
Ideal forfinding authentic Neapolitan pizza, whatever corner of the city you’re in…
11 years after the original Fatto a Mano opened on Brighton’s London Road, two more outposts have opened (one in Hove and one in the city’s North Laines) and world domination seems the only next logical step. Each restaurant is packed every day of the week and it’s easy to see why.
The pizzas are as authentic as they come; wood fired quickly, so the cheese remains delicate rather than singed, the dough soft and pillowy not burnt and crispy, with a blistered crust and restrained, respectful toppings, true to the Italian tradition. The name translates as ‘handmade’ in Italian, and that’s certainly the vibe here; everything is made from scratch and with love, and it shows. It’s great value, too, with pizzas starting at under a tenner.
Even if pizza isn’t your thing (how have you got this far into the article, by the way?), Fatto a Mano has some excellent starters and sides to see you well fed; their aubergine parmigiana, in particular, is ace.
Fatto a Mano offer delivery all over Brighton and Hove. And, testament to the quality of the pizzas here, there are now several Fatto a Manos in London, including in Covent Garden and Kings Cross.
Ventisei has been through almost as many rotations as Brighton’s famous observation tower in its seven years on Preston Street. From authentic Neapolitan pizzeria to takeaway-only spot, then a post-COVID panini purveyor, before coming full circle (much like our seafront’s most iconic attraction) to its current incarnation as a traditional trattoria with pizza at its heart. Oh, and they changed their name at the start of 2026: the restaurant formerly known as Nanninella is now Ventisei Pizzeria Napoletana, the number 26 being Nanninella in the Neapolitan tombola and also, neatly, the restaurant’s address on Preston Street.
What’s remained wonderfully consistent throughout these transformations is the calibre of cooking here (not to mention the reliably warm welcome from Sergio and family), with premium, imported Italian ingredients shining through in everything they serve up. The kitchen is now led by new head chef Giovanni Affinito, a proper dough specialist who’s currently finalising a full new menu; a temporary offering is running in the meantime.
The pizzas are simply gold-standard; blistered, burnished and traditional, just as they should be. Don’t skip the cacio e pepe bites either (£7.50) – crispy fried mac’n’cheese balls made the Italian way, with cacio cheese and black pepper, topped with a cacio e pepe sauce. They’re as indulgent as they sound. The vibe inside, all brightly coloured tiles and a view into the hot glow of the pizza oven, frames a hospitable, enjoyable place to spend time.
Our favourite pizza here – and in the whole of Brighton, in fact – is the provola e pepe, which uses smoked mozzarella and freshly ground black pepper to great effect. Yours for £13.50 and worth every penny. Any pizza featuring their premium imported fresh burrata is equally wonderful. Whichever guise we find this guy in, Ventisei is our favourite pizza restaurant in Brighton, floury hands down.
Ideal for breaking away from Neapolitan traditions with indulgent Detroit-style squares…
In a city swimming with Neapolitan pizzas, Cutie Pies brings something deliciously different to the paddle. Operating from the popular North Laine Brewhouse, these rectangular Detroit-style beauties are redefining what we expect from our pizza in the city.
The USP here is immediately apparent – these aren’t your typical round affairs (yep, we realised we’re rather labouring the point now). Instead, expect deep-dish dreams with gloriously crunchy bases and cheese pulls that would make any Instagram influencer fake that their weeping with joy.
Cutie Pies’ signature XXL Pepp Monster (already a double award winner) is a thing of beauty, featuring a pepperoni-crusted base that’s loaded with marinara, mozzarella, double pepperoni, and finished with a drizzle of hot honey and roast garlic mayo. It’s designed to serve 3-4 people, though we won’t judge if you tackle it solo – though for £43 and surveying the size of the damn thing, that would be mental and we are judging you.
For something a bit different, the Cutie Patootie (not a nice one to order out loud) combines chicken shawarma with fire-roasted peppers and kebab shop chillies – it shouldn’t work, but somehow it really does. Plant-based pizza lovers are particularly well served here too; with a vegan chef at the helm, the meat-free options aren’t mere afterthoughts but carefully crafted alternatives.
Don’t skip on the loaded fries; they are half of the name, after all. The Cutie Fries topped with marinara, mozzarella and their signature tangy red pepper ranch sauce are the perfect accompaniment to these hefty squares. And if you’re feeling particularly decadent, the garlic bread dippers (house-baked focaccia style bread with garlic butter and sea salt) are worth every guilty bite.
When London institution Pizza Pilgrims announced that they were opening only their second restaurant outside the capital in Brighton in the summer of 2022, the city’s pizza aficionados might have been forgiven for asking ”is this really necessary?”
We already had two successful, homegrown pizza chains in Fatto e Mano and VIP Pizza, and Nanninella had redefined just how good pizza can be in this corner of South East England.
How wrong we are; the Brighton branch of Pizza Pilgrims has been a triumph, with superb pizzas rubbing shoulders with a lower ground floor that houses a full indoor five-a-side football pitch, bookable for birthdays and work parties. Yes, really. How could this ever not succeed in a city so well known for its fun-loving spirit?
Pizza Pilgrim’s mantra is ‘In Crust We Trust’, and they stay true to this pledge with a base of lightness, chew, a hint of sourness and the requisite heat blisters that are the hallmark of a true pizza from Southern Italy. Our favourite order? It’s got to be the Double Pepperoni with Spicy Honey, a combination that works just beautifully.
Idealfor tasty rectangular pizzas right by the pebbles…
Very Italian Pizza…yep, it’s infuriating that’s it’s not called VIPizza, but there ya go. In fact, it’s sometimes stylised as PizzaVip, which makes things even more confusing. Regardless, since the first two joints on our list are collection only, and because the pizzas at VIP are lovely, we think it’s safe to say that these guys do the best pizza delivery in Brighton. Of course, you can dine in, too, at their restaurant on Old Steine Road, if getting out of your pants to get elbows deep in dough is your thing.
Image Via VIP Facebook Page
The pizzas here tick all the boxes you want from an ‘authentic’ offering; wood fired at high heat, a sourdough going back generations, a farm in Naples which provides the ingredients, San Marzano tomatoes, Caputo double zero flour…it’s all there and it’s all poetic AF. The result is something very delicious indeed. Don’t be put off by the huge menu; though pizza paradox of choice is a very real thing indeed, just go with your gut. It’ll thank you later.
In May 2021, VIP Pizza opened their second offering in Brighton’s excellent beachside food market Shelter Hall, under the name ‘Amalfi’. After a spell away, they’re back on the pebbles as of spring 2026, which is exactly where those rectangular slices belong.
Idealfor crisp sourdough pizzas in a neighbourhood gem of a spot…
Tucked away off Western Road, on Cross Street, is Pronto In Tavola, a tiny Italian restaurant which packs a big punch. Though they may not have a proper wood fired oven, the vibe is so wonderfully chaotic, authentic and charming that we’re willing to overlook that.
Opening times are unpredictable, wine bottles with candle wax dripping down the sides flicker, traditional Italian folk and opera plays, and chef Nino chats enthusiastically with guests over the pass or on the phone. Oh yes. What’s more, the pizzas are genuinely great, as is their arancini and gnocchi. An absolute blast of a neighbourhood restaurant.
Ideal for groundbreaking, genuinely delicious plant-based pizzas…
Something a little different and a lot ‘Brighton’ to finish with. Purezza is the UK’s first plant based pizzeria, doing vegan, gluten free sourdough, ‘pioneering’ pizzas which don’t sacrifice on flavour. That’s partly because of the huge wood fired oven which is the centrepiece of the restaurant in Kemptown, and also in no small part down to their intriguing flavour combinations.
Purezza, meaning ‘purity’ and sounding a bit like pizza (that was the thinking behind the name, right?) use a surprisingly tasty rice based mozzarella, and heaps of delicious seasonal veg to great effect. If plant based is your vibe, or even if it isn’t, Purezza won’t let you down. They’ve proved themselves in a crowded market confidently.
Ideal for New York-style pies from the man who made Brighton fall for the parm crust…
Those who mourned the closure of lockdown-favourite Toby’s Pizza can dry their eyes. Toby Cackett, the man behind Brighton’s best-loved New York-style pies, is back with a new venture on Trafalgar Street.
Original Tony’s operates as collection, delivery and dine-in; the bricks-and-mortar spot comes complete with a simple, scrawled logo in the window, beckoning the curious and the hungry of Brighton inside. Cackett’s signature style remains intact: sturdy crusts designed to support generous toppings, that famous freshly grated parmesan rim, and a charred base that speaks to devoted heat and good technique.
The menu keeps things tight, with seven or so pies and a seasonally changing special. Tony’s Favourite is also ours. It loads pepperoni, sausage and stracciatella onto a tomato base, finished with hot honey, fresh chillies and parmesan – it’s indulgent without tipping into excess.
Open Wednesday to Friday from 4pm, Saturdays 12–3pm then 4–10:30pm, and Sundays 4–9pm.
Changed your mind on your dinner options? Or still hungry after your pizza? Or perhaps you’re planning tomorrow’s meal and are looking for noodles in Brighton? Aren’t we all? Well, check out our 6 IDEAL places to eat noodles in Brighton for, well….the clue’s in the name isn’t it?
The film, the carnival, the market not the mushroom, The Clash, Stella McCartney, Damon Albarn and Robbie Williams. Yep, Notting Hill is many things to many people, but a foodie destination it has not traditionally been.
All that has changed in recent years, with a slew of exciting openings and not one but two 3 Michelin-starred restaurants (fuck me, that’s an ugly bout of counting) drawing the plaudits and punters just west of centre, all searching for a good feed and a silly little snap of those rainbow coloured facades.
If you’ve landed in Notting Hill packing an appetite and a thick wallet, then you’re in luck; there are plenty of restaurants to see off that hunger in style. These are those; here are the best restaurants in Notting Hill.
Dove, Kensington Park Road
Ideal for comfort food with genuine substance and a burger worth booking ahead for…
When Jackson Boxer closed Orasay at the end of 2024, Notting Hill’s denizens went into what turned out to be a mercifully short period of mourning. Because, just seven days later he reopened as Dove with the same team and the same handsome room. The reason for the closure? Expensive seafood had become economically unviable. The solution? A menu of what he calls “the things I want to cook and eat right now”.
Same, Jackson. Same…
So, that’s a sixteen quid fried potato pizzette topped with bonito, burrata and mortadella, a genre-mashing snack that has no business working as well as it does. Or, a £32 grilled bavette steak with smoked bone marrow and morels that’s a lesson in sauce-building first and foremost, those wobbly cubes of marrow studded throughout making you feel all giddy as you chase them around the plate. Just waiting for them to bring back those truffle and taleggio deep fried lasagna pieces, and we’re theirs forever.
What makes Dove work is Boxer’s refusal to overcomplicate things. This is a chef who capably runs Henri and Brunswick House, and ran that there Orasay, and he knows his way around a plate. But here, he’s stripped things back to focus even more than ever on what tastes great. Fresh pasta with white asparagus, pecorino and wild pepper comes in at £19, and is a case in point; rich, indulgent, comforting, and completely devoid of unnecessary garnishes or faffing about.
There’s something constantly shifting about the menu here, Boxer and his team responding to the season with a restlessness that keeps the place feeling alive. Arrive in spring and you’ll find gariguette strawberries doing extraordinary things in the pudding section. Come back in autumn and it’ll be something else entirely.
