What to eat in London: 10 dishes and where to find them

What to eat in London starts with the food the city made for itself: pie and mash under green parsley liquor, a salt beef beigel at three in the morning, a fry-up in a café opened in 1900 and fish and chips. Do not leave without the roast bone marrow at St. John and a bacon naan roll at Dishoom.

The top end is well mapped: London holds six three-star restaurants in the Michelin Guide Great Britain & Ireland 2026, and we rank the tables worth the money in the best restaurants in London in 2026. This guide covers the other question, what to eat in London between those bookings, and most of the answers cost less than £30.

Every address below was checked in October 2026; prices are per person, without drinks.

London eats best where the room has not changed: a pie shop, a caff, a bakery that never shuts.

What to eat in London first: pie and mash at M. Manze, Bermondsey

Pie and mash is the working lunch of Victorian London: a minced beef pie, mashed potato and liquor, a thin green parsley sauce, eaten with chilli vinegar. Jellied or stewed eels are the traditional side order.

M. Manze, at 87 Tower Bridge Road, is the oldest eel and pie shop still trading. Robert Cooke opened it in the 1890s and Michele Manze took it over in 1902; the green tiles, marble tables and long booths are still in place. Southwark News counted only 34 pie and mash shops left in the capital in November 2024, when a pie, mash and liquor here cost £6.55 eating in.

It opens Monday to Thursday from 10.30am to 5.45pm, Friday from 10am to 6.45pm, Saturday from 10am to 7.45pm and Sunday from 11am to 2.45pm.

Salt beef beigel at Beigel Bake, Brick Lane

The beigel, spelt and pronounced the East End way, is what remains of Jewish Brick Lane. Beigel Bake, at 159 Brick Lane, was founded in 1974 by the brothers Asher and Amnon Cohen, never closes and bakes about 7,000 beigels a day.

The order is hot salt beef, carved thick, with English mustard and a gherkin. The Nudge priced it at £7 in its review; allow under £10.

Full English at E. Pellicci, Bethnal Green

The full English is sausage, bacon, egg, mushrooms, beans, tomato and toast, and the place to eat it is a caff. E. Pellicci, at 332 Bethnal Green Road, has been run by the same Italian family since 1900 and its wood-panelled room is Grade II listed.

The Nudge puts the full breakfast at under £15; a bacon-and-egg roll is £6 and the lasagne £8, according to a listing checked in August 2026. It opens Monday to Saturday from 8am to 3pm, takes walk-ins only and accepts cash and card.

Fish and chips at The Golden Hind, Marylebone

Battered white fish and thick chips, with mushy peas and tartare sauce: the national dish is best eaten sitting down in a chippy, a fish and chip shop, straight from the fryer. The Golden Hind, at 71a–73 Marylebone Lane, has fried since 1914 and is on Time Out's list of London's best fish and chip restaurants, updated in January 2026.

The lunch deal is £21.95 for regular cod or haddock with chips, peas and tartare sauce; the dinner deal, with a large fish, is £24.95. It opens Monday to Saturday from noon to 3.30pm and 6pm to 10.30pm, and Sunday from noon to 7.30pm.

Sunday roast at Blacklock, Soho

The Sunday roast is the meal Londoners plan the week around: roast meat, potatoes, vegetables, gravy and a Yorkshire pudding, a baked batter shell. Blacklock, a chophouse at 24 Great Windmill Street, roasts whole joints over open coals.

The 55-day aged beef rump costs £27, the lamb leg £26 and the pork loin £25, each with a beef-dripping Yorkshire pudding, duck fat roast potatoes, seasonal vegetables and unlimited gravy; the cauliflower roast is £18. Service runs all Sunday with last seating at 8pm, and the house advises booking.

