One restaurant, one chef, one roti beef rendang that will inevitably become two when you just need to double check that a roti can be this gloriously soft and flaky. Yes, this low-key Malaysian spot inside Queensway Market is the kind of place where sharing seems like a good idea—the fried chicken, laksa with king prawns, assam pedas seabass, and that roti beef rendang are all essential orders—but you’ll quickly become as protective over the food in front of you as a poodle with a chicken bone.

London isn’t lacking in French restaurants but we’re extremely confident in saying that Bouchon Racine is the absolute crème de la crème. Everything at this seductive bistro in Farringdon feels like it’s made to be dunked or glugged. A chip into your bavette’s sauce Saint-Marcellin, a tear of baguette into celeriac remoulade, a glass of cognac after the final spoon of sumptuous crème caramel. Like all the true greats, it feels like you could stay in this lived-in room above a pub forever.

London has an excellent Indian restaurant scene. When you think you can’t possibly top that with anything different or special, Bibi enters. Every dish at this Mayfair spot is exciting and innovative. With things like a grilled lahori chicken in a cashew and yoghurt whey sauce that is so tender and creamy, you’d think it was the star of the show, only to have the raw orkney scallop in a lemonade dressing arrive at your table and make you feel things you didn’t think you could feel for a mollusk.

London’s most famous British restaurant and the place in which we have most actively fantasised about holding both our wedding and wake, St. John is a white-walled haven in Clerkenwell that’s been proudly serving up roasted bone marrow, gargantuan pies, and homemade doughnuts since the mid 90s. Use this institution as a daytime escape or a nighttime knees-up.

Kurisu Omakase is special in that it feels utterly unique to London. The sushi omakase experience mixes Japanese cooking with head chef Chris Restrepo's Thai-Colombian heritage, genuine brilliance, and inimitable made-in-Brixton charm. Restrepo wows you with confit uni butter risotto and pieces of 18-times-sliced scallop nigiri, while also entertaining you with stories about family holidays and secret dinners. This is a purposefully informal experience with food that is simply out of this world.

One bite of Kaieteur Kitchen’s pepper pot is all you need to be hooked. Maybe it’s the carefully stewed oxtail that melts in your mouth. Maybe it’s the aromatic sauce where whiffs of cassava, cinnamon, and cloves travel up your nose before spooning your heart. Either way, the attentive and nurturing service of Faye Gomes (the owner of this wonderful Guyanese spot in Elephant and Castle) will make you want to come back weekly.

Meet the Migas. They’re the family behind this modern Korean restaurant in Hackney, with dad in the open kitchen and his kids, the cool, unabashedly kind siblings, who are responsible for the warm welcome and service. It’s a calming, white-washed blank canvas of a room we want to spend the majority of our time in, even if a fleeting thought of the gochujang sauce didn’t already make us blush.

Akoko in Fitzrovia is that rarest of fine dining restaurants—one that makes you forget about the ‘fine dining’ moniker entirely. It’s warm, seductive, and thrums with a confidence that can only be attained when you know how to make moi moi this flawless. The West African tasting menu trots from Senegal to Nigeria and beyond, each dish entirely unique and surprising in an entirely different way to the last.

The front door at One Club Row is the hottest place to pose in east London. But the restaurant brings more than New York-cool and social cachet to Shoreditch. The maître d’ delivers zingers—“the shoes? Real cow, just like me”— with flair, one of the best burgers in London comes with an au poivre dipping sauce richer than the collective net value of the room, and everyone is made to feel like a 10. This is less dining room and more convention of London’s most charismatic people.

Himi is minimalist in design, but far from it in flavour and atmosphere. It’s got a Soho-cool edge, with a soundtrack of clinking half-pints and matcha-infused martinis, and Nas playing in the background as the chef hands out incredible temaki ōtoro warayaki. But it's softened by a warm, welcoming energy, partly thanks to Tamas and Tomoko, the husband and wife chef team who’ll chat with you from behind the bustling counter where prawns are grilled and meat is blowtorched.

There aren’t many places where we’d happily test our quad strength by squatting in an alley to eat a taco—but Sonora Taquería is one of them. There’s almost always a queue that’s full of other believers who’ve made the pilgrimage for cheese crust bean quesadillas. These tacos are worth the wait, worth planning your entire day around, and they are worth popping a squat in the neighbouring alley if the handful of seats are taken. The menu is short and ordering is simple—it’s all fantastic.

You can feel the pull of Belly before you see it. The glow of tea lights and hum of laughter spill onto Kentish Town Road like an invitation you shouldn’t ignore. This Filipino bistro is a magnet for anyone who likes fun and coconut cream. Inside, it’s all playful dates, loud groups, and effortlessly charming servers who glide between tables dropping menu recommendations. The tempura cod pandesal is non-negotiable, and you’re definitely getting at least two desserts.

Meals at Zeret Kitchen come with an overwhelming side of peacefulness. At every table you’ll see hands neatly ripping at injera, pinches of kitfo being expertly dispatched, and warm catch-ups taken to the next level by a scoop of shuro wot. There’s so much to love about this slow-paced Ethiopian restaurant in Camberwell and everyone seems to naturally adjust to its calming atmosphere. The gentle orchestral soundtrack probably helps, and so too does the brilliant food.