Then there’s the burger. Only ten are made each night, they’re not on the menu, and if you’re not there by 6pm, they’re gone. Made with 50-day dry-aged beef, gorgonzola and onions cooked in Champagne, it’s one of the most considered burgers in London. And also one of the best…
The wine list comes courtesy of Noble Rot. There’s a keg red Primitivo at £5.50 a glass that drinks beautifully with the richer dishes. At around £150 for two including drinks and service, Dove sits in that sweet spot where you’re paying for quality but not feeling fleeced.
Ideal for Thai food that doesn’t hold back on the heat or the funk…
The Electric Diner’s closure left that odd tunnel-like space on Portobello Road sitting empty. Speedboat Bar took it over, bringing the same energy that made their Soho original such a hit. The team had already proven they know how to do Bangkok-style Thai that actually tastes like Bangkok, so expectations were high.
Walking in, you’re hit by neon signs, a thumping soundtrack, and the smell of wok hei. The old Electric’s red leather booths have been kept, but everything else has been cranked up several notches, much like the stuff on the plate.
The seriously spicy chicken salad with green mango kerabu is the kind of dish that makes you reach for your beer after every bite, then go straight back in for more. You do end up a little light-headed, pissed from all the beer and tripping from all the chilli. You’ll find a different kind of heat in a £16 crispy pork with black pepper curry, the pork shattering before you hit that silky but rasping sauce. And so it goes on; whole sea bream in makrut lime sauce, at £23, comes out bronzed and crisp-skinned, big enough to share and crying out to be flaked over freshly steamed rice.
The kitchen here doesn’t mess about with authenticity theatre or trying to educate you about regional Thai cuisine. They just cook the food properly, with the kind of jet-powered wok heat and deft technique that’s impossible to replicate at home. Those £29.50 tom yam mama noodles, the signature not only due to their photogenic nature, have the depth of flavour that only comes from a kitchen that knows how to build a deep, complex broth, layering funk and heat and sour notes until you’re scraping the bowl clean playfully.
As with Soho, there are beer towers on the tables, and this isn’t the place for quiet conversation; it’s loud, fun, and the energy stays high throughout service. Stir-fries sit around the tenner mark, with most signatures landing between £20 and £30, which in Notting Hill still feels almost charitable.
What Speedboat Bar does well is refuse to tone things down. The food is unapologetically bold, with the kind of intensity you’d find in a good Bangkok shophouse. When the ol’ £690 Eva Air to Suvarnabhumi just feels too hard on the wallet, this is the next best thing.
Ideal for refined Palestinian cooking that tells a story…
Just a minute’s walk from Notting Hill Gate tube station to Uxbridge Street, and suddenly everything gets ever so residential, with a row of cute houses in shades of Trio’politan, The Uxbridge Arms as a decent local boozer, and one of the best neighbourhood restaurants you could hope for in Akub.
The hunter green frontage, a muted contrast to its pastel-hued neighbours, gives few hints about the riot of flavours found inside this modern Palestinian restaurant, the brainchild of Franco-Palestinian restaurateur Fadi Kattan, who also owns Fawda in Bethlehem.
Fadi’s mission is to bring the diverse, sophisticated culinary traditions of Palestine to London’s food scene, and, all in all, we think it’s mission complete. Akub has settled into its stride as a fixture of the neighbourhood, drawing rave reviews from several national newspapers and pulling full houses pretty much every day of the week, except Mondays, when it’s shut.
At the stoves is head chef Mathilde Papazian, who has spent considerable time in Bethlehem mastering the intricacies of traditional Palestinian cuisine. She brings a certain flair to dishes that celebrate the country’s rich culinary heritage and British seasonal produce. It’s a marriage made in heaven, all poised piquancy, heady spicing and loads and loads of imported Palestinian olive oil, which is some of the world’s best.
It’s all grounded by some excellent bread. A £10.50 bread selection hits the table warm, the zaatar manakeesh in particular made texturally intriguing by a shower of toasted sesame seeds. Perfect for sharing and tearing, and dragging through Akub’s dips.
There’s a sense of dexterity and balance to the cooking here, apparent in dishes like a £30 short rib fatteh, the beef’s inherent unctuousness levelled out with garlic yoghurt and pomegranate. Or, the grilled Nabulsi cheese at £16.50. Arriving with a uniform golden crust, its assertive briny notes are tempered by an allium-adjacent, off-bitter nigella seed oil.
Best of all, a slow cooked lamb neck, the humble cut elevated with fenugreek, cumin, and allspice, and served with red shatta (a Middle Eastern hot sauce made with red chillies and peppers) mayo. It’s thirty quid and looks faintly obscene, but boy does it taste good.
Alongside, there’s a selection of Palestinian and Jordanian wines, as well as imported Taybeh beer, an elite level local lager if ever there was one, and the obligatory arak, the world’s oldest spirit and one whose aniseed assertiveness is a wonderfully refreshing way to reset after the meal.
The intimate and stylish setting of Akub is adorned with nods to Palestinian culture, such as a beautiful Tatreez tapestry and an olive tree, symbolising the ‘right of return’ for the Palestinian people. Indeed, Akub not only serves as one of Notting Hill’s culinary highlights, but also as a place that honours the heritage and resilience of the Palestinian community.
Without doubt, this is our favourite restaurant in Notting Hill, and one more than ever deserving of patronage and support.
Ideal for vibrant Barbary Coast cooking in a room that’s pure jaw-dropping theatre…
Over a decade on from opening their tiny, counter-only original in Neal’s Yard, Zoë and Layo Paskin have brought The Barbary to Notting Hill in considerably grander style.
And what style it is; this Grade II-listed corner spot, designed by Archer Humphryes, is an absolute stunner. Flooded with natural light from wraparound windows, the 75-seat space features a crack-glazed volcanic stone bar, a distinctive woven wicker panelled ceiling, and Paavo Tynell straw pendants that cast a warm glow over proceedings (if the sun wasn’t already making fine work of that).
With its midnight blue horseshoe booths and burnt orange upholstery, the whole place has a rich, 1970s lounge vibe that strikes a fine balancing act between nostalgic and contemporary. As do the cocktails, it should be said, with the smoked pineapple paloma clearly made with skilled hands. Ditto the saffron negroni, a beautifully perfumed take on a classic.
This is a room you want to drink and dine in during the day, when the flowing, unstoppable light seasons the food with a golden-hour vitality. The cooking here continues The Barbary’s love affair with the vast culinary landscape from Southern Europe to Northern Africa, all tied together by the theatre of open-fire cooking.
The artichoke alla giudia arrives as a bronzed, crisp flower, each petal shattering to reveal tender heart beneath. Alongside, a spiced labneh isn’t strictly required, but it’s a welcome jolt of piquancy nonetheless. It’s a looker, and the kind of dish that has tables craning their necks when it passes by. The ‘Spicy Plate’ sounds somewhat prosaic, but is a colourful mix of different chillis, some pickled, some grilled and blistered, and with a mound of salsa verde in the middle for totally unnecessary, totally delicious dredging.
From the wood-fired oven comes their tropea onion and anchovy butter flatbread, the sweet alliums and salty fish creating that perfect sweet-saline balance that makes you immediately order another, the bread itself so light and digestible you don’t ruin the rest of your meal doing so. Anyway, next up is a stone bass tartare so dainty there’s no danger of getting full. In the cloying summer heat, it’s just the ticket.
After all that excitement, some of the larger plates threaten to underwhelm – packing a little less vivacity than those that preceded them – but are satisfying all the same. A bronzed thigh of chicken boasts smoky, bitter char from a judiciously applied coffee crust. Underneath, a pine nut puree (in this economy!) brings a suave balance to the dish.
If you want a taste of the cooking without committing to the full dinner spend, the weekday lunch prix fixe at £28 a head is one of the smarter deals in W2. This is the kind of place to bring someone you’re keen to impress. The room oozes style and combined with the vibrant cooking and the energy that comes from watching the chefs work their magic around that horseshoe counter, The Barbary Notting Hill proves that sometimes bigger really can be better.
Ideal for when only the finest haute cuisine in the country will do…
Considered by much of the country’s culinary cognoscenti to be England’s finest realisation of haute cuisine, The Ledbury has had one hell of a couple of years, even by the lofty standards the restaurant has set across its two decades at the top.
In early 2024, The Ledbury finally achieved a well-deserved third Michelin star, the highest accolade in the game, 14 years after it received its second. It only took a COVID-enforced, potentially permanent closure, an incredible comeback, a change of head chef and a fancy new mushroom cabinet to make that happen, but my does it feel warranted.
Indeed, there’s been a palpable sense that things have been taken up a notch, with already close to immaculate dishes revised and refined, perfected and polished until they’re the most precise expression of time and space, of seasonality and technique, that you’ll likely find anywhere in the country.
This milestone not only underscores The Ledbury’s culinary excellence but also denotes it as one of the rare elite. And the recognition keeps coming; Harden’s Top 100 UK Restaurants 2026 placed The Ledbury fourth in the country and top in London, with diners hailing it for ‘head-to-toe near perfection’. Bravo.
A meal here centres around a £260 eight-course tasting menu, with a slightly shorter six-course lunch option at £210, that pitches each course as headlined by its hero ingredient in sometimes delicate, sometimes robust pairings, ensuring a dining experience that surprises and satisfies in equal measure. Under Graham’s vigilant eye, dishes like Cornish lobster with petit pois, shiso, green fig and magnolia are perfectly balanced and boast an unmatchable clarity of flavour.
Graham’s acute understanding of animal husbandry is perhaps the defining feature of The Ledbury, with the restaurant’s game cookery second to none pretty much anywhere on the planet. His approach to Eric Taylforth’s Herdwick lamb, served as two courses with Yorkshire asparagus, coffee, lovage and Meyer lemon, is characteristic of the quietly masterful touch. To finish, just pray that a dessert like the gariguette strawberry with amaretto, purple basil, burrata and long pepper is on the menu when you go.
Sure, this isn’t your normal neighbourhood restaurant, despite what Graham will claim, but for a special occasion, The Ledbury is arguably the best in the UK at this type of precision fine dining.
Ideal for when France and Italy collide in tasteful harmony…
At the intersection of Westbourne Park and Ledbury Road, Caractère stands at its own kind of crossroads, where tradition meets innovation, and where the grand culinary powers of France and Italy converge.
Testament to the experience of its owners, Emily Roux and Diego Ferrari, this contemporary restaurant harmoniously weaves together their respective experiences while boldly charting its own course forward, managing to celebrate the heritage and expertise of its backers while placing one eye, or, you know, both, firmly on the future.
Emily Roux, daughter of the renowned Michel Roux Jr., has carved her own path in the culinary world, choosing not to take over her father’s famed Le Gavroche but instead to create something uniquely hers with Caractère. Together with her husband Diego Ferrari, they have crafted a menu that aims to straddle comfort and innovation. It confidently succeeds in that aim.
Perhaps the showstopper here, and certainly embodying that approach, is the celeriac cacio e pepe, on the menu from day dot and never likely to leave it. Composed of long strands of celeriac (resembling tagliatelle) coated in a rich and velvety sauce of Pecorino Romano and Parmigiano Reggiano, topped with a few drops of 25 years of age balsamic vinegar and crushed black peppercorns, Emily’s grandfather, the late, great Albert Roux, was said to be besotted with the dish, which is perhaps the highest praise one could bestow here.
