The 10 Restaurants That Defined London Dining in 2023

2023 could be split into two parts – the part of the year before this hotly anticipated newcomer (the first Soho restaurant from Brat chef Tomos Parry), and the remainder of the year, when the question, ‘have you been to Mountain yet?’ became an almost mandatory topic for restaurant lovers.

Mountain doesn’t lack for ambition – within the split-level site just off Carnaby Street, there’s a spacious dining room with an open kitchen and on-site bakery, plus a swish basement area with cosy booths – but the quality of the cooking and ingredients set the bar high for 2023’s newcomers. There was spicy sobrasada and honey on sourdough and a luscious spider crab omelette that threatened to launch a thousand copycats; showstopping calderetas of lobster and spider crab, and immaculate shellfish from British waters; plus, game, meat and fish cooked over wood fire to perfection.

Like its stablemates Brat, Kiln, and Smoking Goat, Mountain takes the idea of putting ingredients front and centre and turns it into a quasi-religion – but in setting that pace and proving a restaurant with lofty ideals can excel, it’s created a yardstick by which others will be measured, and an exceptional experience for diners in the heart of central London.

The story of Chishuru – from Brixton arcade residency to consistently winning the top spot on lists like, well, this one – is familiar to many, but the white-hot core of the restaurant has always remained chef Joké Bakare’s impressive cookery.

Bakare’s newest incarnation of her acclaimed modern West African restaurant finally opened its doors in central London in 2023, with a two-level dining room that provided the contemporary setting that better mirrored the ambition of her food while bringing it to a wider audience. There’s an excellent tasting menu in the evenings that’s best experienced with a friend or three, so you can try a couple of different mains – whether that happens to be succulent guinea fowl or Newlyn cod fillet with spiced black sauce – sandwiched by dessert and a small fleet of remarkable starters (the fermented rice cake with crab and sorrel is incredible). Okra martinis have become the drink of choice here, but there’s also a French-leaning list of natural wines for those inclined; meanwhile, a lunch menu contains many standout dishes for a mere £35. Don’t miss out.

The post-pandemic years have felt like collective culinary hibernation, with a desire for the comfort blanket of familiar flavours in intimate surroundings, and an embrace of aesthetic simplicity over unnecessary bells and whistles.

But with Londoners’ palates more well-travelled than ever, that yearning also arrives with a desire for nuance and storytelling, and no one did it better in 2023 than chef Dara Klein, who turned everyone who walked through the doors at The Compton Arms into true believers. Her diverse Italian heritage and upbringing – with family scattered throughout Italy and the US diaspora, plus her mother’s own background as a slow food luminary in her native New Zealand – has allowed her to share the best of Italy’s comfort food, interpreted through the lens of someone who worked at elite Italian restaurants like Brawn and Trullo. You could revel in anything from fork-tender ossobuco or a peak season fig salad with shallot vinaigrette, to signature dishes like pasta with perfect pesto Genovese or sublime panna cotta with seasonal fruit, all run through with the infectiousness of someone talented enough to pull it all off, night after night.

Of the latest crop of independents to open recently (Rambutan, Akara), none have proffered the buzz and anticipation that chef Abby Lee’s restaurant has served up, both literally and metaphorically.

In a climate when most restaurateurs are forced to play it safe, that a joyful, swashbuckling Malaysian restaurant celebrating the cooking of its diaspora exists in London is a wonderful thing indeed. Even better is the feeling of taking your seat on a busy Thursday night here at Lee’s brand new restaurant in Clapton (having decamped from Peckham, where her cooking became a must-try for serious diners), whether in the packed dining room, or at the counter watching Lee and her team as they spin and toss red-hot woks and pans, transforming ingredients into the kind of food that people literally dream of moving to a city like London to experience.

Nurse a chilled pet-nat while you wait for your crispy lor bak and skate wing curry, and perhaps dive into one of Lee’s kerabu (salads) that explode like psychedelic raindrops on your tongue, or a playful otak-otak prawn toast that’s one of the most thrilling things you can eat right now.

You could argue that Dorian sits at the intersection of two complementary ‘trends’ in London’s restaurant world. Sure – its Notting Hill location and sheer buzz gives it a sort of primacy in the current evolution of west London’s restaurants, while its upscale bistro credentials have also made it London’s buzziest French restaurant – yes, arguably even more than Bouchon Racine – in a city that currently can’t get enough of them.

But Max Coen’s restaurant is a phenomenon all its own, with everything checking the box – incredible food, wine, décor and service – but also the je ne sais quoi of being the restaurant that almost every chef either wanted to visit in 2023, or couldn’t stop talking about after visiting. And when was the last time the hottest restaurant in London happened to be west? Exactly. It is, in short, a scenester’s paradise, and a fun one at that. The bone in ribeye and turbot are excellent, and any game dish – perhaps fallow deer or wood pigeon – are sure bets. Good luck getting a table.

If a novelty takes place regularly, is it still, well, novel? As collab dinners and pop-ups become part of London’s regularly scheduled programming, less a one-night-only experience and more a game of culinary musical chairs – post or cease to exist – the best stuff can get drowned out by the noise.

