My Top London Lunches and Afternoon Teas
- Lucy and the lens
- Sep 8, 2018
- 8 min read
Updated: Jul 11, 2020
When I lived in London, my rent was so high that I couldn't afford to eat out very often! But since moving to Germany, my trips back to London revolve around finding delicious new places to eat in a city with endless options! Here are some of my recent favourites for lunches and afternoon teas.
1. Ella Canta - Mexican food
This restaurant, located on the ground floor of the InterContinental Hotel in Mayfair, was out of my budget for an evening meal but offers a very reasonable brunch menu deal or a pre-theatre deal that offers three courses for £39. Ella Canta serves Mexican food with a beautiful, modern twist. Their signature quacamole with pomegranate and a gold-painted fried grasshopper wasn't included in the lunch menu when we went - but we just had to order it as an extra! We also had a flavourful trio of mini ceviche bowls, pork carnitas and incredible churros. Everything we ate and drank was a riot of colour - so much fun to eat!
2. Yauatcha Soho - dim sum
Patrick and I are huge dim sum fans and we're not fussy about where we eat it...but we treated ourselves to the 'Taste of Yauatcha' menu served between 2pm and 5:45pm for a very reasonable £19 per person! We enjoyed some pretty solid dim sum choices, including har gau, baked venison puff, pumpkin and pine nut dumpling, and mushroom spring rolls, plus sticky rice and and an incredible prawn and bean curd cheung fun. We finished off with Chinese tea and the best macarons I've ever tasted (even in France!). I went back on our next visit to London just for more macarons, which they sell in the patisserie at the front.
3. Gymkhana - Michelin-starred Indian food
Another restaurant too pricey for an evening meal for us, but offering a selection of different lunch set menus of varying sizes and prices. We went for the 4-course option, and were spectacularly full by the end of it. My favourite dish was the spicy potato chat, but we also got to sample their signature biriyani and I loved my dessert of creme brulee with gulab jamun hidden inside and washed down with chai tea.
4. Lunch at Aqua Shard
Another fantastic lunch-menu deal at the Aqua Shard - a three course meal and a bellini for just £34. Every dish we had was delicious, but my favourite was a seasonal celebration of rhubarb for dessert - picture below! If you're planning to visit the Shard, you might as well book a lunch here and save on the £30 entry fee to the viewing platform - the view from the restaurant (and especially the bathrooms, if I'm honest!) is just as good!
5. Brunch at Duck & Waffle
This is certainly not an off-the-beaten-track restaurant, but it offers something that most other restaurants in London (with the exception of the Aqua Shard, above!) can't: absolutely breathtaking views of the London skyline. I actually preferred the view from Duck & Waffle over the one from the Shard, as you get the iconic Gherkin building right in the foreground, and views of the winding Thames, Tower Bridge, Canary Wharf and so on in the background. Unlike many places that charge a premium for a view and then serve mediocre food, the fairly pricey waffles here were absolutely divine: I had the classic duck confit, duck egg and mustard maple syrup on top of a sugary waffle - the sweet/savoury combination is always a winner for me!
6. The most beautiful tasting menu at Hide
Hide is probably one of the prettiest restaurants you could possibly hope to eat at. It's just as famous - if not more! - for its picture-perfect hand-carved spiral staircase than its food. But if you stay for the lunch tasting menu you get to climb these stunning stairs and sample a meal that tastes even better than it looks. The apricot souffle (bottom right photo) was especially perfect!
7. Indian food with a modern twist at Gunpowder
We love Indian food, but have rarely ventured beyond the traditional curries of Brick Lane. So we decided to give the 'tapas-style' Gunpowder a try, enjoying unique sharing plates including venison and vermicelli 'doughnuts', a rasam-ke bomb served as a spicy shot with a lentil-filled puffed ball balanced on top. We also had the most delicious pork ribs that fell right off the bone and into a rich tamarind chutney sauce, as well as lamb chops that are said to be better than well-known Tayyab's in Whitechapel. You can see all four of these dishes, priced between £3.50 and £9, below.
8. Dim sum at Baoziln Romily Street
This is a very centrally-located restaurant specialising in dim sum with pastry flavoured and coloured with natural ingredients such as spinach, chilli, turmeric and beetroot, giving them a different flavour to the usual Chinatown offerings. They are also known for their meat skewers of chicken, sirloin steak, pork belly and lamb. We were really looking forward to trying the skewers but went a bit too crazy on the dim sum and couldn't face any more food! We'll just have to go back!
9. A journey through Peruvian history at Lima Fitzrovia
We really enjoyed the lunch time tasting menu at Michelin-starred Lima, thanks to a combination of the interesting food concept - a course-by-course tour through Peru's past to the present day - and the bottomless prosecco offered as part of their weekend lunch deal!
The standout dishes for us were the beautifully-presented ceviche and tender slices of duck escabeche. We also enjoyed the cod with yuzu sauce, suckling pig with a sweet, crispy coating, a traditional berry parfait and dulce de leche biscuits called alfajores. Lima was the first ever Peruvian restaurant to be awarded a Michelin star, but its colourful cuisine, relaxed, friendly service, and affordable lunch deals makes it totally approachable rather than elitist. We had a lot of fun eating here!