The name of the restaurant means ‘character’ in French, and there’s certainly plenty of that in the way the menu is uniquely structured around 5 personality traits, ‘Curious’, ‘Subtle’, ‘Delicate’, ‘Robust’ and ‘Greedy’, each section showcasing different aspects of their French-Italian fusion cuisine. You can either build your own tasting menu, choosing one dish from each trait, for £155, or go a la carte, with a starter, main and dessert for £120.
That celeriac number is subtle, by the way, whilst of a more robust disposition, a dish of squab pigeon, roasted on the crown and its particularly plump breast a perfect pink, is served with Scottish girolles, halves of cherry and a silky smooth beetroot puree. Its leg is served on the side, foot still attached in an enticing come hither gesture. You know what? We don’t mind if we do…
In lesser hands, that rather idiosyncratic menu might be a little confusing, but the cooking at Caractère boasts such clarity of flavour that any worries are washed away as soon as you’re served.
Not that our anxiety was particularly high before the first course; the interior of Caractère exudes a casual yet sophisticated charm, with terracotta walls contrasting against white-washed ceiling beams to pleasingly soothing effect.
The dining room features plush velvet seating in deep green and charcoal tones. Glass globe chandeliers cast a warm glow throughout. A dramatic feature wall showcases a moody skyline, and the bar area displays an impressive array of glassware on illuminated shelving. It’s all very evocative, suggestive of a large bill on the horizon, but one you’ll be more than happy to foot.
The winelist is an absolute tour-de-force, too, a 26 page tome that exemplifies the restaurant’s Franco-Italian philosophy, exclusively featuring wines from these two nations. Under the careful curation of sommelier Marco Nardi, the collection emphasises sustainable and traditional winemaking practices, with particular attention to organic, biodynamic, and natural wines.
The list pays homage to tradition, sure, with plenty of Burgundys and Barolos, but there are welcome nods to innovation, too, most notably through its inclusion of PIWI varieties, fungus-resistant grapes representing sustainable viticulture’s future. For those seeking something beyond wine, Caractère offers a carefully curated selection of craft cocktails, with several creative variations on the classic Negroni paying tribute to Ferrari’s roots.
Let’s just say that the vision here is fully realised, and the locals of Notting Hill seem to agree; it’s constantly packed out, and holds a star in the Michelin Guide, a testament to Emily and Diego’s vision of sophisticated yet approachable dining. Their appearance on Apple TV’s Knife Edge has only made snagging a table more difficult, so do book well in advance for this one.
Ideal for charcoal-grilled excellence with a side of scene…
Dorian has made a pretty massive name for itself on the London food scene since its opening in October 2022. Founded by Chris D’Sylva, who also owns the Notting Hill Fish Shop and the adjacent meat operation, Dorian was conceived with the aim of creating a bistro that embodies both high-quality technique and an unpretentious charm. It succeeded in both those aims.
In fact, that description sums up the dining experience at Dorian so astutely that we won’t bother expanding…
…only joking. This vision has been realised and recognised, earning the restaurant a Michelin star in 2024 and holding onto it since. Offering even more motivation for the team at Dorian, it has become the place for chefs to have a celebratory meal; pretty much every famous face from the culinary world, both in London and further afield, has been there in recent months, if our Instagram feed is to be believed. Which, it is; there’s photographic evidence of it happening.
Indeed, it’s a place that boasts the buzz of a neighbourhood brasserie, but also one that excels in celebrating a single, premium ingredient via the singular technique of charcoal grilling.
Now, grilling over flames has become so ubiquitous across London in recent years that the smoke in our eyes has rather blinded us to the fact that quite a lot of chefs in the city aren’t actually very good at it. We’ve had enough overcooked whole turbot and ice cold but acridly smoked steak to say that with some confidence.
Not so at Dorian, where head chef Max Coen, who has previous at London heavyweight Ikoyi and three-Michelin-starred Frantzén in Stockholm, is a master of the binchotan.
The menu, stylistically speaking, follows a form very much popularised by Brat, of an A4 longlist of brusque menu descriptors focusing on just one or two ingredients and a hefty price tag that should perhaps be diverted to a copywriter. See; £35 caviar rosti, white asparagus with pistachio and cherry blossom hollandaise for £24, a £49 pork chop, all the way up to a t-bone at £175 for two or three to share.
That t-bone (a cross breed of Holstein Dairy cow x Japanese Black Beef cow, reared in North Yorkshire), to be fair, is a masterful piece of work, 50mm thick and arriving with a pronounced crust, an inch layer of buttery yellow, grassy fat, and flesh that is wall-to-wall blushing pink (those chefs on the neighbouring table will be saying “cuisson” and “soigne” with irritating, increasing regularity). A bone big enough to wave around Flinstone-style is included for gnawing.
Though not nominally a steak restaurant, Dorian has shown up on the World’s Best Steak Restaurants list more than once since opening (fuck me; when will this end?), and it feels richly, warmly deserved. This is one fine steak worthy of a blowout.
Ignore the tagline on the restaurant’s website that Dorian is ‘a bistro for locals’, this ain’t Royston Vasey, fellas, and grab a seat at the counter to get a view of the chefs (the ones working here) in action. The enormous wall of wine behind you is a reassuring, tempting presence. Be warned; the wines here start at £50 a bottle. As in, that’s the very cheapest you’ll find. There are some that clock in at over £14,000. Perhaps Hugo off Succession is ordering some of these off the Waystar company dime (we keep seeing the affable Fisher Stevens in here, having a right old time).
Anyway, it’s a classy, monochrome room that you’re tempted to play human chess in if you’re not seated at that bar. Even the snacks arrive on some Toon Army striped greaseproof, a bite of creamy uni draped over a bang-in season Jersey Royal nailing that luxury/humble thing that’s everywhere right now.
Which is to say, although Dorian posits itself as idiosyncratic, those all caps on Insta do a lot of the hard work, you’ll find boujee London food trends in various guises are all over the menu here. It’s just that the team here has seemingly perfected them.
Ideal for Turkish grill without the faff (and wallet-crushing prices)…
Standing proud and prettily tiled on Ladbroke Grove, a mere kebab’s throw (don’t waste the damn thing doing that!) from the tube station, Fez Mangal has earned its stripes as one of London’s most straightforwardly delicious practitioners of the ancient art of the grill, long before the tatted folks on GBM came along and claimed to have invented cooking meat over fire.
The first clue that you’re in for something genuinely enjoyable comes from the strings of dried chillis hanging in the window, a touch of theatre, sure, but also a statement of intent. Also; almost impossible to resist using as a spicy hanging punch bag.
The second clue? A crushing aroma of charcoal smoke that’ll catch your throat quite shockingly if you breathe in wrong. Don’t let that, or the queues, put you off; the well-oiled machine that is Fez’s service means you’ll be seated before you can say ‘one portion of ezme salata, please’. Admittedly, that would be a fucking weird thing to say before you’d even sat down, but anyway…
The menu is refreshingly straightforward, none of that ‘carefully curated’ or those ‘refined takes’ here, but that doesn’t mean it lacks finesse. The adana kebab is a masterclass in spicing and fatty, bouncy texture, the minced lamb singing with garlic and chilli, whilst remaining distinctly pastoral-tasting. It’s a delicate balance that many get wrong; Fez gets it spot on.
The lamb beyti is another triumph, the meat wrapped in lavash bread and drowned (in a good way) in tomato sauce and yoghurt. It’s comfort food of the highest order, the kind of thing you crave at both 3pm and 3am. The chicken shish proves that the kitchen knows its way around a bird (ewww) as well as it does its lamb, the chunks of breast meat somehow remaining juicy despite their time over the coals. Most of the core kebabs sit at £19.50 and all arrive bloody massive, served with rice, salad and bread.
But it’s not just about the meat. The supporting cast is equally impressive, proper Turkish bread, pillowy and charred in all the right places, red cabbage that’s actually had some thought put into it (how many times have you had the sad, flavourless variety?), and a garlic sauce that’ll have you breathing fire for days. Worth it, though, as long as you’re not snogging after.
Watch as the pides (Turkish flatbreads) emerge from the clay ovens, their toppings bubbling and edges perfectly charred, and order one of those, too.
Best of all? It’s BYO with no corkage charge. Well, not best of all, but in a city where a glass of house white can set you back a tenner, this is something to be celebrated. Bring a bottle of something nice, these kebabs deserve better than corner shop plonk, and settle in for one of the best value meals in West London.
Not so much a hidden gem anymore, those days are long gone, but rather an institution that reminds us that sometimes the best things in life are the simplest. A recently opened Mayfair outpost in Shepherd Market suggests the rest of the city is finally catching on.
Ideal for hearty, honest cooking in a pub that remembers what pubs are for…
The Pelican is the ideal boozer in Notting Hill for those who love a big, hearty feed to go with their John Smith’s. Hey, who doesn’t?
Standing proud on All Saints Road, The Pelican has evolved from your typical local into a modern gastropub under the stewardship of restaurateurs James Gummer and Phil Winser, who took over in 2022, all without losing any of its charm.
This transformation included a revamp of the decor, it’s now all butcher shop tones, leather banquettes, the sound of heels on a sanded wood floor and a menu of meats by weight scrawled on a mirror with chalk, and the installation of Owen Kenworthy as head chef, the kind of solid chef grounded in both the French and British classics. Though Kenworthy has now moved on, his influence over a humble, hearty menu remains.
Menu descriptors are even terser than Dorian’s from a few paragraphs previous. The Pelican’s is basically a shopping list, let’s be honest. Whilst ‘tomatoes, capers’, ‘leek, egg’, ‘hake, parsley’ (would it kill them to chuck an adjective in there so we know how things have been prepared?) all sound a little austere – spiritless, even – there’s fortunately more going on when the plates hit the table. St John-inspired minimalism rather than stinginess, we’d say.
A dish of crimson, thinly sliced ox heart with a tangle of celeriac remoulade certainly wouldn’t feel out of place on the stark white tables of Smithfield, with all the top quality that implies. Bigger plates land around the twenty-eight mark, with onglet, skate, cod and chicken all hovering there, while a bone-in sirloin at £88 is the move when there’s a table of you and a hearty appetite.
The Pelican has featured on the increasingly influential Top 50 Gastropubs list, a testament to its quality. The same team’s newest venture, Canteen, also in Notting Hill, picked up a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2026 for its flavour-forward Italian cooking – further proof that Gummer and Winser know what they’re doing. But the best part is that The Pelican remains a true pub at heart, welcoming patrons for drinks alone without any pretence or need for a feed. Cheers to that.
Ideal for homestyle Malaysian comfort far from home…
We’ve eaten a hell of a lot of grumpily described steaks in this article, and we’re sick of it, quite honestly. Thank the good, syncretistic lord for Med Salleh Kopitiam, then, which brings sweet, spicy relief from our meat coma, and a good jolt of vitality in the process.
Visible from the exit of Bayswater underground, Med Salleh Kopitiam is run by Med Pang and Koi Lee, whose passion for authentic Malaysian food shines through in every complex, thoroughly spiced dish.
