The Resy Guide to London’s Cosiest Neighbourhood Restaurants

On a dark night, Little Cellars is a welcome refuge from the traffic and noise of Camberwell High Street. Sheltered indoors with vermouth in your glass, a record on the turntable, the dimmer switch down, all feels well in the world. Ex-Terroirs chef Ollie Lawrence’s plates are generous and lick-the-plate tasty. Roasted heritage carrots get a good dollop of salted yoghurt and vadouvan-spiced butter; mussels join braised leeks in a hot cider bath.

Cosy up to your amore over a bottle of Brunello at Dalla in Hackney, London’s most fashionable new Italian, where white tablecloths, music, and magnums of Italian wine prove conductive to conviviality. Chef Mitchell Damota is gearing up for the season ahead with pleasingly old-fashioned recipes like tortellini in brodo, risotto di funghi porcini, and guinea fowl alla cacciatora. Find the weekly menu posted on their Instagram.

It’s so cosy at this beloved Bermondsey bistro from the Casse-Croûte crew — why, even the food is wrapped up warm. Check out the classic French starter of pâté en croûte, the swanky venison wellington with ‘sauce grand veneur’ (a glossy sauce of madeira and chocolate) and the signature sea bass shrouded in its own little puffer jacket of pastry. Dessert might be sticky tarte Tatin or the double carb delight of an apple soufflé with caramel and bread ice cream.

French women don’t wear Uggs — they drink wine in chic Parisian bistros. Tom Sellers’ new Covent Garden restaurant is modelled after just such a spot, all dark wood panels, oxblood banquettes, and Gevrey Chambertin by the glass. Rotisserie chicken and fine wine are year-round classics but a cold night calls for pork rump cassoulet, gnocchi with pumpkin and chanterelles, apple crumble and custard or sticky toffee pudding. They don’t have that in Paris. The new Sunday service has a devout following.

At Polentina in Bow, Sophia Massarella marks the shift in seasons by switching from south to north, from strongly Italian to more Alpine and Austrian-inflected food. She’s a self-confessed soup obsessive; if you’re lucky, you might find zuppa pavese (chicken broth with egg yolks), leberknödelsuppe (liver dumpling soup) or frittatensuppe (broth with omelette strips) on at lunch. Evening menus see her dig deeper into her repertoire, for chicken ballotine with offal and calf’s brain crostini. Her sidekick Giulia Dowgier pours the wines to suit.

Cute, candlelit Tranga in villagey Newington Green is the perfect place to hunker down for the night. Split Spanish snacks and sharing plates of mussels escabeche and pickled guindilla chillies, hake with white wine sauce and herring roe, acorn-fed Ibérico ham, or blistered padron peppers (here’s hoping for the hot one).

Steamed sponges, soups, pies and stews — nobody does cold weather cooking better than Rochelle Canteen and River Café alumna Anna Tobias. Her modest Bloomsbury café-restaurant radiates warmth, the heat coming off such belly warmers as brisket with parsley mash and beetroot chrain, salt lamb with carrots, turnips, and caper and parsley sauce, and ginger loaf with toffee sauce and vanilla ice cream. At Café Deco, comfort food is not only for carnivores: vegetarian diners might get root vegetable and Lancashire cheese pie and  and green polenta with walnuts and Gorgonzola sauce.

They quite literally have cuddles on the menu at Trattoria Brutto in Clerkenwell – just what you need when the world outside is frosty and forbidding. The cuddles in question are not PDAs but ‘coccioli’, hot balls of fried dough ready to be crammed with prosciutto and stracchino. They haven’t left the menu since day one. The Tuscans know how to cope with fierce cold; to wit, brothy white beans, pappardelle with rabbit ragù, and copious quantities of Chianti.

Smart south Londoners hibernate at the Camberwell Arms, one of London’s most beloved gastropubs. The kitchen cooks with real oomph, putting scotch bonnet with pork fat on toast, soupy saffron puntalette with oxtail, and hot stem ginger custard with quince cake. The beef and ale pie is back by popular demand. Double park the Whisky Macs and don’t leave.

Trullo in Islington is one of those magical looking locales that has you peering down wistfully from the top deck of the bus, wishing you could be inside. The solution: get booked in and be one of the beautiful people sipping Sangiovese, twirling pasta, and thinking ‘isn’t life swell?’. Here, the seasonal Italian cooking is some of London’s boldest and best. Choose chargrilled quail with a properly pokey aioli, Tamworth pork chop on a 15-tog duvet of soft polenta, or pici with fennel sausage ragù, as effective as an extra layer of Uniqlo Heattech when the temperature drops.

From the cobbled street outside to the wood-burning stove inside, this east London dairy turned southern Italian restaurant couldn’t look more like the set of a Christmas romcom if there were a snow machine blowing outside. Don your cutest cashmere and cosy up at the communal table or in a quiet corner for ribbons of fresh pappardelle with lamb ragù or a soothing risotto pescatore. The ever-popular gnudi with sage butter are like a hug from nonna.

At Buvette in Notting Hill, the follow-up to the Buvettes in New York, Paris and Tokyo, chef Jody Williams pays homage to the Parisian bistro. The all-day menu opens with croque madames and waffles and Nutella at breakfast, bringing out the real ribstickers as the day progresses. Duck parmentier, coq au vin, and escargots are favourites. To drink, make it a communard (red wine with crème de cassis) or vin brulé (mulled wine).

This pocket size bistro and wine bar in Stoke Newington switches into comfort food gear for winter. On a cold day, plates like cotechino with collard greens and tagliatelle with rabbit and ‘nduja, and will warm you up from top to toe. An all-natural wine list features top bottles from the likes of Piemonte, Auvergne and Jura, regions where they know a thing or two about staving off the cold.

Colourful silk lanterns, carved screens and candles stuck in bottles set the scene at this Victoria Park dumpling house. The dumplings are made in-house, among them perennial favourites like pork potstickers, all crispy and lacy, and steamed har gau, the prawns curled in wrappers as snug as a bug. Larger hot plates include braised mapo tofu with shiitake mushrooms and chicken, and rice with three cup glaze.

Baltic in Brixton? Head to Naughty Piglets to defrost. This buzzy little bistro and bottle shop has won over locals with its short, sweet menu of French-accented small plates. The BBQ pork belly with Korean spices is a must-have year-round, while in the winter, the whole baked Vacherin with potatoes and prosciutto cotto and bavette with green peppercorn sauce have us at bonjour. Natural wines from cult producers such as Gut Oggau and Le Coste complete the picture.

Candles flickering, cushions plumped, curtains pulled to — this Dalston sibling to Soho’s Ducksoup gives us the warm fuzzies. The ever-evolving menu’s on a chalkboard, the ferment-forward modern European food served on tactile, homespun crockery. During the colder months, you’ll want Crown Prince squash ravioli with brown butter, treviso and sage or spiced chicken livers with quince. The fluffy gnudi with cime di rapa and chestnuts is unmissable when it’s on.