facttime

Since I moved back to London 15 years ago, I have spent a lot of time eating my way around the city's increasingly diverse and impressive restaurant scene. To help me keep track — and for when friends and family asked for recommendations — I started jotting down my favourites in a Moleskine City notebook, which eventually evolved into a Google Sheet and then a blog post in 2016 . An update was long overdue and here it is: my 50 favourite restaurants in London.  My main criteria for the restaurants on this list are: quality of food, warmth of service and style/ambience of the venue. The list features a wide range of cuisines and price points — from budget to blow-the-budget. Because of where I live and hang out and where I worked, there's a bias towards SE and central neighbourhoods; sorry, West London, I'm working on it! I left out places where brunch is the primary focus because I already  created a guide to my favourite brunch spots . I've added links to my reviews w...

Sometimes a new speciality coffee shop opens that just has it all: warm hospitality, beautiful design, a relaxed atmosphere and, of course, excellent coffee.  Nagare Coffee , which opened in Spitalfields at the end of January, lives up to all of these, and both of my visits so far have been a pleasure. I was disappointed when I found out that Montezuma's chocolate shop at 40 Brushfield Street had closed at the end of last year. I love their chocolate and peanut butter bites and it was the only place I could find them in London. But I'd always thought the small space with its period features was wasted as a shop filled with so many shelves of sweet treats. Nagare makes perfect use of the space with a wooden counter taking up the space on the left-hand side, while the rest of the room houses a few small tables dotted around the fireplace and window seats. Two big windows let in a lot of light even on the greyest of winter days. There are also benches outside offering additional s...