Much has been written about the restaurant’s absurd, impossibly sweet Devil’s tower of shaved ice, but it wasn’t on when we visited, so we’ll pontificate, instead, on the signature Med’s Grandma Hainanese Chicken Rice, which arrives presented prettily on branded greaseproof and in various shades of turmeric, with three sauces, all pleasingly pungent and powerful, for diners to mix and match to their tastes and tolerances.
The chicken itself (thigh) is poached to silky perfection, its fatty, flabby skin thankfully left on (much to the chagrin of Torode and Wallace, pricks). It’s the second best bit, dredged through those sauces, the highlight and headliner of course being the rice itself, satin-like in the mouth from a good dose of chicken fat and just wonderfully, insanely comforting. Lay me nude in a bath and cover me in the stuff, please. It’s how I’d like to go out. Yours for £14.90.
Though the chicken rice is a meal in itself, the roti canai, beef rendang, and chicken satay have also been praised by others who have actually eaten them. For us, it’s all about the signature dish though. We can’t imagine ordering anything else here.
Just as is so brilliant in the hawker centres of Penang and Kuala Lumpur, Med Salleh Kopitiam has an extensive selection of interesting, invigorating fruit juices and homemade teas. The lime iced tea is particularly good.
Med and Koi have since expanded across town with Viet outposts in Westbourne Grove and Earls Court, plus a second Med Salleh in Kentish Town, but this remains the mothership.
One of Notting Hill’s best restaurants, SUMI is the informal, laid back sister restaurant to sushi master Endo Kazutoshi’s Endo at the Rotunda, which is a fifteen minute Uber ride (if you can bloody get one) west in White City.
Something we’ve found a lot in London in recent years; big, heavy hitting fine dining restaurants often phone it in when it comes to their more ‘casual’, bottom-line-fixated siblings. But at SUMI, it’s immediately clear that just as much care and attention has gone into the place as its kin up the road.
‘Sumi’ is chef Endo’s mother’s name, and this sense of reverence goes far beyond that nod to maternal affection. There’s love and respect in every morsel found on this clear, precise menu, primarily composed of nigiri, sashimi and temaki, the latter a technique developed by the family of Endo Kazutoshi. Day-to-day, it’s Executive Chef Christian Onia at the helm, incorporating Endo’s signature style into the menu at SUMI while paying homage to the many people and places that have inspired him on his journey.
Chef’s selection sashimi starts at £28 for three types and £38 for five, while nigiri pairs sit at around a tenner to fifteen quid a pop depending on the fish. There’s also comfort food of sorts here, done the Endo way in the form of A4 Wagyu sirloin grilled over coals at £70 per 100g (the chefs have several compact Konro grills lined up on the counter). It’s served with charred broccoli and a meat jus (‘SUMI meat sauce’) which has dextrously been lifted by the merest splash of rice vinegar. The effect is akin to the lightest yet most luxurious Sunday lunch you could dream of.
Comfort is a theme that runs through much of the operation at SUMI. The £40 Beef Gohan, a Japanese rice dish that’s baked in a cast iron pot and designed to share, is a wonderfully homely thing. The graceful, studied hospitality only helps you relax into the place more deeply.
Don’t come to SUMI expecting the hushed tones of reverence that some sushi joints have. Instead, come for a nourishing, nurturing, familial vibe in keeping with the restaurant’s namesake.
Ideal for French rotisserie that’s a cut above your supermarket bird…
Something straightforward to finish our list of the best restaurants in Notting Hill with, where the decision making has largely been made once you’ve settled on the venue. Because Cocotte is all about one thing; chicken.
Specifically, free range, ‘farm to table’ rotisserie chicken, available in quarter, half or full bird portions, at £10, £17 and £28 respectively. The birds, sourced from the premium poultry producing region Pays de la Loire in Western France, are marinated overnight in a secret spice blend before being slowly grilled on the spit, the skin gradually blistering under the heat. Fabulous.
Throw in a few homemade sauces (the Cocotte’s gravy is basically a jug of umami), a couple of well thought out, healthy-feeling salads, and you’re good to go.
Come to think of it, ‘good to go’ is an apt phrase; although they have tables, Cocotte is perhaps best enjoyed as a takeaway; their boxes are ideal for a nourishing picnic lunch in nearby Kensington Gardens.
If you are staying in, consider coming for brunch. Cocotte’s chicken and waffles, which sees a sweet chili basted chicken thigh, a fried egg and a waffle croissant (or croffle), hits all the right notes.
The English country garden is, in many ways, a beautiful fiction. The romantic image we hold in our heads – a riot of hollyhocks leaning over a flagstone path, bees drunk on lavender, a weathered bench positioned just so – owes rather more to Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West than to any genuine agricultural tradition. It was, fundamentally, a reaction against Victorian formality; an embrace of abundance, layering and the kind of happy accident that makes a garden feel loved rather than landscaped.
And yet, fiction or not, it remains one of the most enduring and desirable garden styles in the world. According to the RHS, the cottage garden tradition that underpins it rewards generosity of planting over precision, and a certain tolerance for things getting slightly out of hand.
If you’re looking to capture something of that spirit in your own plot, whether rolling acres in the Cotswolds or a modest rectangle in a Bristol terrace, here are the five design features worth considering.
Hedging & Structural Green Bones
Before anything else, before the roses and the paths and the borders, comes structure. The great English gardens are almost without exception built on a framework of hedging; yew for formality and permanence, beech for those wonderful copper-brown winter tones, hornbeam where the soil is damp, box for lower edging and parterres, holly for something wilder. These are the architecture of a garden, the walls and corridors that hold everything else in place.
It’s a lesson worth learning early, because a garden without structure is a garden that looks brilliant for six weeks of the year and faintly apologetic for the other forty-six. Evergreen hedging gives you winter interest, shelter from wind, habitat for nesting birds and, perhaps most importantly, a backdrop of deep green against which every flower colour reads more intensely. The National Trust has long championed Hidcote as the defining example, its yew hedges creating the bones of what is otherwise a riot of planting.
On a domestic scale, even a short run of box or a modest beech hedge can transform a garden. You don’t need the budget of a country estate. What matters is that something, somewhere, stays green when everything else has gone to sleep.
Choosing Quintessential English Flowers
The palette is everything. A traditional English country garden is built on a foundation of cottage-garden stalwarts, and the best of them peak in high season with a reliable cast of classic summer flowers: hollyhocks reaching for the eaves, delphiniums in that impossible blue, foxgloves colonising the shadier corners, lupins, astrantias, sweet williams, geraniums, nigella self-seeding wherever it pleases. And roses, of course, always roses.
The trick is to plant in drifts rather than dots. One lonely delphinium looks like a mistake; seven or nine of them clustered together look like intention. Layer by height, with taller spires at the back of a border and softer, mounding things at the front, but allow the occasional tall plant to stray forward; the slight breaking of the rules is what stops a border looking municipal.
Colour-wise, resist the urge to coordinate too carefully. English country gardens traditionally run through the full spectrum from bruised purples and deep magentas to butter yellows and chalky whites. If it all feels a bit much, white flowers and silver foliage, think artemisia or stachys, act as natural peacemakers between clashing tones. Sackville-West’s famous white garden at Sissinghurst remains the masterclass here.
Creating Vertical Features Such As Arches & Trellises
Height is what separates a garden from a flower bed. Even the most modest plot benefits from something reaching upward, whether that’s a rose-smothered arch marking the transition from lawn to vegetable patch, or a simple obelisk rising from a border to give sweet peas somewhere to go.
Rambling and climbing roses are the obvious choice, and there’s a reason for that; few sights are more satisfying than a well-established ‘Rambling Rector’ or ‘Albertine’ in full flight. But don’t limit yourself. Clematis threaded through roses extends the season considerably, and honeysuckle brings scent to the evening hours when you’re most likely to be sitting out.
For smaller gardens, wall-mounted trellis can achieve the same effect without stealing square footage. A south or west-facing wall clothed in climbing hydrangea, wisteria or a trained fig feels instantly established, even if the house behind it is brand new.
Walkways & Labyrinths
The great English gardens almost never reveal themselves all at once. Sissinghurst, Great Dixter and Hidcote are all built around the principle of the garden room; a series of enclosed spaces linked by paths and openings, each with its own character, each withholding just enough to make you want to see what’s around the corner.
You don’t need ten acres to borrow the idea. Even a small garden can be divided by a hedge, a pergola, or a simple change in paving material to create the sense of discovery. A path of reclaimed brick laid in a herringbone pattern, or water-worn cobbles set in sand, does more for atmosphere than any amount of clever planting.
If the space allows, a very modest labyrinth, really just a meandering path through mixed planting, introduces a gentle element of play. It needn’t be geometric or formal. The original medieval turf mazes of England, a handful of which survive, were often irregular and eccentric shapes cut into grass, and they’re all the better for it.
Zones
Even a small or medium-sized plot can be made to feel expansive through thoughtful zoning; dividing the space into distinct areas with different moods and purposes. A sunny terrace for morning coffee, a shadier corner for a bench and a cup of tea at four o’clock, a productive patch for herbs and cut flowers, a wilder area left largely to its own devices.
Vertical zoning is particularly useful in compact gardens. Raised beds, sunken seating areas, a small deck set a step or two above the lawn; these changes in level are what give grand country gardens their sense of choreography, and they translate surprisingly well to smaller scales.
The key is to avoid visibility from every point at once. If you can stand at the back door and see the whole garden in a single glance, you’ve lost the plot, both literally and figuratively. A well-placed tree, a run of trellis, a stand of tall grasses, anything that obscures the view by a few degrees, will make the space feel considerably larger than it is. In small-garden design, the illusion of depth is often worth more than actual square footage.
The Bottom Line
The traditional English country garden isn’t really a style so much as an attitude; a willingness to let plants behave a little badly, to prize romance over symmetry, to build in corners and surprises.
Start with strong structural bones, add generous and varied planting, introduce height through arches and climbers, break the space into distinct zones, and let time do the rest. The best of these gardens take years, sometimes decades, to settle into themselves, which is part of their charm. Few things worth having happen quickly.
Forget Dubai, Singapore and Santorini. If there was anywhere more synonymous with traditional, even old-school luxury, it just has to be the South of France. Or, more specifically, Provence and the Côte d’Azur, the so-called French Riviera.
Famous for hosting the Monaco Grand Prix, the Cannes Film Festival and the Saint Tropez Regatta, as well as being a major inspiration to the works of Picasso and James Joyce and the preferred holiday destination of everyone from Bill Gates to Bono, if it’s an opulent yet undisturbed time that you’re after, then the French Riviera is still very much the place to be.
If you’re looking for inspiration on what to do while you’re visiting, then here are 7 luxury holiday ideas in Provence and the Côte d’Azur.
Enjoy The Glamorous Capital, Nice
The French Riviera’s capital is reassuringly laid back for a region defined by such luxury, with its inclusive atmosphere, refined pace and artistic soul a world away from the city’s more showy neighbours.
That’s not to say you can’t create your own definition of luxury and extravagance in this sophisticated city. Nice is a visual delight, with striking art-deco architecture, the region’s iconic pastel-painted houses, and 19th century regal palaces all a sight to behold.
Enjoy a stroll along the city’s famous Promenade des Anglais, which runs for around 7km from Nice Côte d’Azur Airport in the west to the Old Town in the east. It’s a strip designed for a leisurely stroll, with views of the Baie des Anges on one side and on the other, those pastel houses and palaces.
