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...

The original Gentlemen Baristas  has been one of my favourite coffee shops in my neighbourhood — Bermondsey and Borough — for over seven years. While spending a lot more time closer to home over the past few years, I've been stopping by more often, usually to get a piccolo to go. If you like your coffee shops to combine cosiness with dapperness, this is the place to go. The GBs have expanded since then, with their Park Street shop next to Borough Market, being another of my favourites among their ten locations. The cafes are cousins rather than sisters, some retaining a more rustic style, while others, like their new flagship on Piccadilly , occupy rather grander digs. The Piccadilly cafe opened in September 2021 and I popped in for a 'Winterlude' visit in late December. The facade and entranceway of 162 Piccadilly are particularly impressive, though you'll probably need to cross the road to properly appreciate the building's architecture. But you can do that afte...