Some people think that just because West London has a reputation for luxury and fine living so, therefore, must its restaurants.
Those people would be right.
Of course you’ll also find the occasional edgy & inventive spot intermingled here too. But if you’re looking for an area where cutting-edge sushi spots rub shoulders with classic Michelin Starred restaurants, elegant gastropubs, and globally renowned eateries then, well, you’ve found it…
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Akub | Notting Hill
Before Akub, Palestinian cuisine was a bit of an unknown entity in London. However Bethlehem-born chef Fadi Kattan’s tranquil West London restaurant – bursting with earthy tones, and fitted with an actual olive tree – has put it firmly on the map. Come here for some of the best brunch in West London, for modernised versions of traditional dishes (mansef balls stuffed with minced lamb & rice, freshly-baked zaatar bread spread with labneh & pomegranates) and all sorts of tempting, elegantly-presented desserts like a dead sea chocolate cake garnished with sea salt, served beside a scoop of tahini ice cream.
Details: 27 Uxbridge Street, W8 7TQ | Book a table at Akub
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The Barbary Notting Hill | Notting Hill
Good news: you no longer have to travel outside of your postcode to bask in The Barbary‘s lauded Mediterranean-meets-North African culinary genius. Chronologically speaking, this is the sequel, but it feels very much like the flagship: it’s about three times the size of the original, and utterly gorgeous, with sweeping countertops and banquette seating, overhead lighting that’ll make you look like a movie star, and floor to ceiling wraparound windows where you’ll be showered in envious glances from passers-by. Get the coffee-rubbed chicken, the labneh with fried artichoke, the glazed pork belly skewers and a slab of that famous hash cake – and congratulate yourself on choosing to live in the same neighbourhood as one of the best restaurants in London.
Details: 112 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5RU | Book The Barbary Notting Hill
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The River Café | Hammersmith
West London is often mocked for being less rapidly evolving than its Eastern counterpart. But that’s probably because it’s busy nurturing the award-winning eateries that have been flying the flag for great British restaurants for over 30 years. Ruth Rogers’ River Café has fostered some of the biggest names in the business, and still hits the mark with glorious Italian dishes. Plus, they’ve just launched their sophomore after a mere 37 years, sitting right next door and serving more casual fare – they call it The River Café Café.
Details: Thames Wharf, Rainville Rd, Hammersmith, W6 9HA | Book a table at The River Café
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The Pelican | Notting Hill
The Pelican is a gorgeously revamped neighbourhood pub just off Portobello Road. Except unlike most neighbourhood pubs its drawn heaps of critical acclaim (including a Michelin Bib Gourmand) for its elevated food offering, which you can enjoy in a peaceful, candlelit dining room tucked away at the back. British produce comes out swinging in dishes like ox heart with celeriac, zinging rhubarb with goat’s curd, and the famous lobster & monkfish pie to share, with lobster head gravy.
Details: 45 All Saints Road, London, W11 1HE | Book a table at The Pelican
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The Counter | Notting Hill
Well, this place is lovely. To walk in is to be enveloped by warmth – both metaphorically, from the staff, and physically, from the ocakbaşı grill, which chef Kemal Demirasal and his team use to churn out a parade of mouthwatering, flame-kissed dishes. The cocktails – laced with savoury notes and spices – make perfect and unexpected companions to visionary creations like the white chocolate babaganoush, alongside well-executed Turkish classics. Ask to sit up at the eponymous counter to be a part of the action.
Details: 108 Golborne Road, Notting Hill, W10 5PS | Book a table at The Counter
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Julie’s | Notting Hill
To call a restaurant ‘fabulous’ is usually a polite way of saying it’s fun, frilly, and the food’s a bit crap. But Julie’s is the real deal, blending style and substance to create the kind of restaurant you could happily spend every day of the week in. Service is effusively warm and personable, the decor is glamorous, and the atmosphere is the right side of decadent, with live pianists and attractive lighting. The place is a genuine institution, having been here for decades, but its current incarnation feels like its best yet, thanks to the installation of ex-Brat and The Pelican chef Owen Kenworthy in the kitchen. The terrace out front is the place for shellfish platters and bottles of white wine, but hunkering down in the basement booths in winter is as fabulously romantic as it gets.
Details: 135 Portland Road, Holland Park, W11 4LW | Book a table at Julie’s
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Caia | Notting Hill
Another red hot restaurant firing up Notting Hill, with open-flame cooking on a custom-made grill. Dishes pinch influences liberally from across the globe, from the jerk-spiced Iberico pork to the sweet potato agnolotti with chicken wing butter. Caia doubles as a luxe wine bar, with floor-to-ceiling bottle-stacked racks, while the basement room has a heavy-duty sound set-up with vinyl coming from Kuzma R record player with Auditorium R-25 speakers. ‘Impressive audio equipment’, in simpler terms.
