London Shoreditch Restaurant Guide

With its big, high-ceilinged basement restaurant looking out onto a cool sunken garden – this style-conscious Shoreditch hotel (launched in 2017) never felt like it fully established itself fully prior to the pandemic. It closed from 2020 till June 2022, just after the conclusion of our survey, so our rating will have to wait till next year.

“Superb food with a real eye for detail and quality” – Ruth Hansom’s “outstanding modern cuisine” is really “going places” at this well-established gastroboozer, just off Great Eastern Street. The pleasant-enough dining area is quirkly located on the mezzanine, up a spiral staircase from the main bar: choose from either a five-course or eight-course tasting menu.

“A fun, cheerful Mexican atmosphere” and “enjoyable, fresh tasting” street food dishes can still make “an excellent standby” of this stalwart chain, which has 10 sites in London nowadays. “Even if nothing on the menu is going to wow, its consistent quality and value are reassuring”, with ratings and popularity starting to regain their historic high standing since a majority stake was sold to Nando’s owner, Dick Enthoven, a couple of years ago.

These “groovy Peruvian late-night bar/restaurants” make “a stylish and fun way to end a night out, with a multiplicity of delicious small dishes on the tasting menu”. Best to go in a party mood: they can be “too noisy for conversation”.

For a meat-free burger, this tiny brand (the first vegan restaurant in Europe to use ‘Beyond Meat’ in its patties) is well worth a try if you need a bite near the Old Street roundabout, or are down Pop Brixton way.

“One of the best meals I had all year” – this “noisy, little spot in Shoreditch” showcases “simply great cooking” from kickboxer-turned-chef Jon Lawson, who prepares “awesome sharing-style Italian plates” with Spanish and North African touches. “Perfect for a date night if you want to impress, while still keeping it hip and intimate”. The occasional duff note concerns the low-intervention wines: “interesting” to some, to others “expensive” or “an acquired taste”. Top Tip – “grab a seat at the counter for the best ambience/experience”.

2019 Review: Mixed reviews for this big, all-day Italian newcomer by Old Street tube – a large, modern unit where they’ve spent a packet on the design. Some do praise its “imaginative” fare and say it’s a good place to take business associates, but there’s also a feeling that “the food doesn’t live up to the prices and comes in small portions”: “this is expense account grub for global biz travellers who truly believe ‘Silicon Roundabout’ is a really cool place”.

It’s hard to review this funky Shoreditch five-year-old without mentioning its star from the French tyre firm – the latter setting up expectations that are not always met. Many reports do give the highest praise to its creative small plates and well-curated selection of wines. But there’s a disgruntled minority, who stumble on their feelings that it’s over-egged. (“I’m not a star chaser but I do want to have a good time, and somehow the whole experience felt a bit Spartan…”; “the food is indeed tasty, but is VERY overpriced. Is part of the problem that their Michelin star has pushed them into cramming as many tables in as possible?”)

2019 Review: Garrett and Emer FitzGerald launched their first permanent venture on the former site of Santo Remedio (RIP) in Shoreditch: a take-away (ground floor) and jammed-in diner upstairs serves premium fried chicken; fair value, but food takes its time coming.

“You can’t really go wrong with the plates of meaty delicious chops” (“nothing delicate or subtle just full flavours doing the meat full justice”) at these “no-frills but hearty” pit stops, which provide a “vibrant” and “excellent-value” option for an inexpensive meal out. “It’s great to be able to choose how many chops you want to eat and the sides and sauces are the absolute best”. “They deliver an impressively consistent performance”, and “given that there is nowhere to hide when the food is this simple, it’s hats off to the chefs here!” “Don’t go for a quiet night”, though, as they “can be rather rowdy”. Top Tip – “the Monday night Butcher’s Block offer is super value, especially when teamed up with £10 corkage to BYO”.

“It’s such a lot of fun” (whether you eat “upstairs – think explosion in a china/flower shop; or downstairs – sexy booths”) at the Big Mamma Group’s “kitsch-but-in-a-great-way” Italian, which imports the brio of an imagined Amalfi coast, circa 1972, to this Shoreditch corner site. “You need to love a party” though – the filling cod-Italian cuisine is “not bad” but “doesn’t match the buzz or the queues”.

“Still some of the very best pasta in London at half the price of most places” continues to inspire rave reviews for these genius pit stops, where “pound for pound the great value for money is always good” (“and extends to the drinks”). “For an unplanned midweek supper there’s nothing better”, although at the mega-popular Borough Market original it can feel “like a conveyor belt” at busier times. At “the funky newish premises in Shoreditch” there’s “rather more space than in SE1, with proper booking… what’s not to like?”. Top Menu Tip – “just go for the cacio e pepe… but everything else is good as well”.

2022 Review: With its swish, spacious metropolitan styling, this 100-seater brasserie on one of Shoreditch’s main drags does little to advertise the fact that it’s part of the Hart Shoreditch Hotel London (part of the Curio Collection by Hilton), which opened in early 2020. Knowing this helps explain the slightly over-plush styling – at odds with the strenuously hip neighbourhood – and also the wilfully un-corporate menu: inspired by the flavours of Levantine coastal towns (Levantine weekend brunch is a feature). Early reports are too limited for a rating, but all-round very good.

2021 Review: With their “chilled ambience and laid-back vibe” this trio of cafés have championed Aussie-style day-time eating for more than a decade in London. “Good for breakfast, brunch and lunch”, they are “not too overpriced compared with competitors”, and the Shoreditch and London Bridge venues are open in the evening for drinks and dinner.

2022 Review: On the sizable Shoreditch site that was Merchant’s Tavern (RIP), this mid-2021 newcomer is nowadays a 130-cover Japanese izakaya, with more of an emphasis on drinking (and DJs) than of old. It comes complete with open kitchen and robata counter, serving skewers, sushi and steamed buns to soak up the hot or cold sake, beers and cocktails.

“Intriguing twists on the kebab theme” (plus “good beer brewed on site” at the Kraft Dalston branch) continue to win consistently good ratings for this expanding chain, which in September 2022 adds a 20-seater in Brixton to its roster of locations. See also Kebab Queen.

Some of the “tastiest Vietnamese food in town” is found at this pair in Hoxton and Soho from Hieu Trung Biu, a pioneer of pho and other southeast Asian specialties in the capital over two decades. Popularity means they can be “deafeningly loud”.

“What they do – a limited repertoire – they certainly do well” at this “no-nonsense” steakhouse chain (which serves no starters or puds, just five or six mains and sides, plus “a tiny key they give you at beginning of meal to exchange for a delicious ice cream cornet to take with you as you go!”). It amounts to “amazing value for a good (ish) steak” – “tasty, not mind-blowing, but dependable and fairly priced, and elevated by the sides and sauces”. On the site of a former Byron, the 10th branch opens in Waterloo in 2022.