Bacon naan roll at Dishoom, Covent Garden

London's breakfast is as much Bombay as Bethnal Green. Dishoom, modelled on the Irani cafés of Bombay, serves its bacon in a freshly baked naan instead of sliced bread. The bacon naan roll costs £11.70 at 12 Upper St Martin's Lane, with a house chai at £4.90.

Breakfast is served from 8am to 11.45am. The café is mostly walk-in; evening bookings are only for groups of six or more. Later in the day the order is the house black daal, which you can cook at home with our Dishoom black daal recipe.

Lamb chops at Tayyabs, Whitechapel

Any honest answer to what to eat in London includes the Punjabi grill houses of the East End. Tayyabs, at 83–89 Fieldgate Street, has been family-owned since 1972, and its lamb chops arrive blackened and fragrant from the tandoor.

Harden's puts a three-course meal at £33–37 a head, and you bring your own bottle. It opens daily from noon to 11.30pm. Tayyabs now takes reservations and Time Out's advice is to use them.

Roast bone marrow at St. John, Smithfield

St. John opened in October 1994 beside Smithfield meat market, and built its name on Fergus Henderson's nose-to-tail cooking, which uses the whole animal. The dish that explains it is roast bone marrow and parsley salad: roasted veal bones, a pile of toast and a sharp salad of parsley and shallot.

It was £16.50 on the menu of 5 October 2026, with Welsh rarebit at £12.50, mains at £24–36 and Eccles cake with Lancashire cheese at £12.50. The restaurant, at 26 St John Street, holds one Michelin star. For the British pudding tradition at home, try our treacle tart recipe.

Afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly

Afternoon tea is a meal of its own: finger sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and jam, cakes and as many pots of tea as you can drink. Fortnum & Mason serves it in the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, on the fourth floor of its shop at 181 Piccadilly.

Prices start at £84 per person, the most expensive item in this guide. Book ahead and go hungry: it replaces lunch.

Oysters and toasted cheese at Borough Market

Borough Market, at 8 Southwark Street beside London Bridge station, has more than 100 stalls, shops and restaurants, and entry is free. Richard Haward's Oysters, at 35 Stoney Street, sells Colchester natives and rock oysters from Mersea Island in Essex, where the family has worked the creeks since 1792.

Kappacasein, founded in 2008, is the stall for a toasted cheese sandwich or a plate of raclette. The market opens Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm, Saturday from 9am to 5pm and Sunday from 10am to 4pm.

Markets, neighbourhoods and when to go

• Borough Market closes on Mondays; the market itself says Saturday afternoon is the peak, so go on a weekday morning.
• East End in one walk: Beigel Bake on Brick Lane at any hour, E. Pellicci in Bethnal Green until 3pm, Tayyabs in Whitechapel for dinner.
• Sunday: roast at Blacklock until the 8pm seating; St. John serves lunch only, from noon to 4pm; E. Pellicci is closed.
• St. John adds a discretionary 12.5% service charge; Tayyabs is bring-your-own.

Frequently asked questions about eating in London

Is London expensive to eat in? Not for these dishes. Pie and mash is under £10, a salt beef beigel about £7, a full English under £15 and a Sunday roast £25–27. Afternoon tea, from £84, is the exception.

What is the one dish to try with only a day? Pie and mash at M. Manze, because it is hard to find outside the capital. Add a bacon naan roll at breakfast and the question of what to eat in London in 24 hours is settled.

Do you need to book? For Blacklock on Sunday, St. John, Tayyabs and afternoon tea, yes. Dishoom, E. Pellicci, Beigel Bake and M. Manze are walk-in.

Where to book first

Three reservations fix what to eat in London on a short trip. St. John, 26 St John Street, Smithfield: lunch from noon, supper from 6pm, Monday to Saturday. Blacklock Soho, 24 Great Windmill Street: Sunday roast from 11.45am. Fortnum & Mason, 181 Piccadilly: afternoon tea from £84.

For the competitive side of British cooking, see how ten chefs reached the National Chef of the Year 2026 final in London.