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The Best Restaurants in London, and How to Get Into Them

Three stars in Kensington, two in Notting Hill and Mayfair, and the nose-to-tail room that started it all.

7 min read · Updated September 2026

The Best Restaurants in London, and How to Get Into Them

London now eats better than Paris — a sentence nobody would have written thirty years ago, and one that is difficult to argue with in 2026. The catch is that the best tables are also the most contested in the country.

These are the five we put people in, with the booking tactics that actually work. Each says plainly who it suits, because a Mayfair club room and a bare-wood Shoreditch dining room are different evenings out.

The pinnacle

Core by Clare Smyth in Kensington holds three Michelin stars for cooking that folds wit into formal food — the potato-and-roe course has been imitated across the world and never equalled. The room is plush and calm; book two months out or take the counter at lunch.

The Ledbury in Notting Hill is the other kind of three-star night: a warm wood room where nothing is performed and every plate lands. Weekday tables are genuinely gettable; Saturday is not.

The club and the theatre

Gymkhana holds two stars in an Edwardian club room of dark green and brass — game tikkas, kid goat methi keema, and the best Indian cooking in the city. Book the early seating.

Sketch is the theatrical one: blush velvet, sculptural lamps, and an afternoon tea worth travelling for. The stars live upstairs in the Lecture Room & Library; the pink Gallery is where everyone takes photographs.

The original

St John near Smithfield remains the most influential dining room in London — Fergus Henderson's nose-to-tail cooking in a whitewashed former smokehouse. Order the marrow and the madeleines; lunch is the better sitting.

Where to stay between them

Claridge's is the address that puts you within a ten-minute cab of four of the five, and its own rooms are a fair consolation for any table you failed to book.

Velori earns a commission on some bookings made through partner links. It never changes what you pay.