The Best London Dishes of 2025

London saw a huge number of new restaurant openings this year – some of which straddle cuisines with experimental hybrid dishes, and others that turn out exceptional traditional fare. The year’s best dishes – according to Broadsheet London’s editors, contributors and columnists – reflect the most exciting new additions to the city’s restaurant scene, but also celebrate the capital’s well-established eateries that continue to impress.

For more guides to the best of London in 2025, read our list of this year's best new restaurants, our favourite bars that have opened, and our top picks of restaurants to open outside of London.

Sometimes nostalgia rears its head when you least expect it – and so it was during a visit to Fitzrovia’s Rovi when it reopened in September with a lightly rebooted design and menu. The dish in question was corn and feta mash; salty feta squished through the sweet corn resulting in the sort of elevated slop you’d quite like to spoon from a bowl while sitting on the sofa after a stressful week. In fact, it’s the sort of slop I grew up eating in toasted sandwiches (though the corn was creamed and from a tin, and I doubt the cheese used bore any relation to a dairy product; the Ottolenghi empire’s commitment to produce far surpasses that of ’90s regional Australia). Where the dish strayed from the past into a jolting, memorable present, is what else was involved: a smoky berbere aubergine stew that flipped the script and turned it into something more than just corn and cheese: it became a plate of food that my mind has drifted back to again and again in the months since. – Che-Marie Trigg, commissioning editor

Nearly 15 years ago, I had the most delicious three weeks of my life in Sri Lanka. My highlights there were many – crisp egg hoppers and zingy coconut sambol for breakfast; creamy dahl; mountains of fiery deviled potatoes. But nothing compared to kothu – a glorious street food staple made from chopped roti, eggs, vegetables and curry sauce. I can still hear cooks’ rhythmic clatter of metal scrapers on hot plates. Since then, I’ve been chasing that kothu hit – but nothing quite compared. Until Adoh. When I took that first bite – soft, gently spiced roti clinging to crunchy carrot and onion, the almost-sweet surprise of juicy jackfruit – I was transported straight back there. – Rose Johnstone, acting London editor

There are two types of people in this world: those who like chips and curry sauce, and those who should be banished. I’m very much the former, and can usually argue about the value of cheap, vaguely curried, acid-green goo until the cows come home. This year, however, my speech about potatoes-chopped-and-fried-and-topped-with-something-called-curry has been completely derailed by … potatoes-chopped-and-fried-and-topped-with-actual-curry. And, honestly? I’m not mad about it. Enter: the Burmese mutton curry fries at Khao Bird, Soho. Inspired by the chunky, bravas-style fried potatoes found in Thailand's second-largest city, Chiang Mai, here a silver tray of crisp yet fluffy triple-cooked chips arrives carpeted with a lively, ginger-packed sauce suspending hefty amounts of tender mutton. A final dollop of sour cream brings fresh respite from the richness, while a scattering of crispy leaves adds just a smidge of not quite guilt-free greenery. In short? I’ll never look at ye olde chip-shop favourite in the same way again. – Jo Taylor, contributor

Let’s skip the debate about whether an estuary border town like Chingford qualifies as London or Essex (the genuine answer: it’s both). Gina is a shorter door-to-door journey from my Lewisham borough home than it is to Stoke Newington and a lunch there this July gave me what was perhaps my most potent and prolonged dopamine high of the year. Partly this was the palpable sense of how much founders Ravneet Gill and Mattie Taiano had put into the project; partly it was the genre-defining, malt-scented intoxicant that is Gill’s chocolate cake. But, mostly, it was this supersized pail of preternaturally buttery puff pastry, spilling over with a tangy, butter-glossed expression of the pleasures of high summer. Old school. Abundant. Exuberant. It encapsulated what made Gina such a nuanced and deeply affecting opening. – Jimi Famurewa, contributing editor

The most memorable meal I had this year was actually a beach barbeque on a lantern-lit spit of sand somewhere off the coast of Lembata island in Indonesia but choosing that makes me sound insufferable so I’ll stick to home turf, where things of an Iberian nature really won me over. Honourable porky mentions must go to the newly spruced Macbeth’s brilliant bifana which I’ve been back a few times for, and to the perfect presa iberica with the sweetest of sweet red peppers at José “King of Bermondsey” Pizarro’s Lolo. But the one dish I’ve fantasized about the most was a rich, red, glossy, unctuous Basque lobster stew cooked by Tomos Parry upstairs at Quo Vadis for one of its brilliantly convivial QV & Friends nights. We helped ourselves to giant communal pots of the stuff, dunking chunks of bread, cracking claws with abandon, and insisting others go in for more – a table of strangers became fast friends in doing so. By the end of the night the red sauce-stained table looked like a crime scene and, to be fair, it would’ve been one hell of a final meal. – Richie MacKichan, print editor

