Fitzrovia, Mediterranean Restaurant Guide

Jun Tanaka’s brilliant Mediterranean-inspired cooking is showcased at its best at his casual six-year-old HQ in Fitzrovia. It’s “notably good value” for cooking of this “excellence” and “variety of flavours” – the sort of place you’ll “definitely go back to again”. Tanaka has done some TV but is relatively unsung – if he was a little better known, this place would be a household name.

2021 Review: A “wealth of wines by the glass” and “tasty nibbles”, help make this growing group of self-service wine bars a “fun way to try a selection of vintages from a multitude of small producers”. At the Battersea Power Station branch’s school you can educate your palate towards Wine & Spirit Education Trust certification and watch wine being made from grapes grown in Oxfordshire and Surrey.

“Lovely contemporary Greek” inspired by the modern wine-focused restaurants of Athens – and with a high-quality list created by a Greek Master of Wine. Photographer Jenny Pagnoni opened this agreeable newcomer on Charlotte Street’s ‘restaurant row’ in January 2020. It features “interesting” dishes inspired by the Eastern Mediterranean generally, not just Greece (with lots emerging from the Josper oven), from a chef trained in Tel Aviv. The mezzanine is the best dining spot (rather than the ground floor bar or basement).

2021 Review: “Fun” and fashionable yearling – a glamorous, grown-up, all-day restaurant complete with bar, on the ground floor of ‘private workspace and wellbeing destination’, Mortimer House in Fitzrovia. Its open kitchen is headed by Antonio ‘Lello’ Favuzzi (formerly of leading City Italian, L’Anima) who joined as head chef in February 2019. A versatile choice for many occasions, it is particularly tipped for business. Foodwise, one or two reporters consider the Mediterranean-via-the-Middle-East cuisine a little “average”, but overall it’s consistently decently rated.

Breakfast or brunch is “a real treat” at this all-day bar-brasserie just north of Oxford Street in Fitzrovia, which provides “a fantastic choice” in a “lovely open setting”. There’s little feedback on dining options later in the day, despite a recent revamp and the introduction of a five-course tasting menu.

“The full Ottolenghi experience” – with a marvellous selection of dishes at amazing value prices – is to be found at the celebrated chef’s “foodie heaven” in Fitzrovia. “Unusual ingredients are beautifully combined in a varied array of options” which put vegetables to the forefront. “It’s great fun too – bustling and chic, with a great sense of intimacy.”

He has three Michelin stars back in Alicante, but Quique Dacosta’s two-floor two-year-old just north of Oxford Street is a more middle-market affair, with an extensive menu of meat, fish and vegetarian dishes whose most obvious Hispanic features are a large collection of paellas. Feedback was mixed this year, though. Some reporters had wonderful meals, but others found it “just too pricey for what it was… lovely interior, but the dishes fell a bit flat”.