For an even more striking, panoramic view of the city in all its glamour and glory, head up to Parc de la Colline du Château, a historic park with a man-made waterfall sitting atop Castle Hill, accessible on foot.
Back at sea level, Nice is home to several world renowned art galleries. The city has been a haven for artists for centuries; Henri Matisse spent the latter half of his life in Nice, and the city’s Musée Matisse holds one of the world’s largest collections of his work, tracing his evolution from his Fauve beginnings through to the late cut-outs, alongside objects and artefacts from his life.
Indulging in fine art and architecture in one of the world’s most regal cities. What could be more luxurious than that?
Charter A Yacht Along The Côte d’Azur
If there’s one way to experience the French Riviera that feels genuinely, unapologetically luxurious, it’s from the deck of a private yacht. The coast was made for it; sheltered anchorages, short hops between marquee ports, and a sea calm enough that even reluctant sailors find their legs by day two.
A French Riviera yacht charter out of Saint Tropez, Cannes, Antibes or Monaco opens up stretches of coast that the coastal road simply can’t reach. The Îles de Lérins, a short crossing from Cannes, offer monastery gardens, a fortress that once held the Man in the Iron Mask, and swimming off rocks with no road access. Further east, the pine-fringed coves of Cap d’Antibes and the turquoise shallows below Villefranche-sur-Mer are still most easily reached by tender.
Charters run from a day’s skippered sailing on a classic motor yacht up to full crewed weeks aboard something with a helipad. A typical Riviera itinerary might start in Saint Tropez for a long lunch at Club 55 on Pampelonne Beach, swing past Cannes and the Lérins for a day at anchor, then track east to Monaco in time for an evening at the Casino. Plenty of operators also tie their schedules to the Cannes Film Festival in May, the Monaco Grand Prix in late May, and the Saint Tropez Regatta in early October, for those who want to combine the sea with the social calendar.
While you’re in Monaco, and if the time is right, consider planning your trip around the city-state’s world famous Grand Prix.
Stay In A Luxury Villa Overlooking The Lavender Fields Of Provence
A summer trip to Provence and the Côte d’Azur just isn’t complete without experiencing the region’s lavender fields, with their sweet fragrance and striking appearance at their peak during the flowering season between mid June and early August.
Perhaps the finest place to experience one of nature’s most gorgeous and aromatic spectacles is the Luberon Valley, with its stunning peaks and troughs revealing the epicentre of where the region’s lavender and sunflower fields meet.
To appreciate these views in a less fleeting, more long-lasting way, consider renting a villa in the Luberon Valley. We’re huge fans of the Provençal farmhouses in this region, primarily found in the ‘Golden Triangle’ of villages that make up the north of Luberon, namely Bonnieux, Gordes, Goult, Lacoste, Oppède, Roussillon, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, and Ménerbes.
Offering refined, understated luxury, immaculately landscaped grounds, and courtyards with expansive vistas of those famous lavender fields, you’ll never want to leave. Unless, of course, you’re sensitive to the iconic purple plant, that is.
Be Seen Along La Croisette, Cannes
The resort town of Cannes is arguably most famous for its influential film festival, but if you weren’t lucky enough to land an invite or exclusive ticket to that event, there’s still much to enjoy on the luxurious side of things here.
The 3km stretch of glitzy boulevard known as La Croisette is one of France’s most iconic walkways, boasting five star resorts, private beaches and a fair amount of celebrity spotting as you stroll the seafront.
Once you’re done admiring the Bay of Cannes and looking out for the city’s famous residents, turn your attention inland; along La Croisette there are some hugely exclusive restaurants, boutiques and casinos (there are three along the strip) for you to luxuriate in.The Michelin-starred La Palme d’Or, inside the Hôtel Martinez, is arguably the city’s most high-class eatery, sitting right on the promenade and boasting views over the bay.
Reopened in 2024 under chef Jean Imbert, whose kitchen plays on Cannes’ cinematic heritage with menus designed like film scripts, it’s worth every cent of the substantial bill that follows. Expect to spend around €240 a head on the à la carte, considerably more for the tasting menu with wine. Well, you did say you wanted luxury, right?
Go On A Shopping Spree In Saint Tropez Old Town
Speaking of spending big, Saint Tropez is home to some incredible shopping opportunities, with its tight, narrow streets packed with boutique clothes shops and outlets from some of the fashion world’s heaviest hitters.
The majority of the best shopping opportunities in Saint Tropez are found in the pedestrianised Old Town. You’ll have seen it before; the iconic images of a bikini-clad Brigitte Bardot strolling the beachfront promenade with the honey hued houses of Saint Tropez behind her. Now, many of those buildings are home to the likes of Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Rondini.
The biggest collection of designer names are located on Place des Lices, Rue Gambetta and Rue Allard, and if you’re keen to pick up some artisan foods, then be sure to head to Place des Lices Market, which takes place every Tuesday and Saturday morning.
No luxury tour of the French Riviera is complete without a day or two in Monaco. The world’s second smallest country packs more wealth per square metre than anywhere on the planet, and even a brief visit leaves you with stories for years.
Start at the Place du Casino, where the Belle Époque façade of the Casino de Monte-Carlo looms over a forecourt of Bentleys, Rolls-Royces and the occasional borrowed supercar idling for effect. The casino itself has been operating since 1863 and remains, for many, the most atmospheric room in which to lose money ever built. Non-gamblers can still take a tour of the gaming rooms in the morning before play begins.
Across the square sits the Hôtel de Paris, the grande dame of Monte-Carlo hospitality since 1864 and home to Alain Ducasse’s three-Michelin-starred Le Louis XV, one of France’s most decorated dining rooms. Book weeks in advance if you’re serious.
Beyond the casino quarter, wander up the Rock to the old town, where the Prince’s Palace, the cathedral where Grace Kelly is buried and the Oceanographic Museum founded by Prince Albert I all sit within easy walking distance. Finish with an aperitif at the Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel’s Blue Gin bar for that last, unbeatable view back across the principality as the sun drops.
Enjoy Michelin-Starred Fine Dining In Menton
Menton, bordering Italy and within walking distance of the country, is the last stop on the French Riviera and perhaps its most delicious dining destination.
Fuelled by the area’s unique microclimate (reportedly several degrees warmer than the rest of the Riviera on average) and its varied, prolific fresh produce, the cuisine here has a personality all of its own; largely seafood and vegetable led, light-as-you-like and worth the trip alone to sample.
The jewel in Menton’s crown is Mirazur, a three Michelin-starred restaurant run by Italo-Argentinian chef Mauro Colagreco. It’s previously been named the world’s best, and celebrates the region’s unique landscape in the most refined way. The tasting menu sits at around €380 per head without wine, sure, but if you’re going to splurge on one meal during your Côte d’Azur trip, then it should surely be here.
That needn’t mean every meal is going to cost you big bucks. For superb Breton crêpes, Fleur de Sel is a lovely spot for brunch. And for a superb selection of bread and pastries from the region, head to the excellent boulangerie Au Baiser du Mitron; their lemon tart is to die for.
Speaking of lemons, Menton is famed for its citrus fruit, and at Au Pays Du Citron (“you can stay with meeee”), on Rue Saint-Michel, you’ll find some of the finest limoncellos in the world. What a way to end our luxury holiday of Provence and the French Riviera.
There’s something rather romantic about the idea of traversing Europe by train. Even now, in an era of low-cost flights and same-day city breaks, the rhythm of a long rail journey, the slow reveal of borders, the way a landscape drifts from one national character to another through the carriage window, has a pull that wheels-up-wheels-down travel will never quite match.
No longer the preserve of the gap year student, interrailing across mainland Europe has surged in popularity across all age groups, with a record breaking 1.2 million Eurail and Interrail Passes sold in 2023 and sales continuing to perform well into 2026. Climate consciousness, the rise of sleeper trains, and a broader cultural reappraisal of slow travel have all played their part in the resurgence.
If you’re thinking about boarding the bandwagon, then have we got an itinerary for you; here’s our IDEAL three-week interrailing adventure from London through Europe.
Week 1: London to Paris to Amsterdam
Your journey begins in London. Once you’ve soaked up the city’s iconic sights, or, you know, just had a really good lunch close to London St Pancras, then it’s time to hop aboard the Eurostar, which will whisk you away to Paris. The direct journey covers approximately 343 km and takes around 2 hours and 20 minutes.
In Paris, take time to explore its diverse arrondissements and timeless charm, devouring croissants by the Seine and marvelling at the masterpieces in the Louvre. After two days, continue your adventure on a Eurostar service to Amsterdam (the Thalys brand merged into Eurostar in 2023, though the route and trains will feel familiar to seasoned travellers). The distance is roughly 430 km, and the journey takes around 3 hours and 20 minutes.
Amsterdam is a city that defies expectations, where historic canals rub shoulders with innovative design and a vibrant nightlife scene. Don’t miss the Anne Frank House or the Van Gogh Museum.
Week 2: Amsterdam to Berlin to Prague
From Amsterdam, catch a direct ICE train to Berlin, a journey of approximately 638 km that lasts about 6 hours and 20 minutes. Berlin’s blend of history, culture and contemporary cool makes it a must-visit destination. Explore the remnants of the Berlin Wall, take a stroll around the Brandenburg Gate, and savour a currywurst or two.
After absorbing all that Berlin has to offer, hop on a EuroCity train to Prague. Covering a distance of roughly 350 km in about 4 hours and 30 minutes, this journey takes you into the heart of the Czech Republic. Prague’s fairy-tale charm is irresistible, with its cobbled lanes, hidden courtyards, and the stunning Prague Castle.
As your third week begins, board a Railjet train to Vienna. This 330 km journey takes about 4 hours. Vienna, Austria’s capital, offers a blend of imperial tradition and stunning modern architecture. Visit the Schönbrunn Palace, stroll around the historic city centre, and indulge in a slice of Sachertorte.
Your final stop is Budapest, accessible via a direct Railjet train from Vienna. The journey covers approximately 216 km and takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes. Budapest, Hungary’s capital, is split by the River Danube, with Buda and Pest offering contrasting experiences. Explore Castle Hill on the Buda side or unwind at one of the thermal baths in Pest.
Three Ways To Stretch Your Trip
If three weeks feels too short, or if Budapest seems an abrupt ending to such a grand European arc, there are three natural extensions to consider. Each pulls the journey in a different direction, and each suits a different kind of traveller.
South To Italy
For those who’d rather their trip ended somewhere warm, sun-bleached and full of pasta, head south from Budapest into the Adriatic and Italian peninsula. A Eurocity service runs from Budapest down through Slovenia to Venice, with Ljubljana making a worthwhile stopover en route. The Slovenian capital has emerged as one of Europe’s most rewarding city break destinations, all riverside cafe culture and dragon-flanked bridges.
From Venice, the high-speed Frecciarossa network opens up the rest of Italy at pace. Florence is two hours south, Rome a further hour and a half beyond that. Naples, Bologna, the Cinque Terre and the lakes are all within reach for those with an extra week to play with.
North To Scandinavia
For travellers visiting in late spring or summer, and willing to swap continental warmth for long northern daylight, fjord-cut coastlines and Nordic design, Scandinavia offers a compelling counterpoint. The route works best as a diversion from Berlin or Amsterdam, heading north via Hamburg to Copenhagen, then on to Stockholm and Oslo.