10. Mighty thali brunch at Tandoor Chop House
A thali is the Indian equivalent of brunch, served on a huge round platter and consisting of a big spread of lots of smaller dishes. The thali at Tandoor Chop House featured its signature lamb chops alongside a selection of different naan breads including bone marrow, a spicy chaat, tandoori chicken and all kinds of dips. We were so full by the end of it, but we enjoyed it so much we wished we weren't!
11. A Basque tasting menu at Ametsa
We were drawn to this restaurant for its creative-looking afternoon tea, influenced by Basque cuisine. However, we decided to upgrade to the full lunch tasting menu after seeing how reasonably priced it was! What followed was a beautiful and creative journey where nothing was quite what it seemed. My favourite course was this scallop dish featuring honey and bee pollen.
12. Scientific afternoon tea at Ampersand Hotel
The most fun afternoon tea we've ever had, it lets you become a scientist (or at least become a kid again) for a couple of hours as you decant different flavoured syrups from test tubes into beakers full of sparkling water to mix yourself a lemonade; dig for dinosaur bones in a box of chocolate-crumb 'soil', and fight through clouds of liquid nitrogen to discover a chocolate spaceman hanging out by a coconut moon and raspberry planet. There's even a petri dish made of strawberry and elderflower jelly!
13. Afternoon tea at Bea's of Bloomsbury
I've lost count of the number of times I've had the afternoon tea at Bea's. This one is for those with a serious sweet tooth, as Bea's of Bloomsbury specialises in cakes and meringues of all kinds, and they're VERY generous in the size of their afternoon tea. We haven't yet managed to leave without a doggy bag of everything we couldn't get through. You have been warned!
14. Festive afternoon tea at Dominique Ansel Bakery
Dominique Ansel needs little introduction as the inventor of the Cronut, but the bakery in London also does a fantastic festive afternoon tea! The theme changes every year, and for Christmas 2019 we were treated to a variety of savoury choux buns and sweet cakes in the guise of Santa and his reindeer! So fun, and so cute- almost too cute to eat!
15. Afternoon snacks and floral cocktails at Mr Fogg's House of Botanicals
Towards the end of our visit, we were looking for a less heavy - and slightly more boozy - meal option, so we settled on Mr Fogg's House of Botanicals in Fitzrovia. The USP here is that every cocktail on the menu is named after a flower and tastes like it too: we tried Cherry Blossom, Apple Blossom, Rose and (my favourite) Violet. The decor here is atmospheric: the ground floor is like walking into a Victorian greenhouse and the upstairs lounge looks like it belongs to a lord. The 'bar snacks' they offer are far too delicious and high-end to be called this: we went for the smooth chicken and pine nut croquettes (yum) and the loaded sweet potato fries with feta cheese, onions, spiced sesame seeds and orange flavoured mayo! So good!
16. Grazing your way through Old Spitalfields Market
The perfect place for when you just can't settle on one kind of cuisine, this market features everything from Asian to African options. We leaned heavily towards the Asian side of things with the pork wraps from Rice Brothers, dumplings from Dumpling Shack, and Taiwanese wheel cakes from Wheelcake Island. It's very, VERY important to round off a trip to the market with a visit to Crosstown Donuts, whose donuts are still the best I've ever had.
17. Tea, cakes and lunches at Japanese patisserie, Wa Cafe.
I discovered this adorable cafe in Covent Garden after pining for Japanese food after our trip there during cherry blossom season. Wa Cafe satisfied my need for the flavours of Japan - I went for a matcha tiramisu - and the beautiful presentation that I loved so much about Japanese food! As well as cakes, I believe they offer some lunch options, too.
18. A taste of New Orleans at NOLA
This one is more of an early dinner than a lunch, but NOLA is one of the only bars accredited to offer authentic New Orleans cocktails such as the Sazerac and the Grasshopper. Alongside the drinks, you can try gumbo, jambalaya and even praline bacon! Sadly, the gumbo had already run out when we arrived, so get there early!
19. An early dinner at Relais de Venise
Again, this one's more of an early dinner if you arrive at 6pm, opening time - the restaurant doesn't take reservations so we always go early to beat the rush! Relais offers only one menu item: super tender entrecote steak marinated in their secret sauce, served with perfectly crisp fries and a side salad. The only request you can make is how you'd like your steak cooked. The heavily French-themed restaurant serves you two thirds of your meal first, while keeping the rest hot, so you feel like you're winning when they come with the rest of it just when you think you've finished!
20. The best-stuffed steamed buns in London at Bun House
I'd had my eye on Bun House's famed steamed pork buns for quite a while before I finally got the chance to try them! They were so fluffy, with generous amounts of meaty filling. The star of the show however, was the custard bun, so full of runny custard sauce that tearing it open and letting the filling dribble out is quite the ritual here!
That's it for now: no doubt this list will continue to be updated each time we return to London!
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