Details: 46 Golborne Road, London W10 5PR | Book a table at Caia
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Petersham Nurseries | Richmond
Petersham Nurseries recently won a battle to keep trading for dinner service, which feels like a bizarre position to be in considering it’s one of the most unique restaurants in West London. Attached to the eponymous plant nurseries, Petersham Nurseries’ restaurant serves elegant Italian-inflected dishes in what is essentially a giant greenhouse – one overgrown with creepers and canopies of bougainvillea, and filled with an eclectic array of vintage tables and chairs topped with freshly cut flowers every week. The teahouse (also set in a greenhouse) is a more casual setting for home-made cakes and coffee next to a wood-burner stove, as well as a stellar afternoon tea.
Details: Church Lane, Off Petersham Road, Richmond, TW10 7AB | Book a table at Petersham Nurseries
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SUMI | Notting Hill
SUMI is easily one of the best sushi restaurants in West London, coming to you from Michelin-starred chef Endo Kazutoshi (of Endo at the Rotunda fame). The breezy dining room exudes effortless elegance, as will you after one of their signature Japanese-leaning cocktails. Standout dishes include iced sashimi, hand-rolled temaki, and salmon teriyaki. It’s worth the splurge, even if you have to eat beans the rest of the week.
Details: 157 Westbourne Grove, Notting Hill, W11 2RS | Book a table at SUMI
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Claude Bosi At Bibendum | South Kensington
It’s Modern European fine-dining courtesy of the illustrious Claude Bosi. You’ll find it in the former Michelin tyre factory (hands down the best-looking building in South Ken). Downstairs is a more relaxed seafood bar with stunning interiors, while upstairs Bosi and his team rustle up the likes of Basque pork with parsley root, winter mushrooms, and black liquorice, earning themselves not one but two Michelin stars within months of opening.
Details: Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road, Kensington, West London, SW3 6RD | Book a table at Bibendum
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Dinner by Heston | Knightsbridge
Your double Michelin-starred dinner at Dinner will take inspiration from dishes through the centuries, with a little help from Heston Blumenthal’s wacky creativity (like an ‘orange’ that’s actually meat), a very old recipe book, and a historically accurate pineapple roasting pulley.
Details: Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, 66 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7LA | Book a table at Dinner
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The Harwood Arms | Fulham
The Harwood Arms is London’s only Michelin-starred pub, co-owned by restaurateurs Brett Graham & Mike Robinson. It focuses on using as much wild food as possible, particularly game, and has a cosy atmosphere with velvet banquettes and dark wood. The menu includes dishes such as deer with beetroot, blackcurrant and smoked bone marrow, and whipped chicken livers with thyme hobnobs and onion jam. Basically, it’s good – and you can enjoy it all with a pint.
Details: Walham Grove, Fulham, SW6 1QP | Book a table at The Harwood Arms
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Fantômas | Chelsea
Fantômas is the latest opening from the team behind the wildly popular Lita, who, in a real coup, have joined forces with ex-Fiend chef Chris Denney. It’s a dangerously sleek and seductive spot tucked down the quieter end of the King’s Road, heralded by a red neon sign across its plain exterior. Inside, it’s like stepping into another world – think the sultry atmosphere of La Bodega Negra paired with the ingredient-led cooking of somewhere like Angelina. The Josper is the star of the open kitchen, turning out tender game dishes, perfectly-pitched fish and more, and the cocktails are just as fantastic.
Details: 300 King’s Road, London, SW3 5UH | Book a table at Fantômas
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The Ledbury | Notting Hill
Justin De Souza
Three Michelin starred The Ledbury is undoubtedly one of London’s finest fine dining restaurants. Drop in, and you’ll find a streamlined 8-course tasting menu, which focuses on using whole animals as part of chef Brett Graham’s (yes, him again) push for more sustainable meat production. No a la carte. After closing for a few years during the pandemic, the place has had something of a revamp: the menu is prepared by new head chef Tom Spenceley (previously of the double Michelin-starred Kitchen Table in Fitzrovia), and the restaurant’s glamorous interior has been redesigned by These White Walls, who’ve steered away from their usual look with some green & beige walls.
Details: 127 Ledbury Road, Notting Hill, W11 2AQ | Book a table at The Ledbury
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Wildflowers | Chelsea
Rebecca Dickson
Aaron Potter’s debut solo restaurant will take no time at all in growing on you. Firstly, it’s unspeakably gorgeous, thanks to interior designer Laura Hart’s stylish marriage of candlelight, vintage pieces and sensitive, post-industrial refurb of the former timber yard space. And secondly, the food is absolutely first-class: Potter’s Mediterranean menu skips effortlessly from Bologna to Catalonia, taking in dishes like Galician Blond ex-dairy steak; gnocchi fritti; and cuttlefish fideuà along the way. Make time pre- or post-meal to get acquainted with the upstairs cocktail bar, too.