The Copenhagen-to-Stockholm sleeper service, reintroduced after a long absence, has rekindled interest in the route, while the Oslo-to-Bergen line remains one of Europe’s most cinematic train journeys, climbing through high mountain plateaux and birch forest before descending to the fjords.
Westward In Style
For the most romantic finale of all, luxury rail journeys such as the Belmond Venice Simplon-Orient-Express offer a rather different way to make your way back across the continent. Where interrailing is rail travel’s accessible, democratic face, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is its grand dame, all polished wood, vintage 1920s carriages and white-jacketed stewards.
The Budapest-to-London route picks up neatly from the end of Week 3, sweeping back across Europe over five days with overnight stops along the way. It’s the antithesis of budget interrailing in every respect bar one: the abiding belief that the journey itself is at least as good as the destination.
What Are The Different Tickets & Passes Available?
Though you could buy your tickets as you go at each European station along your route, that would be inconvenient and costly. Instead, the best options are the Eurail Pass and the Interrail Pass, for non-European residents and Europeans, respectively.
The Interrail Pass
An Interrail Pass, also known as an Interrail ticket, is a rail pass available to European residents that allows unlimited travel across the vast railway network of 33 participating countries in Europe. It’s a fantastic way to explore the continent at your own pace, offering flexibility and freedom to travel as much or as little as you like within a certain time period.
The Interrail Pass works on a simple principle. Once you’ve purchased your pass, you can hop on and off most trains in the participating countries without needing to buy individual tickets. Some high-speed or overnight trains may require a reservation, but the Interrail Pass will still cover a significant portion of the fare.
The pass comes in various types to suit different travel needs. There are Global Passes for those who want to travel across multiple countries, and One Country Passes for those who want to explore a single country in depth. The passes also come in different durations, from a few days to a month, and there are options for continuous travel or a certain number of travel days within a longer period.
The Interrail Pass is available to both European citizens and non-Europeans who are official legal residents of European countries. It’s a fantastic option for anyone wanting to see more of Europe, regardless of whether you’re a solo traveller or travelling in a group, prefer a planned itinerary or spontaneous journeys, and no matter your age. There’s always an Interrail Pass that can cater to your travel preferences and needs.
The Eurail Pass
Visitors from outside Europe can use the Eurail Pass to travel across the continent’s railway network, while permanent residents of European countries should opt for the equivalent Interrail Pass, which offers the same benefits.
The Eurail Pass is a comprehensive train ticket that provides unlimited travel across participating European rail networks for a predetermined number of travel days, ranging from 4 days to 3 months. It’s an economical option for non-European citizens or residents looking to explore single or multiple European countries.
The pass opens up some of Europe’s most striking landscapes, from the Centovalli line winding between Italy and Switzerland to the pine forests of Germany’s Black Forest. The Eurail Pass comes in two types: the Global Pass, which covers 33 European countries, and the One-Country Pass, which is specific to one country. Both offer additional benefits such as discounts on Eurostar, free local public transport in some countries, and free entry to local museums.
The Bottom Line
This three-week interrailing route from London through Central Europe is designed to show you the breadth and depth of what this incredible part of the continent has to offer. It’s an itinerary for those who want to see the most countries while enjoying direct train journeys wherever possible, with the option of stretching the trip south, north, or homeward in serious style. Remember, the joy of interrailing lies not just in the destinations but also in the journey itself. So sit back, relax, and watch Europe unfold before your eyes.
The brown-throated sunbird arrives first, usually around six in the morning, just as the light over Bangsak Beach shifts from grey to gold. It is small and iridescent and entirely indifferent to the fact that its home is a resort of considerable scale.
By the time you’ve ordered your first coffee, the red-whiskered bulbul has joined it – a bird whose haircut suggests Elvis spent a formative holiday in Thailand and returned to Memphis inspired, and whose call, a cheerful repeating whistle that ornithologists have mnemonically rendered as “pleased to meet you,” drifts across the gardens whether you’re listening for it or not.
Seventy-two species visit the grounds of Le Méridien Khao Lak Resort & Spa. The figure appears in the hotel’s literature with a pride that is, it turns out, entirely justified. Khao Lak-Lam Ru National Park, which records over 170 bird species in total, presses directly against the resort’s back boundary, and its lowland birds move freely between the forest edge and the hotel gardens as if the distinction between the two is a matter of little consequence. And they have a point; it isn’t.
Like those birds passing through the grounds, you will find yourself calculating a return flight before you’ve even checked out.
The Location
Ask anyone who knew Phuket in the nineties what they miss about it and they’ll tell you the same things: the empty beaches, the unhurried mornings, the sense that it lay there undiscovered, though of course it had. They’ll tell you it was a different Thailand, one that’s confined to the past. They’re not quite right; it simply moved north.
The drive north from Phuket airport to Khao Lak takes about 90 minutes, but it feels like a different kind of longer because of what falls away. The construction sites thin out and the condo billboards get smaller and smaller until they’re A4-size and significantly less desperate.
By the time you reach Phang Nga province, the roadside is rubber plantations and coconut palms, and the towns line the single highway in sporadic scatterings. Khao Lak sits at the end of that transition, with Le Méridien at the quieter, more northerly end, on a long, laid-back stretch of Bangsak Beach.
Bangsak beach is the real deal. Here the sand is wide and the morning crowds scant, just a few early wanderers soaking up the first sights of sun. The first thing you notice if you’re one of them is the shells. Not fragments – actual shells. The kind that you stopped finding on Phuket’s beaches long ago, when the last of the quiet stretches succumbed to sun lounger concessions and jet-ski rental. Here, they are simply lying in the sand, as if nobody has thought to collect them. It is a small thing, but it’s revealing about the wider picture in Khao Lak.
Khao Lak-Lam Ru National Park borders the resort area on all sides but the sea, bringing the jungle right up to the back of the hotel strip. Building height restrictions mean nothing rises above the treeline and the horizon remains uncluttered. Protected land, geography, and regulation work in concert here, and the result is that Khao Lak couldn’t become another Patong even if it wanted to. Though spend even a day here, and it’s obvious no one wants that anyway.
The park itself is more than a buffer. Coastal trails wind through it, mangroves line sections of the shore, and Ton Chong Fa waterfall, the most accessible of several in the area, is an easy half-day from the resort. The wildlife hasn’t learned to be afraid of people. Not in ‘Tiger Who Came To Tea’ vibes – you won’t be sharing your morning eggs with a big old Panthera tigris corbetti – but the geckos hold their position when you approach and the squirrels watch you sunbathing from the branches without even so much as offering to apply a fresh layer of lotion.
Le Méridien’s position also puts you close to the Similan Islands departure pier at Thap Lamu. The Similans are consistently rated among the best dive sites in Southeast Asia, and access is tightly controlled, with limited daily visitor numbers, no overnight stays on most islands, and a seasonal closure running roughly May to October to allow the reef to recover. That exclusivity is part of what keeps them worth the trip. From Bangsak Beach, the logistics are straightforward: most operators run transfers from the hotel, and you’re back by mid-afternoon with enough time left to claim a lounger for sunset.
The Vibe
This is, on paper, a mega resort: 283 rooms, three lagoon pools, multiple dining options, a kids’ club, a 24-hour gym, and enough lawn to get genuinely lost in. In practice, the only time you register the scale is at breakfast. The grounds are generous and lush enough that guests find their own corners. There is an anonymity to the place, and it works in its favour – people are here doing the same thing you are, but there is enough space to see off the illusory superiority complex that we all bloody suffer from on this lawn. On this beach. In this country…
Elsewhere, colourful murals appear at intervals throughout the resort, making even a corridor feel like somewhere worth pausing. The vibe is cheerful rather than frantic, with children everywhere during the day and somehow never too much.
Part of that is the layout: Le Méridien is sprawling enough that different groups drift to different ends of the resort without overlap (some weirdos are still dwelling in a random corridor, admiring a mural), and there is a self-sorting quality to it. Beach chairs and sun loungers are in generous supply; unlike at many places of this scale, the morning towel-dash is not something you need to think about.
Part of what sustains that ease is the hotel’s all-inclusive option, which Le Méridien sells as an add-on (around £75 per night for two in low season, closer to £140 in high) – meaning you can commit at booking or decide when you arrive. Once you have it, the taxing mental arithmetic of a resort holiday largely dissolves. You can wander in off the beach with nothing more than your branded wristband on (hey you, put some clothes on!) and lunch and drinks just happen. Nobody is calculating whether a second pina colada is worth it. That low-level financial anxiety, which hums beneath the surface of some resort stays, simply isn’t here, and the atmosphere is noticeably more relaxed for it.
Families should note that the all-inclusive rate covers two adults; additional guests are handled separately at the desk, and the terms are worth checking before you arrive if you’re travelling with children.
Bird art is everywhere, rendered in that vivid, wing-splayed style that owes something to paintings of Siamese fighting fish. Bird identification signs are dotted about the grounds, wildlife-reserve style, naming the species that pass through. It gives the place an unexpected earnestness, a resort that’s proud of its adjacency to the national park. Download a birding app before you go: half the pleasure is learning to match the calls to the signs. Or, indeed, at trying to imitate those calls, much to the amusement of absolutely no one in your vicinity.
The Rooms
There are ten room types across 283 rooms, suites, and villas. The entry point is the Superior – perfectly comfortable, though notably it’s the one category that forgoes a bathtub. Although, who’s taking a bath in this heat, with three pools and the big blue right at your door?
Above that, Deluxe Pool View rooms add more space and a proper bath. The Deluxe Pool Terrace takes the same room to ground floor level with direct terrace access to the lagoon. It’s what we stayed in, and the category we’d point most guests towards. The line between room and resort dissolves, and you stop thinking of the pool as somewhere you have to tick off. Interconnecting rooms are available across several categories, and a dedicated two-bedroom family room with pool access sleeps up to five. At the top end sits a private pool villa for those who want the resort experience entirely on their own terms.
The bird theme that runs through the resort makes it into the rooms too, as if they’ve flown in here and they’re just too charming to be ushered out. Above the bed, a flock of gilt swallows arcs across a slate-grey wall; small, sculptural, mid-flight. It’s a detail that could easily tip into kitsch but doesn’t. A careful balancing act well struck.
The bathrooms are a particular strength. Ours was vast, with a deep soaking tub set beneath an internal window looking back into the bedroom, a marble-topped double vanity, and a separate walk-in rainfall shower. The robes are thick, the shelving generous. Having stayed in enough Thai hotels where the bathroom is an apology tacked onto the room, it’s worth saying clearly: this one is not.
Balconies are private and, if you book an east-facing room, they catch the morning sun beautifully. Welcome amenities on arrival are a nice touch (fresh fruit, a small cake, chocolates), as are the in-room toiletries; Malin + Goetz, if you’re asking. Not the generic white-label product most Thai resorts default to, and a thoughtful choice when you’re spending the day living between the pool and the sea. The shampoo and conditioner leave your hair noticeably soft in a way that matters when saltwater and chlorine are taking turns with it.
Facilities & The Beach
The three lagoon pools are more interesting than they sound on paper. The main one functions almost like a water park, with bridges to duck under, a volleyball net, a basketball hoop at the deep end, and, during our stay, a foam party that kids and adults loved in equal measure. It’s executed with enough restraint that it never tips into holiday-park territory. Grab an inflatable and drift. You’ll be fine.