Tasty Jerk is the most elite Caribbean spot in London. The takeaway-only joint opposite Selhurst Park is a must. Its pork belly marries a ludicrously charred and crunching exterior with melt-in-your-mouth fat, while the chicken surrenders from the bone almost immediately. Hunch over the counter if you like or find your own space in the big Sainsbury’s behind. Either way, get extra homemade jerk sauce. It’s better than water.

Ikoyi is one of those restaurants, complete with a £150+ tasting menu, that will make you wonder whether a higher power has been resurrected in the form of a bowl of crab custard. The St. James’s restaurant is West African in influence and haute in style. The combination of these things—in the form of dishes like ginger and kombu caramelised plantain and irresistible smoked jollof rice—makes Ikoyi a truly unique eating and drinking experience. Which isn’t something you can say often in London.

A lot of fine dining places leave you feeling like the foam you’ve just been served—very fancy but rapidly deflating, and, eventually, completely flat. But not Core. The cooking at Clare Smyth’s British Notting Hill restaurant is flawless, the presentation of dishes make us feel like we’ve stepped on to the set of a live-action fairy tale, and the service is slick but never stuffy. The easiest booking to nab is at 9:45pm, but don’t be put off.

Off Carnaby Street, in a hellish courtyard crowded with bewildered tourists and vape fumes, is a Filipino-born and London-bred restaurant doing its own thing. At Donia, devour lamb caldereta ingeniously reinvented in pie form and investigate all manner of lush, layered sauces. This restaurant doesn’t whisper sweet nothings with its food, it introduces itself and gives you a back-breaking embrace before kissing your forehead for good measure.

The people behind The Devonshire understand that pubs should be warm places and the soundtrack in the dining room is all humming conversation and the crackling fire responsible for your fall-apart Iberico pork ribs. The menu single-handedly rehabilitates the image of dishes like suet pudding which comes with buttery, light pastry and rich beef stew. The temptation to hunker down in the dimly lit, wood-clad space for just one more—sticky toffee pudding or pint—is hard to resist.

If you’re looking for the plumpest, most herb-packed summer rolls, or the crispiest, most prawn-heavy bánh xèo, go to Eat Vietnam. The Deptford favourite is without doubt the most consistently excellent Vietnamese restaurant in London. The low-key room and reasonable prices suit any occasion but the attention to detail is seen in everything you eat. Regulars know repeat visits are essential, simply because the menu is so vast and so appealing.

Highbury and Islington is one of the busiest stations in the UK, but at Trullo everyone feels like they have all the time in the world. The neighbourhood Italian is a restaurant that isn’t just loved—it’s utterly adored. Everything from anniversaries to afternoons off are celebrated here, be it with a plate of glorious beef shin pappardelle or over a bottle of barolo. If adult playgrounds were a thing, they would likely look like this.

Curry recommendations can send you all over London, but it’s close to Heathrow Airport where you’ll find the silkiest charsi chicken karahi and the most gargantuan Afghan naans. If anything, Taste of Pakistan is more hectic than a departures terminal. The Pashtun favourite is more akin to a club, with 4x4s pulling up outside come dinner and hordes of friends and families settling into the paired-back, white-lit dining room ready to take down several chapli kebabs and mountains of kabli pilau.

One trip to this laid-back Xi’anese restaurant and you’ll feel like a cold liangpi noodle has wrapped itself around your hippocampus, squeezing out pretty much everything else you care about. But it’s not just those chilli oil noodles that are unmissable at Master Wei, a low-key spot in Bloomsbury. It’s the spicy cumin beef burger, the hypnotic chew-factor of the hand-pulled biang biang noodles, and the zingy potato sliver salad that’s like a high five on a sunny day.

There has never been any point beating around the bush with Dimsum and Duck: it’s the best all-round Cantonese we’ve eaten in London. The dumplings, from xiaolongbao to cheung fun, are superb. The ho fun is slippery and full of the aroma of wok hei. Yes, the walk-in only queues are consistent. And no, it isn’t fine dining service. But whether you squeeze into its box-sized dining room or get a spot under the canopy out front, the food very quickly takes permanent residence in your brain.

This British-Thai restaurant takes no prisoners. Its changing menu will see an electric northern laap with pollock one month, before it switches to a pork offal creation. Sit at the counter and watch flames dance over claypots as you sip a crisp beer and know that, if it all gets too much, you can always lean on those lush pork belly and brown crab noodles.

Whether you're a Beckham or a bemused tourist, Gymkhana is a certified London landmark. It’s a Mayfair restaurant dressed up in jade green glad rags, but look past the marble and hunting trophies, and you’ll find some of the city's very best Indian food. The creamy, Hermès orange-hued prawn curry results in Kashmiri chilli tingles, the tandoori lamb chops sizzle in all of their garam masala splendour, and the obscenely fragrant wild muntjac biryani arrives on its own tableside throne.