My favourite food moment was sharing a whole crab for lunch at Camille. You usually enter the doors expecting two brilliant things: one, reprieve from the noisy blur of Borough Market and two, excellent offal. But that day was different, and I was led off the well-trodden à la carte and toward the specials. Could my favourite restaurant imbue seafood with the same heady, fatty goodness of the rest of their menu? Yes, would be the shortest answer I’d be able to muster between mouthfuls of curried crab as they were removed from the shell for me in the ultimate act of service. Joyously messy, finger-sucking goodness.– Hannah Crosbie, columnist

Many of the best meals I had this year happened to take place at Burmese restaurants around London, but my favourite bite was at Cafe Mandalay on an improbably lovely October day. The cafe could be a blink-and-you’ll-miss it greasy spoon were it not for the menu scrawled in Burmese script in red and green marker. I get the pon ye gyi with pork (pork slowly simmered in a gravy of fermented bean paste), the kind of thing my dad might make only a couple of times a year after an uncle or aunt smuggled some over in a suitcase. The dish’s gravy is softer and the curry wetter than the ones I’m used to, all the better for soaking up the family-sized bowl of rice that arrives at the table, all for me. I don’t order like I’m hungry, I order like I’m homesick; and after a couple of exploratory bites, I wolf the lot down. – David Paw, contributor

When I scan my rolodex of “Best Bites of 2025,” one dish stands out far beyond the rest. Enter Saltine, a low-key neighbourhood restaurant in Highbury [which is closing this month]. I first ate Saltine's ridiculous pan con tomate with sardines, during its summer party in August – a perfect trifecta of savoury, acidity and sweetness; juicy and crunchy in equal parts. The amount I ate that night was greedy and unhinged. But who can blame me? Fink’s sourdough turned into olive-oil toasts; perfect sardines cured for a day and then blowtorched; popped on top a tangy layer of grated Vesuvio tomatoes. – Emily Bryce-Perkins, contributor

I have a love-hate relationship with soup. It has a particular chokehold on me, probably because I grew up in a Cantonese household where soup is ingrained in our DNA. We drink soup to wake up the stomach, to aid digestion, to end a meal sweetly. Soup is life. So when I had the chilled melon soup with trout roe for my birthday at east London wine bar Planque earlier this year, the cogs in my head started whirring. I was trying to work out the sorcery and why it reminded me of 楊枝甘露, a mango pomelo sago dessert found in almost every dessert parlour in Hong Kong. It transported me back to hot summers spent furiously slurping bowls of it to stay cool, refreshed and soothed. Here, it’s something else entirely. Brighter, sharper and more savoury. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it does, in a slightly strange way. That’s what I love about Planque. It’s a restaurant that gets better with each visit, keeps you on your toes and exceeds expectations. Chef Sebastian Myers turns melon into a shocking canary-yellow liquid, crowned with a contrasting white quenelle of raw cream, slicks of oil shimmering on top, and a small dollop of trout roe popping with notes of the sea. It’s far beyond a simple fruit soup. If soup is life, then Planque’s melon soup is what makes life worth living. – Angela Hui, contributor

My dad has made his 70th birthday last all year. Even my wedding felt like part of his party. But his “official” birthday, which we had at Jackson Boxer’s Brunswick House in Vauxhall, was one I shall never forget – mostly on account of the chicken. It is a truth rarely acknowledged that chicken is an overrated meat: a bland, beige vehicle for whatever glaze or sauce it carries. I trusted Boxer to serve an exception to this rule, but still refused to order one myself, such is my scepticism. I wish I hadn’t. So do my brothers, who ended up sharing theirs between five, there were that many of us digging in. The bird was burnished bronze, scattered with fresh herbs and nutty clams that had been simmered in an aromatic moqueca broth. The meat was rich, the clams sung of lime, and the juices were mopped up with their famed potato bread. Married with Boxer’s determination to make that meal feel as special as if it were his own dad’s birthday – candles, cake, copious wine – it was my mouthful of 2025 amidst stiff competition. – Clare Finney, contributor