That memo didn’t reach the owners of Oranj, however, who have genuinely added colour and depth to London’s culinary palette in 2023 by inviting some of the world’s best up-and-coming young chefs to show their stuff in a vibey and buzzing restaurant and gallery space in Shoreditch. Along with Vietnamese American trailblazers Ha’s Đặc Biệt and Torontonian crew See You Soon (made up of alum from Noma, Borago and Momofuku Shōtō), there was also a summer residency from CDMX’s Carinito as well as stints from local pacesetters like AYO Collective and Ana da Costa. They’re far from the only ones to do so – 180 Corner and, of course, Carousel spring to mind – but that the space pulses with energy even when the guest chefs disappear is a testament to the establishment’s appeal.

The year’s Francophile obsession (see also: Ploussard, 64 Goodge Street, Socca and Bistro Freddie, to name a few) punctuated a year in which celeriac remoulade, escargots, and sauce américaine graced London’s most fashionable restaurant menus.

The year’s benchmark, however, remained Bouchon Racine, a Lyonnais-style dining room above a Farringdon boozer that won people over with its cosy location, heartwarming food, and a charming blackboard that was rewritten daily with a new menu. Its chef and owner, Henry Harris, has done much to remind Londoners of the charm of gutsy French (particularly Lyonnais) cooking, and the menu at Bouchon Racine reflected that to a tee, with terrines, veal chops, tripe, and perfect crème caramel comforting Londoners banking on familiarity and the guarantee of a good time. It’s still difficult to snag a table at peak times, but worth persevering for.

In 2023, the closure of restaurants that, for many, defined an era in Hackney dining (Peg, P. Franco, and Bright) felt like a huge blow. But the new shoots that have grown in their place – whether ex vivo, as in the beautiful Leo’s from Bright’s Pep Belvedere, or taking over the former premises, as in 107 or Bambi – have hastened the healing.

The best has been saved for last, with Dalla opening on Morning Lane (on the former site of Peg), a quietly stunning restaurant that feels equal parts like a neighbourhood treasure, a showcase for Italian design, and a living museum for archive recipes. The seductive, romantic space is a haven for aesthetes but also the kind of space to linger and to savour in good light; meanwhile, chef Mitchell Damota’s love of old recipes means that, alongside familiar antipasti and hand-rolled pastas, each menu will offer unexpected delights, like trofie prepared with chestnut flour and a winter pesto of marjoram, whipped ricotta with saba (reduced grape must) or polenta and bean fritters from Emilia Romagna.

There was much to celebrate by way of London’s independent restaurants in 2023, but a huge chunk of the conversation was dominated by chains and huge, splashy openings from decorated chefs (Claude Bosi at the Peninsula; Yannick Alleno at the Four Seasons) in glamorous parts of town, often within elite hotels.

None were bigger than Raffles London, an outpost of the legendary Singaporean hotel that took over the refurbished Old War Rooms on Whitehall, polished and buffed to within an inch of its life. The hotel’s restaurants could have encompassed an upscale development by themselves, with a brace of upscale Milanese imports, an outpost of Paris’s Café Lapérouse,  a forthcoming Katzutoshi Endo offering, and three – count ‘em – restaurants by Mauro Colagreco of Mirazur. The latter’s flagship – a tasting menu situation in tastefully plush surroundings – has, to its credit, made the most of London (and Britain)’s larder while pushing the creative envelope in dishes like hydroponically grown Red Oak lettuce with smoked fish and a vermouth sauce, or a remarkable carrot dish with sea bass sashimi and sea buckthorn that focus on highlighting a central ingredient in stunning ways. While far from a frequent indulgence for most, its continued success should be a credit to London’s high-end dining scene.

Over lockdown, few raised Londoners’ spirits like Sonora, a taqueria selling perfect Northern Mexican wheat tacos and quesadillas from a tiny hatch in Hackney’s Netil Market. Sonora is one of many small, homegrown businesses that the city has collectively been rooting for over the past few years, and the opening of the owners’ first bricks and mortar affair is something to celebrate..

Not all of these food businesses are Sonora, by the way – few have raised the profile of Mexican cuisine (and the nuances therein) like owners Sam Napier and Sonoran native Michelle Salazar de la Rocha – which was mobbed by devotees from day one. Lines over the summer were regularly long, but the new premises has meant that the menu now stretches to saucy guisados (braises) as well as the familiar grilled fillings that Sonora built its reputation on like carne asada or nopales (cactus). There’s an area to sit and enjoy your tacos seated if you’re lucky, but really, they’re excellent enjoyed anywhere.

The late restaurateur Russell Norman exemplified the graciousness, attention to detail, and care that Londoners came to associate with their city’s dining culture, and few have had such an impact on the way an entire generation of Londoners approach the occasion of eating out. The affection for artfully raffish decor and negronis endures in so many of London’s dining rooms and menus, while small plates, the format Norman popularised with Polpo, is arguably now the preferred style of dining across the capital.

As legacies go, Trattoria Brutto is the rare restaurant that can be so many things to a wide spectrum of Londoners. It’s also one of the only restaurants where each service — yes, even Tuesday lunchtime on the coldest day imaginable — is imbued with the sparkle and sense of occasion of a Friday night. Everything, from the thoughtfully considered menu of Tuscan dishes (hearty and correct), flattering lighting and the knowingly retro decor — somewhere between the Lower East Side and Venice — conspires to drown the noise of the world outside, leaving you to revel in the pleasure of excellent food, wine, and company. Norman’s recent passing has left an irreplaceable void in London’s hospitality community, but in Brutto, his influence, generosity and humour live on.