Best See & Be Seen Places in London

Clare Smyth's three-Michelin-star Notting Hill flagship, modern British cooking at the peninsula's ceiling

Royal Hospital Road's three-Michelin-star founding flagship, held continuously since 2001

The 2023 conversion of the Old War Office on Whitehall, Mauro Colagreco's Michelin-starred Saison, a Guerlain spa, and the most ambitious new opening in the city.

Karam Sethi's Marylebone coastal-Indian, one Michelin star held since 2012

Notting Hill's Michelin-starred neighbourhood brasserie, wood-fired grill, retained star 2026

Claude and Lucy Bosi's Parisian-brasserie second site, the Marylebone room that opened where Daylesford Blandford Street used to sit

Mount Street seafood and the city's most consequential lunch crowd, the Mayfair set-piece.

The Brook Street Art Deco grande dame, afternoon tea in the Foyer, a Foyer Bar by Bryan O'Sullivan, and the most famous lobby in London.

Tomos Parry's Michelin-starred Beak Street wood-fired room, the Basque grill that Brat became Soho-confident in

Rainer Becker's original 2004 robatayaki, the Charlotte Street counter Roka grew from, with Shochu Lounge in the basement

A patinated 18th-century courtroom turned dining room, Clerkenwell's most photographed kitchen

The 1893 hotel bar that wrote the cocktail manual the rest of London still reads

Piccadilly's grand café, the Viennese-Parisian brasserie that runs from breakfast to supper

The Berkeley's pastry counter, Grolet's first London room, the trompe-l'œil fruits the audience has only seen on Instagram

St Martin's Court's 1890s seafood institution, Theatreland's pre-curtain Dover sole

Piccadilly's 1707 grocery, the food hall, the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, the hampers everyone takes home

Keith McNally's Russell Street brasserie, the SoHo Manhattan original transposed to Covent Garden, twelve years in.

Pierre Gagnaire's three-Michelin-star Mayfair drawing room, the most theatrical fine-dining address in W1.

Chet Sharma's one-Michelin-star Mayfair Indian, the JKS room that reframed regional Indian cooking in 2021.