10 Superb London Restaurants for Dining Solo

Anna Tobias’s Bloomsbury café takes its cues from the bars and bistros of continental Europe, where sipping wine and reading Sartre by candlelight is still the norm (no judgement if you’d rather stare listlessly at your phone). Unobtrusive spots for solo diners are at high stools by the bar or at the handful of small tables that hug the walls. Tobias’s menu suits appetites small or large. A bowl of leek and potato soup would make a fine lunch; but for something more substantial, make it wild mushroom tagliatelle or roast pigeon with pumpkin and bitter leaf salad. A scoop of plum ice cream is just right for pudding.

You’re never alone long at Sambal Shiok on Holloway Road, where the constant stream of like-minded laksa-lovers throughout the day keeps the place at a permanent level of pleasantly buzzy. Most come for Mandy Yin’s signature curry laksa with rice noodles to which you can add all the extras you like, whether tofu puffs, an egg, double the sambal. Choose traditional shrimp-based broth, or the lip-smacking umami juice that is the vegan version.

What makes Silo in Hackney Wick so good for the solo diner? First off, the service: natural, confident, well informed (you’ll be on first name terms by the end); the music is just the right level of interesting; and you could argue that the seats at the counter that wraps around the open kitchen are the best in the house. The menu, projected on the wall – Silo is strictly zero waste – offers a £59 tasting menu or a choose-your-own-adventure of small plates such as ‘quavers’ with vegetable treacle and goats’ cheese, and chicken with buttermilk and wild garlic. There are some superb wines by the glass, should you not wish to uncork a bottle just for yourself.

The French have perfected the art of dîner à deux – and à un. Robin and Sarah Gill’s new, Gallic-accented Brixton wine bar invites us all to find our inner Parisian, and make every meal, even a solo meal, a splendid one. A thick slice of the rabbit and Agen prune terrine with crusty sourdough does very nicely with a glass of the excellent house red, as of course would a flat iron steak, comme il faut, with frites, peppercorn sauce and a salad for health. Opening hours are long, so you can always find a quieter time if that’s your preference.

Slurp your noodles like nobody’s listening at Koya City, the Bloomberg Arcade upcropping of London’s homegrown udon specialists. A solo meal here is habit-forming; you’ll want to make a weekly thing of it as you work your way through the menu in its entirety, from springy udon in hot dashi to such sensational specials (courtesy of Portuguese chef Gustavo Tavares) such as French oysters with preserved lemon and kumquat and sweetcorn kakiage tempura with bonito salt. The best seats are at the bar, head down over a steaming bowl of soup.

Me-time comes with a Michelin star at Leroy, the vinyl-soundtracked wine bar and restaurant in Shoreditch. Sit up at the counter where the records, cookbooks and cool staff hang out, for gently innovative modern European plates such as monkfish with sweetcorn and chicken wings or trout with crispy oysters and warm tartare sauce. The lunchtime prix fixe is pretty great, from £32, for the likes of grilled ox heart, borlotti beans and red pepper or the signature steak tartare with a tangle of shoestring fries, all crisp and golden.

If dinner alone in Soho feels daunting, Duck Soup is your friend. This small-scale natural wine bar (one of the area’s first, back in the day) seats singletons at the long wooden counter that runs the length of the room. The weekly changing menu, scrawled on the blackboard, majors in simple cooking and true, clear flavours. Such as, recently, white crab with bobby beans, mayonnaise and tarragon and rare lamb with radish, mint, and salted anchovy. You’ll be wanting a glass of wine with that. Pleasingly, that list also changes weekly.

There’s no better place to decompress post-Borough Market than at the counter at Elliot’s, glass of natural wine in hand. Brett Redman’s flavourful food is as good for hogging as it is for sharing. The signature sourdough pizzas are insane, bubbly of crust and laden with toppings like crab with preserved lemon and pickled chillies or red kuri squash, ricotta, confit garlic and walnut. Seasonal small plates include girolles and oyster mushrooms with egg yolk and ex-dairy sirloin carpaccio and tonnato dressing. The zinc-topped bar at a sister restaurant in Hackney also fits the solo dining bill perfectly.

There’s joy to be had around the communal table at Sunday in Brooklyn in Notting Hill, the first international outpost of the Williamsburg original. The famous Sunday Pancakes™ come in orders of one, two or three. Alternatively, there’s thick-cut brioche with ricotta and jam or biscuits and gravy with poached eggs and hot sauce, best enjoyed with a Honeybear on Holiday, surely the world’s cutest cocktail. Not just for brunch or indeed for Sundays, Sunday in Brooklyn does a great line in salads, smashburgers and steaks for dinner. Bring the papers and/or your dog.

The window seats at Rita’s in Soho are the perfect perches from which to look out at the goings-on on Lexington Street. Chef Gabriel Pryce keeps lunch casual, perhaps a fried chicken roll, Caesar salad or sausages and peppers with beans and mustard. Things are a bit more amped up in the evening, when the palomas flow, and the steaks hit the grill, but it’s fun to be part of it, even when you’re there solo. Signatures such as the mini margarita, hot bean devilled eggs, and jalapeño popper gildas conveniently come in single serves.