Here is The London Economic’s top 10 restaurants in London that you need to visit in 2016
TripAdvisor boasts reviews for 18,159 restaurants in London, catering for foodie tastes of every type imaginable from all corners of the globe. Keeping up with the hot new eateries and menu choices in the capital is a time-consuming and calorie-busting effort (179 new restaurants opened in London last year alone) achieved by monitoring sites such as How to Spend It. To help you zero in on the best the capital has to offer, here’s a selection of our favourite staples and ones to watch for 2016.
The Ledbury
Chosen by TimeOut London as its number one restaurant for London, at least partially on the basis of its famous flame-grilled mackerel with pickled cucumber and the £105 taster menu, this is a restaurant in Westbourne Grove that looks set to endure. High-end, but hospitable.
Le Gavroche
Recently named as the number one gastronomic experience in the capital in Harden’s 2016 London Guide, this Michel Roux Jr restaurant was the first in the UK to be awarded one, two and three Michelin Stars. It boasts an extensive vegetarian menu and dishes such as clear duck broth with turnip flan, smoked duck, and roast T bone of turbot.
Viajante
This one’s a little mischievous, since we are describing a restaurant that doesn’t exist yet.
…but anyone who has experienced the magnificence of Chiltern Firehouse will know that Michelin star chef Nuno Mendes is unlikely to fail at anything he tries at life, including crowdfunding a £1.75m restaurant on the River Thames for late 2016 which shares the name of another of his eateries in Bethnal Green.
Araki
How many restaurants do you know that only seat nine people at one counter and six in another room? Mitsuhiro Araki has never done things in a conventional way, which was probably what helped him to bag three Michelin stars for his Tokyo restaurant.
The London equivalent is quickly catching up, with an FT review marvelling at the 99 dishes served in a single sitting.
Chez Bruce
Winner of the favourite restaurant in Harden’s guide, Bruce Poole’s Michelin-starred restaurant celebrated its 20th birthday in 2015.
Head chef Matt Christmas has worked at the venue for 10 years, creating dishes such as South Indian spiced fishcakes, pumpkin empanada, and pistachio meringue.
Fera at Claridge’s
Another Michelin-starred venue, Fera describes itself as taking a ‘creative and natural take on modern British cuisine’. Based at the world-renowned hotel in Mayfair, Simon Rogan’s menu literally changes with the weather the ingredients are grown in, and the set lunch at £39 is more than reasonable.
Now a quarter of a century old, the Panjabi sisters have put high-class cuisine on the London map with courses that you just won’t find in your average Indian restaurant.
This year it has relocated from Chelsea to St James’s Street and brought with it jardaloo masala, lal maas lamb, and other beautiful variations.
Orange Elephant
This Fulham steakhouse will be a treat for carnivores, serving a 12oz steak and beef-dripping chips for £20. That’s the menu!
If you do want more variety you can go bigger with a huge tomahawk 1.5kg Goliath when the restaurant opens in November 2015.
Coin Laundry
Fancy a trip back to the 70s? This Exmouth Market all-day restaurant boasts grasshopper and snowball cocktails, a sumptuous chicken kiev (with a counter telling guests how many are left in the kitchen), and authentic rabbit balti pie. Click here to get yourself on the mailing list.
Dabbous
Time Out says of this Whitfield Street venue: “Dabbous is particularly skilled with fruit, veg and foliage: if it’s got leaves, herbs or flowers in it, order it.”
That would mean that the set menu, starting with Cauliflower shavings with chestnuts, lovage and raisins soaked in jasmine tea (or lard on toast!) is a must then.