For younger guests, the resort earns its reputation as one of Thailand’s best family beach stays. The kids’ club runs daily activities (arts and crafts, nature discovery sessions, bird-watching walks) and the expansive beachfront lawns are set up with games throughout the day, giving children somewhere to burn energy that isn’t the pool. Kayaking and paddleboarding are complimentary. On the main lawn every evening, there’s a cinema screen set-up and a couple of rows of deckchairs populated by enraptured kids and the occasional parent. Someone knows their stuff, sound engineering-wise, as Toy Story doesn’t overspill into any of the outdoor dining areas.
The gym is 24-hour and well-appointed. There’s a dedicated boxing setup next door to the main gym area, and each has cold towels in the fridge smelling of tiger balm and eucalyptus, as well as flavoured waters, and free fruit. The treadmills line up along a vast window that runs the length of the gym, looking out over a dense canopy of banana palms and areca trees swaying under a blue Phang-Nga sky. The staircase up to the fitness centre is steep enough to count as a workout in its own right, which did give us a convenient excuse to cut short each and every session.
Bangsak Beach itself is the real facility. Walk it early, when the tide is out, and the sand holds the patterns made by the crabs overnight as local women work the waterline digging for clams that may well end up on your dinner plate. Borrow sea shoes from the hotel if you want to walk further right along the coast, where the beach becomes more untouched. Go left, and further down you’ll find a handful of bars, Happy Beach among them, where cold Singha goes for a fraction of what the Bamboo Pool Bar charges. Though the all-inclusive option renders that redundant, of course.
Food & Drink
Three restaurants plus three bars means that, in theory, you don’t need to leave for the duration of your stay. In practice, the all-inclusive package is what makes that calculus work financially; without it, the on-site prices feel steep for what’s on offer, which is the honest trade-off of being captively located. You don’t have to leave, and you don’t have to think. Surrender yourself to it.
That said, there are genuine highlights. Breakfast at The Nest is an event worth setting an alarm for, but strategy helps. The first rush belongs to families with small children. Wait it out with a coffee and the brisk hostess will have a table cleared in short order, and handy table-claiming signs are provided for when you need to browse the buffet without losing your seat. The sausages are proper butcher quality, not the hot-dog pallor you find at most hotel buffets. The fruit selection is excellent, including sour green mango served with chilli-spiked dipping salt. If your first coffee didn’t wake you up, this will.
The juice fridge runs named blends rather than the usual carton OJ: the Hot Sabparod (ginger, celery, pineapple) has real kick to it, the Golden Siam (mango, banana, honey, yoghurt, milk) is essentially a dessert doing its best impression of a smoothie, and the Tropical Essentials (banana, mango, passionfruit, orange juice) is the one to start with. The jams, really more like compotes, come in mango, papaya and cantaloupe, and are worth spreading thickly.
The waffle and pancake station felt like the headlining act. Boozy caramel bananas are served alongside, and the combination is one of the better things you’ll eat all week. There is also a bread pudding, rich and custardy and golden on top. It had no business being this good. There’s a good selection of Thai food too, a kanom jeen station, and, of note for anyone partial to southern Thai flavours, a moo parlow that you would happily pay good baht for in a decent restaurant in Phuket Old Town.
Coconut Jo’s beach bar is where the evening should begin. There’s live music, and the coconut mojitos and piña coladas are exactly what the situation calls for. On certain evenings the resort runs a beach barbecue, worth timing your stay around if you can, as it’s an opulent spread. Do be aware that it’s not covered by the all-inclusive package, however.
The Beach Grill is the one to book. Sat right on the sand with fisherman’s buoys strung across the ceiling, it leans into its coastal setting without overdoing the theme. The Andaman prawns served with a sharp nahm jim are a good way in, but the seabass wrapped in banana leaf is the order here. Tables fill up fast from sunset onwards, so it pays to book ahead rather than chance a walk-in.
The Pizzeria is worth sitting down in rather than treating purely as a collection point, though plenty of guests do exactly that. The room earns it: gingham napkins, scenes of black and white Naples on the walls, a pizza oven in constant rotation and offering the necessary ambience to boot. While we were there, a steady procession of people came through collecting boxes for the beach, and staff disappeared into the grounds with deliveries for rooms. Both are good options. But so is just staying put with a carafe of wine.
Le Scoop is the place for ice cream: fresh green coconut served with two scoops of coconut ice cream, roasted pineapple, and sliced almonds. Scoop the coconut flesh and eat it with the ice cream; it’s excellent. The pandan macaroons shouldn’t be missed either.
The Latitude 08 lobby bar has a slightly half-hearted Great Gatsby theme, but it runs happy hour between 2pm and 4pm, and then again 8pm to 10pm. During that time, it’s buy one, get one free on cocktails. File that information somewhere accessible.
Ideal For…
Families who want beach without chaos. Le Méridien’s strongest card. The kids’ club, family rooms, lagoon pools, and a beach that is genuinely safe and uncrowded make this an easy choice. The all-inclusive option removes the wallet anxiety, and the remoteness that might frustrate a couple without children is an outright benefit here.
Couples who want to do very little. Not honeymooners in search of boutique romance – The Sarojin or Casa de la Flora handle that better. But a week of pool, beach, breakfast, and perhaps one Similan Islands day trip? The pool access rooms are the move.
A base for Phang Nga province. Le Méridien’s northern position puts you closer to Takua Pa Old Town, the Similan Islands departure pier at Thap Lamu, Khao Sok National Park, and the working fishing villages along the coast. If you want a hotel from which to actually explore the region rather than simply inhabiting it, the location makes sense.
Why Stay?
Le Méridien Khao Lak is a large resort that wears its scale lightly, on a beach you won’t have to share, in a province that hasn’t yet decided to become the next Phuket. The all-inclusive package is the sensible way to book it, and the pool access rooms are worth the upgrade. Go while the shells are still on the beach. Guests here become migratory creatures, the pull to return less a decision than an instinct. We now count ourselves among them. Hang on, why aren’t these wings working?
Rooms start from around 2,750 baht (£55) per night during low season, and 11,500 baht (£230) per night during high.
Wanderlust. It’s a beautiful thing, and when the itch hits, you’ve just got to scratch it. Or, is it just that skin condition we’ve been meaning to get checked out?
Anyway, whether you’re looking to travel near or far, to feel the gravel under your feet in the Andes or the snow in your grasp in the Alps, that sense of unbridled freedom and escapism sounds so good to us right now. So with itchy feet needing some lotion, here are 7 must-see trekking destinations worldwide, ranging from the easily-tackled to the genuinely epic.
The Grand Canyon
The mile-deep and 10-mile-wide Grand Canyon is not for the faint of heart. Oh no. You’ve got to be properly prepared to make the most of your Grand Canyon trekking experience; the terrain here can be, at times, inhospitable and the heat unbearable, particularly between May and September when temperatures on the canyon floor regularly tip past 40°C.
Although it may not be the best choice for novice hikers, you don’t have to be a skilled pro on your feet (is trekking even a job?) to take on this natural wonder carved by the Colorado River.
The Bright Angel Trail is the classic way in, with rest houses and water stations along its 9.5 mile descent to the river, while the South Kaibab offers a steeper, more exposed route for those after a stiffer test. Whichever you choose, just be sure to respect the terrain and honour your limitations so that you can have an enjoyable and safe trek. The golden rule, repeated by rangers everywhere: going down is optional, coming back up is mandatory.
Machu Picchu
This UNESCO World Heritage Site will not disappoint avid hikers. Hidden in the Andean Mountains of northwestern Peru near the town of Cusco, you’ll find Machu Picchu. The ruins include over 150 buildings and more than 3,000 stone steps of pure wonder.
A hike along the Inca Trail from Cuzco, which follows the Urubamba River, can take two to seven days depending on your route and pace. It’s a high-altitude course full of tropical scenery and fascinating wildlife, with cloud forest giving way to alpine tundra as you climb towards Dead Woman’s Pass at 4,215 metres.
And the views; oh, the views. As such, the country wants to preserve this ancient site as best it can, so booking ahead of time is a must. Permits sell out months in advance for the classic four-day route, and hikers are limited to 500 each day, accordingly. If the Inca Trail is fully booked, the Salkantay and Lares treks are gorgeous alternatives that approach the citadel from less-trodden directions.
Kilimanjaro
No visit to Tanzania is complete without a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro. Well, actually it is, but you get what we’re saying. It’s Africa’s tallest mountain, and the world’s tallest free-standing one, too, topping out at 5,895 metres at Uhuru Peak.
Sounds too daunting to tackle? Surprisingly, it’s doable. The best thing about climbing Kilimanjaro is that you don’t have to be a seasoned hiker with specialised gear and technical skills to manage the climb. In fact, Kilimanjaro is known as a ‘walk up’ mountain. As in, you don’t need to be scrambling up on hands and knees. Depending on your prowess and which of the seven established routes you choose, this ascent should take between five and nine days, with the longer Lemosho and Northern Circuit options offering the best acclimatisation and therefore the highest summit success rates.
That said, less than half of climbers actually make it. But if you view such an excursion as torture rather than challenge, then don’t worry, the Kilimanjaro National Park has plenty to offer even at ground level. Elephant, buffalo and antelope roam in the Forest Reserve area of the park, meaning you’ll see action even if the ascent isn’t for you.
The Lake District
Trekking needn’t involve unnecessary air miles and leaving a guilty carbon footprint. In fact, some of the best walks around are found on terra firma, though the famously changeable Cumbrian weather means a pair of well-fitted men’s hiking boots will earn their keep on the bog-soft fells more than they might in the dry heat of the Grand Canyon.
Scafell Pike, in the beautiful Lake District, is a complex mountain to hike, with landscape and views to take your breath away. The simplest route to the summit is via Brown Tongue from Wasdale, but if you’re feeling more ambitious and want to see the best the mountain has to offer, try the Corridor Route.
Or, you could go for Helvellyn, a beautiful mountain surrounded by the Lake District’s signature bright blue lakes. The peak sits at 950 metres and should take three to four hours to ascend, with the legendary Striding Edge offering a thrilling scramble for those with a head for heights and the Swirral Edge giving a slightly gentler return. All the routes to the summit are fairly challenging and require a high level of fitness. Better get on that heavily inclined treadmill, pronto, in preparation.
If you’re looking for something lighter, then Allen Crags is part of a nine-mile scenic walk that takes in the glorious Great Gable mountain. The walk starts from Seathwaite and then winds up to the summit of Allen Crags. You’ll be rewarded by some glorious countryside if you take this one on.
The Quilotoa Loop
If off-the-beaten-path is everything you want from your next destination, then the Quilotoa Loop in Ecuador is just what the trekker in you ordered. Lots of tourists overlook this cracking three to five day hike in search of a more orthodox Amazon or Galapagos adventure, but the nonconformists are rewarded with a path less beaten and crowded.
This hike through the vast Andean countryside will not only give you the chance to see a volcano and crater lake, the latter glowing an unreal shade of turquoise courtesy of the dissolved minerals in its waters, but you’ll also get to experience the unique and fascinating Quechua culture of the region. Nights are spent in basic but characterful family-run hostels in villages like Chugchilán and Isinliví, where dinner usually means whatever the host is cooking for their own family that evening.
