London Holborn Restaurant Guide

If it hadn’t originally launched on 28 October 2020, this expensively designed Covent Garden hotel would have attracted more attention. In its all-day bar and restaurant occupying much of the ground floor (there’s also a mezzanine), executive chef Paul Robinson (ex-Temper and The Coal Shed) serves food from Northern Italy using British produce. Pizza and cicchetti feature alongside small plates, pasta and secondi.

“Exceptional Provençal cuisine” – “light and full of fresh flavours” – ensures that dining is “always a real pleasure” here, in what is itself a “lovely, light and airy” glass-roofed venue (once an auction room for books) on Chancery Lane, whose “well-spaced tables” make it a good choice for a business lunch in legal-land. Part of Pascal Aussignac’s Club Gascon group, it has its own cocktail bar, Baranis, downstairs.

Stuck looking for a comfortable bite near the LSE? – try this staple of legal-land, typically packed with barristers from Lincoln’s Inn. It’s unlikely to knock your socks off with culinary fireworks, but regulars say a meal here is “always a pleasure, with a great choice of dishes at good-value prices”, and applaud the “professional” staff who “go the extra mile”.

Actually in Holborn not Hoxton – “an all-pleasing place, with a cool bar area” that’s part of the Soho House group, tipped for its “excellent breakfasts” and “simple, classic burgers”.

“Crazily long queues marked the inaugural week” of the UK’s first 250-seat branch in Covent Garden of this legendary Asian soup, dumpling and noodle chain: established in 1972 in Taipei, and now also set to open a second branch near Centrepoint. “For anyone who’s been to DTF in the Far East, the first London one may come across as a slightly unnecessarily puffed-up version of what is at heart a fantastically efficient and good-value, shopping-mall brand”. “Dumplings, of many and various forms, are uniformly good (quality-control at this cult brand is notoriously anal)” and aficionados of the chain mostly feel “it lives up to the standards of branches in well-established locations in Asia”. But, they also warn that: “as per my experience in Singapore etc, they’re not about to change your concept of what a good xiao long bao, etc, can be”.

“Savoury pastry heaven” – “outstanding pies, steak puddings and beef Wellington” are the orders of the day at this “fabulous” dining room on the edge of the City, where Chef Calum Franklin oversees a “great menu” also featuring British charcuterie and grills. The setting is “a little hotel-like” but “tables are nicely spaced” helping to make it a big hit with business types. Top Tip – “pick up a takeaway pie from the Pie Room”; and there’s “an excellent breakfast, to boot”.

2019 Review: These “busy” Korean BBQ joints – a Holborn original and in the new Pancras Square development (tel 020 3907 8474) – offer a range of grilled dishes, signature hot pickles and Korean cocktails in modern settings. Reports are “slightly variable” but most feel the food is “enjoyable”.

2017 Review: “This tiny, charismatic pub” behind the Royal Courts of Justice – run by landlady Roxy Beaujolais – “offers traditional ales and quirky food at very good value prices”.