The network of streets off Green Park station might well be Britain’s most prestigious dining quarter. Indeed, come up for air from the underground here and the two Michelin-starred Ritz is staring you in the face – setting the tone for the quality (and cost) of dining in this exclusive corner of London.
The convergence of St James’s old money and Mayfair’s new oligarchs has created a restaurant scene where Michelin stars cluster like fairy lights on a Chelsea townhouse. Within a few minutes’ walk of the station, you’ll find more heavy hitters, tasting menus and celebrity chefs than most European capitals manage across their entire metropolitan areas.
For better or for worse? We’re still not sure. Because heavy is the head that wears the, ahem, crown. Hungry hedge fund managers, expense-account ambassadors and tedious socialites might find that Green Park’s embarrassment of gastronomic riches creates its own problems. Step off the Piccadilly Line and you’re immediately confronted with choices that require either extreme financial commitment or reservations booked further in advance than most people’s holiday plans allow for.
That’s not to say there aren’t fantastic places to eat within a comfortable stroll of Green Park Station; it’s just that most of them require either serious money or the kind of chutzpah that has you strolling into somewhere that’s clearly fully booked and asking for a table anyway.
Anyway, we’ve got ourselves in a tangle with that introduction. Here are the best restaurants near Green Park, London.
The Ritz Restaurant, Piccadilly
Ideal for celebrating life’s biggest moments with theatrics and flair...
John Williams MBE spent more than two decades perfecting classical French cooking in one of London’s most theatrical dining rooms before the Michelin inspectors finally awarded the two stars that everyone else knew this kitchen deserved. That February 2025 promotion felt both overdue and entirely justified, recognising a kitchen that obsessively sources British ingredients, then applies techniques so refined perhaps even Escoffier himself would doff his toque.
Despite the belated accolades, the dining room itself remains gloriously, unapologetically Ritz. Chandeliers you could swing from, marble columns as thick as tree trunks, and that ceiling, still painted with clouds that make you feel like you’re dining in heaven’s anteroom. Friday and Saturday evenings bring live music that costs an extra £57 per person, which sounds insane until you’re three glasses deep in Chassagne-Montrachet, your foot starts tapping, your head starts spinning, and you feel decidedly frivolous about being pissed in such a grand room.
There is dancing.
Theatrical presentation and masterful tableside service define the Ritz Restaurant experience. The restaurant’s approach to Arts de la Table is second to none. Their guéridon service style brings dishes such as the celebrated crêpes suzette directly to guests’ tables, where the dramatic flambé creates dancing blue flames that captivate diners. Or, indeed, singes eyebrows off the curious and foolhardy…
Indeed, if you ask us, you’ve not truly experienced the Ritz if you haven’t savoured their crêpes suzette, which has graced the menu for more than a century. Another spectacular display of culinary theatre is the Poulet de Bresse en Vessie Demi-deuil – an extraordinary dish where a Bresse chicken, stuffed with foie gras and truffles, is sealed within a pig’s bladder and poached to perfection, then dramatically unveiled tableside to reveal the supremely moist, aromatic fowl within.
You’ll pay for the privilege of even being in the same room as such illustrious dishes. The five-course tasting runs £199, the seven-course £221, and both feature trolley service so flamboyant you half expect applause. Some more ruddy-faced customers do, in fact, clap. It’s all in service of Cornish beef aged longer than most parliamentary careers, Lake District lamb with actual postcodes for provenance, and vegetables treated like visiting dignitaries. As in, erm, carved up into pretty shapes. That doesn’t quite make sense, we realise…
There’s a more affordable set lunch menu where three courses will set you back £92 – potato vichyssoise with smoked bacon and comté for starters, Yorkshire duck with cassis and smoked walnut for mains. ‘Affordable’ being relative, of course, when lunch alone costs more than the rest of your week’s meals combined. The real financial reckoning comes when you start ordering wine – the cheapest glass of white begins at £18, red at £19. At this point, the meal shifts from expensive lunch to minor life decision. But you are here to indulge, after all…
Jackets and ties are mandatory for gents, which in 2025 feels either charmingly traditional or wildly anachronistic depending on your mood. On our visit, it all felt like good, clean fun.