Details: Newson’s Yard, 57 Pimlico Rd, London, SW1W 8NE | Make a booking at Wildflowers
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The Hero | Maida Vale
Sibling to The Pelican, The Hero has inherited the family’s good looks, with bare plaster and stripped wood panelling wrapping the walls of its historic pub home. Downstairs remains a bustling neighbourhood boozer, pulling pints and serving god-tier Scotch eggs by a roaring fire in the colder months. But on the first floor you’ll find the Grill Room, a lofty-ceilinged dining room fitted with crisp white tablecloths, ready to receive a stellar British menu of elevated gastro cuisine and well-sourced slabs of meat and fish scorched over a live fire.
Details: 55 Shirland Road, Maida Vale, W9 2JD | Make a booking at The Hero
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Paulette | Maida Vale
A quintessentially Parisian bistro, complete with the requisite gingham tablecloths, bentwood cafe chairs and a constellation of chintzy pendant lampshades hanging overhead. Come here whenever you feel the distinct need to be thoroughly well looked-after, through the personable hospitality of the family owners, through the flowing bottles of house red, and most certainly through the lemon meringue pie.
Details: 18 Formosa Street, London, W9 1EE | Make a booking at Paulette
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Canteen | Notting Hill
The latest venture from the seemingly unstoppable team behind The Pelican and The Hero, Canteen represents a total departure from their usual formula of ‘rustic, dressed-down gastropub’. Instead, it’s a gorgeously buzzy little Italian parked on a corner of Golborne Road, with a menu that’s constantly morphing in response to the seasons and the whims of the chefs. It’s the kind of place you could happily spend a whole evening chatting, nibbling, and sipping apéritifs until they become digestifs…
Details: 310 Portobello Road, W10 5TA | No bookings
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Three Darlings | Chelsea
A fine dining maestro has come to Chelsea – and he’s given the area one of its most relaxed restaurants. Three Darlings is part of Jason Atherton’s prolific new wave of openings (which also includes the ambitious British brasserie Sael and the tasting menu spot Row On 5), and its genius lies in serving fine dining-quality dishes, only in generous portions, at decent prices, in the kind of warm, neighbourhood setting you could come back to again and again. It’s a place which befits weekend brunch as well as a celebration, and the Yukon Gold potato dish is probably the most comforting thing you’ll eat all year.
Details: 241b Pavilion Road, Chelsea, SW1X 0BP | Make a booking at Three Darlings
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Juno | Notting Hill
Los Mochis deserves a spot on the list of West London’s top restaurants in itself. But if you head to the back of the restaurant and peek behind the curtain, you’ll be rewarded with Juno – a hidden omakase restaurant serving top quality sushi. Oh, and you’ll need a booking, too, because there’s only six seats.
Details: Inside Los Mochis, 2-4 Farmer St, W8 7SN | Book a seat at Juno
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The Waterman’s Arms | Barnes
The Waterman’s Arms are beautiful. Must be something in the Thames water. Or it could be the recent refurb that’s decked out this riverside pub in deep wooden tones and candlelight. Sure, you could just come here for a pint on the balcony terrace, but it’s so much more than that – settle in for the kind of feast you’ll barely be able to stumble home after, with fried beef pain perdu, spit-roasted chicken or herby lemon sole, and their famed baked malt custard.
Details: 375 Lonsdale Road, London SW13 9PY | Make a booking at The Waterman’s Arms
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Silver Birch | Chiswick
Walk into Silver Birch, and you’ll soon twig this isn’t any neighbourhood restaurant. Sitting on Chiswick High Road – one of the most charming avenues in West London – it has the feel of a local brasserie, with generous terrace seating out front and soothing, earthy-toned interiors. The food, however, is a cut above. Head chef Nathan Cornwell cut his teeth at Michelin Starred restaurants around the world, and it shows in the roasted Isle of Mull scallop, in the guinea fowl with apricot purée and salsa verde, and in the brown butter chocolate delice with cherries & milk sorbet. It definitely shows in that.
Details: 142 Chiswick High Road, W4 1PU | Book a table at Silver Birch
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Core by Clare Smyth | Notting Hill
Clare Smyth was the first female British chef to net three Michelin stars when she headed up Gordon Ramsay’s eponymous joint – and blow us down if she hasn’t done it again with her own debut solo spot. Enter a sleek, well-heeled dining room with a huge plate glass window looking onto the kitchen, where Smyth and her team industriously prepare elegant tasting menus of classic British fare. If your wallet won’t stretch that far yet, drop into the restaurant’s bar, Whiskey & Seaweed, where you can enjoy signature cocktails alongside meticulously-prepared bar snacks.
Details: 92 Kensington Park Road, W11 2PN | Book a table at Core by Clare Smyth
Like dining out in West London? Follow up with a tour of the best bars in West London