Torres Del Paine, Patagonia
Down at the wind-lashed bottom of South America, Torres del Paine National Park is the kind of place that ruins other hikes for you. Granite spires erupt out of the steppe, glaciers calve into electric-blue lakes, and the wind, well, the wind has its own personality. Bring a windproof. Bring two.
The park’s signature trek is the W, named for the shape it traces across the southern face of the Paine massif. Most hikers do it over four to five days, with refugios and camping spots strung out along the route, taking in the French Valley, the foot of the Grey Glacier, and the base of the towers themselves. Those with more time and stronger calves can tackle the full O Circuit, an eight to ten day loop that adds the wilder, less-trafficked back side of the massif. Either way, the moment you crest the final morainal scramble at dawn and see the towers go pink in the sunrise is one you’ll be telling people about for years.
The Tour Du Mont Blanc
Closer to home, the Tour du Mont Blanc remains one of the great long-distance walks. The 170-kilometre circuit loops through France, Italy and Switzerland, circling Western Europe’s highest mountain and passing through some of the most photogenic alpine country on the continent.
Most walkers complete the full circuit in ten to twelve days, staying in mountain refuges and village guesthouses along the way, though you can shorten it considerably by using the network of local buses to skip the less interesting valley sections.
The route is well-waymarked and doesn’t require any technical skills, just decent fitness and a willingness to get up early; daily ascents of 800 to 1,200 metres are routine. Highlights include the descent into the Val Ferret on the Italian side, the wildflower-strewn balcony paths above Champex, and the moment Mont Blanc itself reveals its full bulk above the Aiguilles Rouges. Late June through early September is the sweet spot, after the snow has cleared from the higher passes but before the autumn weather rolls in.
The Bottom Line
Of course, the beauty of hiking is carving out your own path. But should you be stuck for inspiration or looking for someone to take those first couple of steps with you, these seven trekking destinations should be right up your street. Or should that be route? Who knows. Anyway, bon voyage!
Sure, fish’n’chips on the pebbles, perhaps with a plastic pint in hand, is a great way to spend an afternoon in the quintessential British seaside town of Brighton. And yep, poking around in a polystyrene tub trying to spear that last pickled cockle…we love it just as much as you do.
But variety is the spice of life, and sometimes it’s nice to perch your bum on a proper seat or stool, clink a glass of wine and enjoy something a little more hearty and warming. If you’re craving Italian today, you only need to step inland just a little, and there’s heaps of the good stuff. Here’s where to eat Italian food in Brighton; the best Italian restaurants in Brighton, IDEAL for the best pizza and pasta in Brighton.
Cin Cin, Western Road
Ideal for a modern Italian menu showcasing the best of seasonal Sussex produce…
Though the trend for daily, freshly made pasta with refined but generous sauces has taken over London completely, it’s yet to permeate the UK’s other foodie cities in quite the same way. Brighton, though, is rightly proud of Cin Cin, the premier purveyors of the good stuff here, and a more than capable match for any of London’s top pasta slingers.
In 2021, the restaurant did indeed decide to match those pasta slingers, and opened a branch of Cin Cin in Fitzrovia, which has quickly received acclaim in the national press. Sadly, it has now had to close; a sign of the times rather than the standard of Cin Cin, which is reliably excellent wherever their double zero is stashed.
Back in Hove, and you can expect some of the finest bowls of pasta you’re likely to find outside of Italy, alongside some excellent housemade charcuterie, gorgeous desserts and the odd creative starter, too.
The restaurant even boasts a grill for a couple of larger plates in the evening. On our last visit, of which there have been many, a ragu of lamb sweetbreads with rigatoni was sublime.
Bring a fellow pasta enthusiast with you, sit at the bar and order a couple of small, seasonal starters, then share a pasta or two and drink plenty of wine. And if the marmalade bread and butter panettone pudding is on the menu, order it and you’ll leave a very satisfied duo.
Cin Cin has now held a Michelin Bib Gourmand for nine consecutive years, the 2026 Guide confirming their place on the list once again.
Ideal for authentic, homestyle Italian cooking in an endearingly chaotic setting…
Tucked away just off Western Road as you descend down hill towards the beach, this tiny one-man restaurant has been serving up some of Brighton’s most honest Italian fare since 2009. While bigger, glossier Italian establishments have come and gone, Pronto in Tavola has quietly built a devoted following among locals, who are as enamoured with chef-owner Nino, a Calabrian native, as they are faithful to the actual food.
The atmosphere here is refreshingly genuine; it’s the kind of place where candles drip leisurely down wine bottles, Italian folk music crackles through old speakers, and Nino’s enthusiastic conversations with regulars float over from the open kitchen (it feels real nice when he starts calling you by your name). The biggest compliment we could pay to Pronto is that it’s more like popping round to an Italian relative’s house than dining in a restaurant – if said relative happened to be a dab hand with pizza dough. It’s a really special place.
Speaking of which, while they may not have the wood-fired ovens of some of their competitors, the pizzas here are genuinely delicious. The dough, made fresh daily, achieves that perfect balance of crisp and chewy that marks out a proudly Italian pizza. Their Granducato, topped with homemade sausage, mushrooms, ricotta and garlic, is a particular triumph. But it’s not just about the pizza. The pasta dishes shine just as brightly, especially the fresh tagliatelle with its rich, long-simmered bolognese sauce.
For the full experience, let Nino cook you something off-menu (he’s always happy to oblige with advance notice), accompanied by a bottle from their thoughtfully chosen wine list. End the meal with his wife’s homemade Torta della Nonna, a traditional ‘grandmother’s cake’ filled with lemon-scented custard and topped with pine nuts. It’s impossible to resist, much like the whole place in general.
Ideal for reliably delicious and affordable Neapolitan pizza …
Some 11 years after the original Fatto a Mano opened on Brighton’s London Road, two more outposts have opened (one in Hove and one in the city’s North Laines) and now there are several successful London branches too, in King’s Cross, Covent Garden and Bethnal Green. World domination seems the only next logical step.
Each restaurant is packed every day of the week and it’s easy to see why. The pizzas are as authentic as they come; wood fired quickly, so the cheese remains delicate rather than singed, the dough soft and pillowy not burnt and crispy, with a blistered crust and restrained, respectful toppings, true to the Italian tradition. The name translates as ‘handmade’ in Italian, and that’s certainly the vibe here; everything is made from scratch and with love, and it shows. It’s great value, too, with their sprawling pizzas starting at just £9.50.
Even if pizza isn’t your thing (how have you got this far into the article, by the way?), Fatto a Mano has some excellent starters and sides to see you well fed; their aubergine parmigiana, in particular, is ace.
Ideal if you’re looking for the most traditional Neapolitan pizza in Brighton…
Having evolved through several iterations over its seven years on Preston Street, the restaurant formerly known as Nanninella has just entered its newest chapter: as of early 2026, it’s now Ventisei Pizzeria Napoletana. The logic tracks – 26 is Nanninella in the Neapolitan tombola, and the restaurant’s address has always been 26 Preston Street. Same spot, same Sergio, same soul.
Rich 12hr+ slow cooked Neapolitan
The journey – from pizzeria to takeaway, then panini specialist and back to its roots – speaks to its resilience and commitment to finding the perfect format to showcase their exceptional Italian cooking.
What sets Ventisei apart is their unwavering commitment to quality. The pizzas here are nothing short of exemplary; blistered, burnished, and traditional, just as they should be. The interior, with its brightly coloured tiles and the warm glow of the pizza oven, creates an atmosphere that’s both authentic and welcoming, while Sergio and his family’s hospitality makes every visit feel special.
The kitchen is now led by new head chef Giovanni Affinito, a dough specialist who’s currently finalising a full new menu; a temporary offering is running in the meantime.
Our favourite pizza here – and in the whole of Brighton, in fact – is the provola e pepe (£13.50), which uses smoked mozzarella and freshly ground black pepper to create something truly magical. Any pizza featuring their fresh burrata is equally wonderful. The quality of ingredients shines through in everything they serve, with premium, imported Italian products taking centre stage.
Make sure to start your meal with a plate of the cacio e pepe bites (£7.50) for the table; crispy fried mac’n’cheese balls made the Italian way, with cacio cheese and black pepper, topped with a cacio e pepe sauce. They’re as indulgent as they sound.
Ideal for ingredient-led Italian cooking in an impressive setting…
It felt inevitable that Tutto, the Italian arm of Brighton’s all conquering Black Rock restaurant group, would be a success.
After all, this is a team that had already brought us some of Brighton’s best restaurants, whether in the superb steaks at the Coal Shed, the Salt Room’s premium seafood, or the Middle Eastern inflections of Burnt Orange.
To say that Tutto’s opening didn’t quite go according to plan would be an understatement. Firstly, following a soft launch beset with organisational issues, the restaurant decided to ‘re-group’, with Black Rock boss Razak Helatat candidly writing that the ”concept and consistency of the food and service have not aligned to my original vision”.
After Tutto’s reopening, things got worse, with a disastrous national review from Grace Dent in The Guardian declaring that ”there are chefs here who can’t cook pasta”. For an Italian restaurant with big ambitions, there could be no more damning indictment.
Fortunately for the Italian-food lovers of Brighton, things picked up significantly after those early challenges, with Tutto now cooking a freshly configured menu with confidence and precision, a fact that was recently recognised by an inclusion in the Michelin Guide back in 2022, recognition is still holds.
A must order if it’s on the menu is the lasagne croquette; think layers oozing with rich ragu and creamy bechamel sauce, breadcrumb, deep-fried and then sprinkled with aged parmesan, all served with a tangy tomato sauce. Finish with Tutto’s chocolate and hazelnut torte, which has become something of a signature dish here, and, in our view, is the ideal end to this – or any – meal.
Oh, and if you’re all about vibes, we should mention that the restaurant occupies a former bank which has been transformed into a modern and rather gorgeous dining room. Vibes-ahoy!
Just beyond Hove Lawns and right on the oceanfront along the gorgeous Kingsway promenade is Marrocco’s, an Brighton and Hove institution. It’s pretty old school looking from the front, with Tricolore themed signage and a few al fresco seats. Open since 1969, it feels as though nothing has changed since, and that’s all part of the charm.
Though the menu includes a Norwegian breakfast, burgers, and fish and chips amongst other globe-trotting delicacies and alongside seafood pasta and pizza, we’re here for the superb, daily changing selection of gelato, which is some of the best in the city.
Sure, the word ‘legendary’ is thrown about on menus a little too liberally these days, but Marrocco’s ice cream sundaes feel genuinely worthy of the acclaim, and are, indeed, legendary. Proper old school Italian at its best, this.
Brighton is home to some excellent high-end Italian restaurants. Cin Cin has already proven that it can keep up with London standards and we wouldn’t be surprised if Tutto followed suit by opening a branch in the capital soon.
Sometimes, however, you just want homely Italian comfort food, without all the bells, whistles and price tags sometime associated with it. Enter Semola; the ideal spot for a midweek meal without all the fuss and frippery of going to a fancy restaurant.
At Semola, they cook the simple things well. Roberto and Luca make all the pasta on-site, using multiple semolina flours – hence the name. The house wine is super affordable, with the cheapest bottle clocking in at around the £20 mark. While the food may not blow your socks off, it’s certainly satisfying. If you’re a local, it’s a restaurant that you’ll end up coming back to, time and time again.