Website: theritzlondon.com
Address: 150 Piccadilly, London W1J 9BR
Gymkhana, Albemarle Street
Ideal for experiencing Indian fine dining at its absolute pinnacle…
Already near-impossible to get a reservation back in the heady days of 2024, the waiting list has entered geological time following Gymkhana’s promotion to two Michelin stars, the first Indian restaurant in Britain to achieve this distinction.
Whilst we wouldn’t claim to understand just why the little red book doles out the stars, we can’t argue with Gymkhana’s accolades or reputation. This is quite simply superb food, a place where Sid Ahuja’s basement kitchen takes tandoor cooking and chatpata spicing into territory that makes traditionalists nervous and progressives ecstatic, with results that justify that waiting list.
The star of the show, the biryani, alone validates the hype. It arrives under a handsome pastry lid – a Gymkhana signature move that traps all that residual steam inside, letting the complex flavours get properly acquainted with each other before you break through.
We love to come here during game season. The restaurant is well-known for pairing Britain’s revered grouse and venison with contemporary and classic Indian dishes, and our favourite biryani rendition is the wild venison – the aged basmati with incredible depth of flavour, spices ground fresh every service… It’s immense. Sadly, it’s not on the keenly priced set lunch menu, which regardless represents London’s best-value double-starred meal by a significant margin, priced as it is at £65. You will find the funky kid goat methi keema on that menu though, and it’s the best we’ve ever tasted.
There have been murmurings of discontent in recent months about the restaurant’s minimum spend of £100, but it doesn’t apply to lunch, so it’s still possible to dine here without breaking the bank into too many pieces.
Whichever way you play it, finish up in the 42 cocktail lounge above the restaurant, which stays open until 2am on weekends, perfect for drowning your sorrows after they tell you the next available table is in April 2026.
Website: gymkhanalondon.com
Address: 42 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4JH
Hide, Piccadilly
Ideal for watching Green Park’s squirrels while decimating your credit limit…
Back in 2018, Ollie Dabbous (not him alone, christ; Hedonism Wines are the backers here) built this three-storey temple to modern European cooking directly opposite Green Park, then filled it with enough blonde wood to rebuild Noah’s ark and windows so vast you need sunglasses on sunny days. The effect is visually stunning. Though he has now moved on to pastures new, on the plate that bright, vital vibe continues…
Eating here means that much like the restaurant’s magnificent sculptural staircase, your finances will spiral downward with each course – though at least the descent is deliciously pleasing. Aside from the prices, it’s an outwardly inclusive affair, with breakfast, lunch and dinner served from 7am to 10pm daily (with slightly shorter hours at the weekend). That’s not to say they spread themselves too thin; the full arsenal of creativity is still firing, with their Michelin star still intact after Dabbous’ departure.
There is a mind-boggling array of different menu options that would be too tedious to list, so let’s discuss what must be one of the only Michelin-starred breakfasts in the capital (yes, we know menus aren’t actually anointed with a star). At Hide, your scrambled eggs on toast will set you back a measly £36 (truffle is involved), your Benedict will feature lobster and caviar, and your croissant will be filled with scorched banana and pecan. Of course, the champagne flows freely from morning onwards.
At the other end of the spectrum, Hide offers a tasting menu for both lunch and dinner service that shows off their most creative side. Priced at £165 a head with several optional add-ons, it’s a pleasingly frippery-free celebration of Europe’s finest seasonal bounty. Think dishes like delicate steamed Cornish turbot with its pearlescent flesh barely yielding to the fork, earthy cauliflower paired with golden girolles in a glossy vin jaune butter sauce, or perfectly charred Anjou pigeon, its skin barbequed and burnished, accompanied by smokey beetroot, Kalibos cabbage, and a rich, velvety Madeira jus. Thirsty? For a cool extra £1295, you can enjoy the ‘Hedonistic’ premium wine pairing.
