The London Restaurants And Bars To Book Now: May 2025

Forbes

01-05-2025

People like to ask us food writers where to eat and drink. The question arrives by text, voice note, sometimes even in that panicked mid-dinner moment when your mate find out their Hinge crush wants to take things offline. No matter the instinct, what they're really asking is this: what are you excited about right now? What's worth the Uber, the splurge, the two-week waitlist?
So here you go: five spots I haven't shut up about lately—not necessarily the ones that are the talk of the town, but the ones that stayed with me. Some are new. Others have quietly hit their stride. All of them feel like places doing something honest, brilliant, and slightly obsessive in the best way.
There's a Ukrainian restaurant in Shoreditch that nearly made me cry into a dumpling; a chaotic west London dinner party disguised as a night in Cuba; a long-loved bar with a fantastic new food and drink menu—importantly, not just in a 'post it on Stories' kind of way. This month's list isn't about hype. It's about where I'd send someone who really wants to eat and drink well.
Minced meat varenyks at Tatar Bunar
Quietly extraordinary, Tatar Bunar is co-founded by Ukrainian restaurateurs Anna Andriienko and Alex Cooper, whose group runs more than 30 restaurants back home. While Cooper remains in Odesa helping with humanitarian relief, Andriienko brought their shared vision to life in Shoreditch in a whitewashed space on Curtain Road. TL;Dr? You should go now, while you can still get a table.
Importantly, Tatar Bunar is not some surface-level Slavic pastiche. The food, by Kyiv chef Kateryna Tkachuk, is both deeply regional and softly modern: rabbit skewers grilled over grapevines; subtly-spiced tomatoes that even now, writing this, make my mouth water; a creme brûlée packed with varenyk. There's pickled everything, excellent house bread, and a sense of quiet conviction in every dish. My discerning Ukrainian dinner date was so impressed with the restaurant's nostalgic-yet-elevated dishes it almost brought us both to tears; if that's not a five-star review, I'm not sure what is.
Address: 152 Curtain Road, EC2A 3AT
The Smoke Stack at Heard
It's not the first Michelin star chef-backed burger spot in London, but it might be the first one that feels genuinely fun. Heard comes from Jordan Bailey (formerly of two-star Restaurant Sat Bains) and sits in Flat Iron Square with the kind of understated swagger you'd expect from someone who's already proven they can do tweezers and tasting menus. Here, the brief is tighter. Burgers only. But they are serious.
The meat is 35-day-aged British beef, cooked smash-style (so it's all crispy fringe and molten core), tucked into roast potato buns. There's tonnes on offer within the many interactions, including house pickles, Ogleshield cheese, and a 'secret sauce' that tastes like someone lab-tested it for umami. They're not reinventing the burger so much as restoring its dignity—less junk-food nostalgia, more clarity, technique, precision. There's cold beer, natural wine, and a casual confidence to the whole thing that extends to its very lovely staff. My advice? Don't skip the Smoke Stack.
Address: 1 Flat Iron Square, SE1 0AB
Kapara, London
A little bit of Tel Aviv on Manette Street, Kapara is brought to us by one of the nicest men in the industry, Israeli chef Eran Tibi (of Bala Baya fame), as a true expression of the food and culture he loves; vibrant, joyful, a little bit wild.
The food goes big on texture, spice and indulgence: cloud-like challah with za'atar butter, lamb neck tagine layered with rose harissa and saffron, a beautiful Jerusalem artichoke dish that wouldn't look out of place in a white-tablecloth tasting menu. Which is, in fact, what you should book. The £68 menu is generous and precise, balancing big, traditional flavors with truly inventive new takes—including his 'Ode to the Wilding Women' from his recent appearance on Great British Menu. It's an edit of Tibi's best work to date.
Address: 10 Manette Street, W1D 4AL
Paradise Under The Stars
At a time when half of London's immersive dining 'experiences' feel like poorly lit theatre with mediocre food, Paradise Under the Stars pulls off something arguably difficult: a genuinely good dinner with a genuinely good time. Set in a hall in West Kensington, the space has been transformed into a 1950s Havana supper club—complete with house band, table-side daiquiris, and a perfectly-lit stage that feels like it's always seconds from a dance break.
The food is a blend of Cuban-Latin big hitters, generous and joyful: ceviche 'Cojimar', Lechon Asado (mojo-marinated pork loin, slow-roasted spiced pork, salsa, et al),. But what really makes it is the atmosphere. A sparkling energy runs through the entire night: everyone's dressed up, the wine's flowing, and if you don't end up dancing by the second course, you're the only one.
Address: 9 Beaumont Avenue W14 9LP
The Glade Bar at Sketch
It's easy to forget, between the Instagrammable egg-pod loos and velvet maximalism, that Sketch is still one of the most exacting hospitality operations in London. Case in point: The Glade Bar. Long seen as the fanciful bar you passed through on your way to afternoon tea, it's now staking a claim as a destination in its own right with a serious new cocktail programme and a renewed focus on luxury drinking.
Bar Director Martino Franchi has built something ambitious here: a 21-strong cocktail list divided into three sections—Roots (for classics), Alchemy (for reimaginings), and Essence (for non-alcoholic drinks that aren't an afterthought). The kind of menu where even an Espresso Martini has a plot twist; the Alchemy version is crystal clear, distilled for clarity, while the Essence edition delivers full intensity with zero alcohol, if you were wondering. A Negroni gets smoked, a Gin Basil Smash gets yuzu and pepper, a Rum Punch gets clarified with milk. And they all look as good as they taste. Basically, you can now sit under the mossy canopy, sip something special, and snack on lobster rolls without ever touching the dining room proper.
Address: 9 Conduit Street, W1S 2XG