London Haggerston Restaurant Guide

2022 Review: Charlie Mellor’s (ex-Brawn and Elliot’s) cute Hackney wine bar and merchant provides a high- quality fixed-price modern European menu, accompanied by artisan wines from small producers. There’s also ‘The Cave’, for evening DJ sets, behind the off licence.

Consistently ranked as one of the capital’s leading food pubs over its decade in operation – this “very comfortable, non-stuffy, and inviting” Bethnal Green boozer near Columbia Road market has a bar downstairs and a dining room and terrace upstairs, serving modern British food. Founders Tom Harris and Jon Rotheram, who met working at St John, launched the National Theatre’s restaurant Lasdun in 2023. Top Menu Tip – “Sunday roast is excellent”.

“This ever-friendly cafe sibling of next door Moro is a wonderful place to eat great tapas” – “especially sitting outside in Exmouth market”. Husband-and-wife team Sam & Sam Clark’s 15-year-old spin-off provides “superb tasty food at very reasonable prices” in a “casual but professional” environment, encompassing “interesting plates” of Spanish and North African-inspired food that is “not pretentious but delivers great enjoyment”. There’s a second branch in Hackney Road.

2024 Review: Well predating the gentrification of Columbia Road, this “small, local Spanish restaurant” (est 1982) is worth remembering when browsing for blooms and designer flower pots. It probably won’t re-frame your understanding of Hispanic cuisine, but “prices are reasonable” and the “team are friendly and fun” (albeit sometimes under pressure at busy times).

2022 Review: “Outside tables in Columbia Road” help lend an air of rusticity to this former cowshed off Columbia Road Flower Market. The culinary focus is on the south of Italy, and with pasta made daily (including to buy retail), the thrust of our feedback: “what’s not to like?”.

“Ed Wilson seems to be spending even more time in the kitchen, so the food is better than ever” at the eternally hip East London fixture he has run near Columbia Road flower market for 15 years and counting. “The wine list is always interesting”, and helped pioneer the shift toward natural and low intervention wines that is now common currency. (Even the odd reporter who was “not blown away by the food” said “maybe we made the wrong choices or just hit a bad day” – and considered their meal “enjoyable”.)

It’s “difficult to have a bad time” at Josh Katz’s funky duo, which started as a “cool little place in a railway arch near the canal in Haggerston” and later added a shawarma bar spin-off in Exmouth Market. On the menu: “delicious small plates of Middle Eastern-inspired food” – “gutsy food and great staff too”. (It’s no criticism to say that ratings are not as white hot as when it first opened: it’s just that the competition has caught up with them a bit). Sample dishes – Miso-harissa BBQ butterflied poussin, salata mashwiya; Whole sea bream, moroccan chili honey, saffron aioli, lemon; or Smoked lamb mechoui, harissa, cumin salt, grilled flatbread.

2022 Review: In Hackney’s Broadway Market and next to the Regent’s Canal, this Japanese street food and ramen bar opened in December 2019. It’s smallish – 45 seats – mixing communal seating and some individual tables. Early reports suggest it’s an OK standby – not enough feedback for a more hearty endorsement at this stage.

This hip wine clubhouse with a restaurant open to the public is set in a pair of Haggerston railway arches, where it wows pretty much all who visit. Former P Franco chef Seb Myers shapes his modern French-Nordic menu around the wines selected by founder Jonathan Alphandery, while members enjoy priority booking and can store their wines in the club cellar.

“Amongst the many restaurants in Little Vietnam” this “friendly if slightly chaotic” institution is a treasured mainstay thanks to its “very tasty, home-style cooking” with “plenty of choice”.

This 15-strong London noodle chain (now with branches in Brighton, Birmingham and Bristol) is “a good stand-by” – perhaps it’s “not as good as some of its competitors”, but it is widely seen as “good value”: in particular “the lunch-time meal deal” is a winner.

2022 Review: The wild and wacky French chain opened this eclectically designed 194-room hotel in late 2019, complete with clashing fabrics, retro gaming machines, füsball and karaoke rooms. The loungy restaurant offers an easy-grazing selection of dishes to suit the tastes of globe-trotting hipsters: initial feedback suggests it's better than you might expect (given all the competing attractions).

2024 Review: A “spectacular breakfast” – “the options are hard to choose from, but none are a poor choice” – is the top culinary feature at these Kiwi haunts, whose zeitgeisty vibe and in-house roasting (omg the smell in Shoreditch!) makes them a magnet for a “top notch coffee” at any time of day.

2023 Review: This quartet of family-run restaurants have won a big reputation for their southwest Vietnamese dishes, including pho and their famed goat with galangal. They started out 15 years ago in Shoreditch before heading across the river to Battersea.

2022 Review: A late 2020 arrival in Hackney – this new haunt bills itself as ‘a neighbourhood oasis in east london’. It’s a large space (200 covers), complete with bar made out of recycled materials and garden courtyard. Everything is ‘curated’ including the craft pizza. No survey feedback as yet, but the general social buzz about the place is a good one.

This all-day Hackney venue with a “quirky canalside setting” from St John-trained chef Max Rocha (son of fashion designer John) is “accessible and casual by day, and morphs at night into a sexy hotspot for East London’s beautiful young things”. “Breakfast is a stand-out treat”. The “French bistro food” that follows later in the day receives steady but more guarded acclaim. Top Menu Tip – “rabbit rillettes a highlight”.

One of our Top-100 Best UK Restaurants in the 2025 edition: Gabriel Waterhouse and Patricia Wakaimba’s stylish high-ceilinged space near Regent’s Canal inspired a disappointing lack of feedback in our latest 2026 annual diners’ poll: so we’ve removed its top 5/5 rating not on the basis that there has been any lack of excellence this year, but for simple lack of data. He serves four seasonal menus each year, and the limited space makes this a very personal, supperclub- style experience: with 11 servings of the Wednesday evening and Saturday lunch ‘Discovery’ menu (at £85 per person); and 15 servings of the fuller ‘Signature’ menu (at £110 per person) served in the evening from Thursday-Saturday. More reports please!

“Fabulous pizza” – “quick, fresh, delicious”, and “impeccably made with original toppings” – makes this London-based group “a Friday night favourite”, with 14 outlets across the capital and counting. Founders Johnnie Tate & Nick Buckland last year secured investment designed to boost their presence to 40 sites over five years.

2022 Review: Although it’s from the Anchor and Hope stable, this all-day operation near Hoxton tube is not a pub: it’s a new café (opened May 2021) within the rebranded Geffrye Museum (which features exhibits on domestic living since 1600). On offer – breakfast, lunch and buns, and – in the fullness of time – a dinner service.

“Perfect local restaurant in a cute location” – across the canal from Hackney’s Broadway Market: a “surprisingly romantic”, Scandi-esque dining room with “inspired dishes, fab wine list and a wonderfully friendly team”, headed by its founders (hospitality power couple Charlie Sims – ex-Noma; plus sommelier and natural wine proponent Honey Spencer). Top Menu Tip – “if the monumental pork chop is on, go for it! (and I don’t even like pork chops)”.