Website: hide.co.uk
Address: 85 Piccadilly, London W1J 7NB
Sketch (The Lecture Room & Library), Conduit Street
Ideal for when reality feels insufficiently surreal…
Pierre Gagnaire’s London outpost occupies a Conduit Street townhouse that feels less like a restaurant and more like what happens when unlimited budgets meet unmedicated imaginations. The famous egg-pod toilets get all the Instagram attention, but the three-starred Lecture Room & Library remains one of Europe’s most over-blown dining experiences, executing Gagnaire’s hallucinogenic French cuisine with millimetre precision.
The £225 tasting menu reads prosaically enough; ‘Violet artichoke, bergamot, pistachio oil’ doesn’t tell you what you’re about to eat so much as hint at the general direction of the flavour explosion. Each dish comes as multiple components that you’re instructed to eat in specific orders, like edible choreography that only makes sense after the third glass of Avenue Foch.
The room itself, redesigned by India Mahdavi and Yinka Shonibare in 2022, wraps you in dusty pink mohair and African textiles that seem synergistic for eating foam made from lobster souls. And then, you come out blinking into the light, still hungry and a little confused, and wonder if it was all worth it…
Website: sketch.london
Address: 9 Conduit Street, London W1S 2XG
Read: The best restaurants near Oxford Circus
Arlington, Arlington Street
Ideal for pretending Le Caprice never closed…
Jeremy King’s return to the London restaurant scene after his acrimonious Corbin & King departure reads like a Hollywood script. He swooped on the old Le Caprice site, recruited Jesus Adorno (the GM every other GM secretly wants to be), and created Arlington, which is essentially Le Caprice reborn but legally distinct enough to avoid lawsuits. Within weeks of opening in March 2024, the reservation book looked like a Tatler party guest list. It remains so.
Arlington offers classic brasserie fare with prices that reflect its prestigious location near Green Park. Steak tartare is mixed tableside with proper ceremony (at £35 for a portion, you’d hope there was the requisite fanfare). Most mains hover around the £25-35 mark, which feels almost reasonable until you remember you’re paying Mayfair prices for what is essentially good pub food in expensive clothes.
The chargrilled rib-eye with sauce béarnaise and allumettes (that’s fancy for French Fries) will relieve you of £45, though given the neighbourhood, that barely raises an eyebrow. It’s comfort food for people whose idea of comfort involves linen tablecloths, cosy pink corduroy and the warming glow of a ruddy face. Make sure you order a side of Russel’s Caesar, named after Russel Norman’s favourite dish back at Le Caprice. It’s served just as he liked it; “crisp, generous and without fuss”.
The move here is to kick things off with a coastal martini, one of the capital’s finest cocktails. It’s appropriate for a room where everything happens at a refined pace and with a reassuringly timeless glamour. David Bailey photographs, venetian blinds, those particular shades of cream and brown, Tom Holland and Zendaya in corner banquettes, Cabinet ministers pretending they’re not checking their phones, fashion editors picking at salads while eyeing the profiteroles. It’s theatrical without being too tacky, which is harder than it looks.
Website: arlington.london
Address: 20 Arlington Street, London SW1A 1RJ
Benares, Berkeley Square House
Ideal for a Michelin-starred Indian that verges on the institutional…
Sameer Taneja’s (less said about the previous head honcho, the better) Berkeley Square operation has held its Michelin star since 2007, which in restaurant years makes it practically part of the furniture. Yet the cooking remains remarkably current, taking Indian techniques and applying them to impeccable British ingredients with results that don’t succumb to the much-malgined ‘fusion’ billing. It all goes down in a recently renovated space that spreads across multiple opulently-appointed rooms, working equally well for corporate lunches or special occasions.
The menu reads like a subcontinental greatest hits reimagined by someone with access to Harrods Food Hall and no budget constraints. Orkney scallops dressed in Kerala spices. Kentish lamb given the slow-cook treatment usually reserved for railway station goat curry but here rendered silk-shirt appropriate. A chocolate samosa with cardamom ice cream that is as good as it sounds. You might find one or all of those dishes on the business lunch menu, which at £49 for three courses (with a tight wine pairing for £28) represents fine value in this neck of the woods.
The finest thing we’ve eaten here, though, was a simple, delicate dish of chicken dumplings served in a fragrant spiced coconut broth, given real indulgence by bobbing lobes of caramelised foie gras. Man, it was good, and we’re always sad when it leaves the menu. Bring it back, guys!