I’ve eaten some delightfully extravagant plates in 2025 – Dexter beef steak the size of your head at Ibai; an opulent surf and turf mixed grill at Island – but sometimes you can’t beat something simple, done very, very well. I recently went to just-opened Tempo in Bethnal Green, the first perma-restaurant from Eric Wan, formerly of pop-up Lá Lốt. Honestly, everything was superb; the spicy braised aubergine with whipped tofu and wonton crisps will live in my head for a while, and their green chilli-swathed prawn toast is god-tier. But their honey butter madeleines – warm, sweet and crisp with a light yet satisfying centre, served with orange zest-spiked chantilly cream – were a little pillow of heaven at the end of the meal. It’s been a bad few months for Madeline (who the f••• is she?), but these madeleines reinstated the balance. – Lisa Wright, contributor

I’ve turned to food for comfort a lot over the last 12 months, and no dish has made me feel warmer or fuzzier than the galbijjim (soy-braised short ribs) at Miga. Tender, sweet, and Bovril beefy on the finish, it’s a generous haunch of meat you can pull apart with a spoon. Pair it with a sliver of the sticky cooked pear it’s served with, along with some fluffy rice, and you’ve got the perfect bite on your hand. While we’re on the subject of slow-cooked meat, it’s worth mentioning that the beautifully collagenous braised soy and spiced pork hock at Plaza Khao Gaeng’s new Borough Yards outpost was a close second in my list of best dishes. It’s been a big year for braised meat. – Lucas Oakeley, contributor

Look, I'd do pretty much anything for a good dinner – though I do balk at cycling to Clapton from Camberwell for a feed. But no longer: pizzaiolo Hannah Drye opened a second Dough Hands residency in Nunhead this year, which crucially means I can secure a Jode mere minutes from my flat. A melange of stracciatella, ‘nduja and (inevitably) hot honey, with a perfect base/crust that teeters between feather-light and blissfully chewy, it’s the apex evocation of London’s overstuffed new-school pizza landscape. I’d go so far as to call it one of the city’s landmark dishes; a crackers work of maximalist art by a gastro auteur at the top of her game. That they’re served at the Old Nun’s Head – one of south east’s most convivial boozers – makes the idea of queuing for five hours surrounded by Guinness-chugging sales-advisors at Crisp v.2 (or cycling to the Spurstowe) even more mind boggling. – Tom Howells, contributor

Ikoyi is London’s most original restaurant right now, and on my last visit, Jeremy Chan turned the heavily trodden beef tartare into a definitive statement of his style. Served raw, the Hereford beef had been aged to a funk as rich and mellow as Roy Ayers – never tipping into James Brown intensity – letting every other element land with purpose. Earthy chanterelles smoked and smoothed into an emulsion, zips of salted citrus, chilli, and sudachi – all soothed by wild borage, with its refreshing, cucumber-like profile. Held together in a snappy roasted rose shell, everything converged in one explosive bite. – Joel Hart, contributor

If, like me, your sweet tooth tends to strike without warning, you could do far worse than Leo’s tiramisu, which is available from breakfast right through to the end of dinner service. Classic, no-nonsense and stacked several layers high, it’s an expert exercise in balance – bitter cocoa nibs and coffee-soaked sponge, a gentle liquor aftertaste, plenty of airy whipped cream and a generous dusting of sugary chocolate – which tastes even better in its ’60s-style Italian caff setting, all wood-panelled walls, retro poster prints, and newspapers bulldog-clipped to the wall. This is the sort of dessert you order with “two spoons”, only to find yourself fencing with your dining partner for every last scrape. Best enjoyed washed down with an espresso. – Chiara Wilkinson, contributor

I may be a street food girly at heart, but sometimes nothing beats the old-school magic of a proper tasting menu. Case in point: an autumn feast rustled up by three Michelin-star chefs from the Peninsula’s international roster. The whole evening was a blur of whimsical charm (tweezered flowers, generous dollops of Oscietra caviar, crabs wearing maki like jaunty top hats) but the standout for me was a spin on Claude Bosi’s celebrated “Scottish cep” dessert – a banana ice-cream, fragrant with the woodland notes of porcini, encased in a delicate shell crusted with sweet dew droplets. Willy Wonka could never. – Madévi Dailly, contributor