Dress Joanna Lumley up in head to toe William Morris print, hand her a glass of pinot noir, and you’re well on your way to understanding the essence of London’s reigning dame of class, cosiness, and hearty Great British cooking: Maggie Jones’s. Outside of making a fish pie that is more comforting than any Oodie slanket to grace God’s green earth, this Kensington institution has been operating as the gloriously cluttered country home of west London’s elite for over 60 years (minus a sad little hiatus due to a fire). As a result, she has all the best stories to tell. There’s the one about Princess Margaret regularly slinking in under a fake name (cough, Maggie, cough, Jones) for meet cutes with Lord Snowdon back when it was called Nan’s Kitchen. And the lesser-known tale of us co-opting one of the church-style pews for so many hours in the depths of a grim December that the exceptional, cinnamon-spiked crumble can be formally recognised as one of our longest relationships. All of the essential orders at Maggie’s can be classed as national treasures of the beige persuasion—the defiantly stinky stilton mousse, the molten cauliflower cheese, and some of the finest chips in London. The fact that every single main comes with a serving of our long-standing cold weather muse, mashed potato, is a huge part of why we return to this restaurant like it’s our favourite worn-in paperback, but we’d be telling a big fat fib if we claimed that the set-dressing isn’t just as seductive. Whether you’re cooing over a candle downstairs or make the perilous hike up the old winding staircase to the upper dining room, you’ll be surrounded by baskets of dried flowers and an assortment of twee knick-knacks that will enchant Darcy groupies even more efficiently than Colin Firth’s lakeside wet shirt contest. Bring the protagonist of your own great Austen-esque love story, an out-of-towner you always, always miss, or that relative who sends you loving little kisses at the end of their typo-ridden texts. Just know that the abundance of stilton and cream, and the candlelit home county setting are accomplices in lovely old Magg’s signature move: ensuring that you’re so charmed that you never want to leave.