Anyway, the five minutes’ walk from Green Park makes it one of the most apt substitutes in the area for those turned away from Gymkhana because they’re not famous enough to snag a last minute table.
Website: benaresrestaurant.com
Address: 12a Berkeley Square House, London W1J 6BS
Row on 5, Savile Row
Ideal for experiencing Jason Atherton’s triumphant return…
When Jason Atherton announced Pollen Street Social would be closing, London’s fine-dining food world held its breath. Would the man who’d conquered Mayfair with City Social, Social Eating House, and countless others bounce back? The answer came on Savile Row in late 2024 with Roux Scholarship winner Spencer Metzger (poached from The Ritz) running a kitchen that earned its Michelin star faster than you can say “fourteen-course tasting menu.”
The space feels suitably Savile Row, that’s for sure; all subdued luxury and perfect proportions, and you could use those descriptors for the food too, it could be said. The cooking displays the technical precision that made Atherton’s reputation but with a maturity that suggests lessons learned. British ingredients treated with international techniques but never losing sight of what makes them special in the first place. Highland beef aged until it’s practically eligible for a pension. Cornish fish so fresh it practically swims onto the plate (that would be weird, actually).
Remaining firmly on the plate, thank fuck, a dish of Cornish turbot, gently steamed and brushed with brown kombu butter, was the best thing we’ve eaten in this corner of London all year. The fish alone would have justified that praise, but it was finished with an ethereal silky fish Albufera sauce, razor clams, and fresh lovage, to make it something truly remarkable.
The fourteen-course tasting menu (there’s no other option) takes you through what feels like Atherton’s entire career condensed into one meal, all with the incredible tekkers that Metzger showed on his record-breaking Great British Menu debut. At £250 for the tasting menu, it’s not cheap, but given the neighbourhood and the pedigree, it’s not surprising either. The fact that many insiders were shocked Row on 5 didn’t debut with two Michelin stars speaks of the high regard the culinary cognoscenti hold this place in.
Website: rowon5london.com
Address: 5 Savile Row, London W1S 3PB
Bellamy’s, Bruton Place
Ideal for dining like royalty without the corgi hair…
Gavin Rankin’s Bruton Place brasserie trades on discretion, which in Mayfair means it’s absolutely rammed with people you recognise from the papers. Bellamy’s Franco-Belgian menu hasn’t changed significantly in twenty years because when your regulars included the late Queen Elizabeth II, you don’t mess with success. No wonder it has previously been given the somewhat dubious crown of ‘London’s most civilised restaurant’ by Tatler.
Stéphane Pacoud’s kitchen produces classics with the consistency of a Swiss watch manufacturer. The £45 table d’hôte lunch offers tremendous value for Mayfair, though value here still means you’re paying weekly shop prices for one meal (yep, we realise we’re rather labouring on a theme now, but this is the last entry on the list, so allow it).
The iced lobster soufflé sounds like something from the 1980s but tastes timeless. And not icey at all, thank heavens. The smoked eel mousse sounds like something from the… Hang on, we’ve already said that. Anyway, there’s a dedicated oyster bar, too, with immaculately shucked Jerseys priced at £24 a dozen. Amazingly for the posture of the place and its location, you can have a proper blow-out here for around £100 a head, even pricing in a couple of fine martinis, here poured from a bottle of frozen spirit into a frozen glass misted, completed with a spritz of vermouth. It’s those finer details that really sets Bellamy’s apart.
The room, all green banquettes and lighting that casts intimate shadows yet allows the more elderly regulars to actually see the menus, feels fitting. Just five minutes from Green Park, Bellamy’s has no Michelin stars, and has absolutely no need for them, either. Sometimes a restaurant’s greatest achievement is knowing exactly what it is and doing that thing better than anyone else. Bellamy’s mastered that equation decades ago and sees no reason to change now.
Website: bellamysrestaurant.co.uk
Address: 18-18a Bruton Place, London W1J 6LY
Speaking of oysters, and now that there’s an ‘r’ back in the month, here’s our guide on where to eat the best oysters in London. And yes, we know the whole ‘r’ thing is somewhat cooked now…
