10 Best Things to Eat in London

London is one of the best cities in the world to get great food. There are so many choices of what you can eat, from traditional dishes to international cuisines, that it can be hard to choose - especially if you’re there for only a few days. To guide you on your visit, here’s a list of the 10 best foods you have to eat in London!

1 Fish & Chips

Fish and Chips

Perhaps the most popular food in London is Fish & Chips. It’s the favorite of locals and tourists alike. Crispy battered fish with thick cut fried potatoes, it doesn’t get any better than that.

You can eat this in different types of eateries from the traditional take away stand, a pub or a restaurant.

It often comes with a side of mushy peas, as seen in the image below.

Fish and chips with mush peas

We’ve enjoyed Fish & Chips in several restaurants and recommend these places: Masters Superfish near Waterloo Station, Gigs in Fitzrovia, The Seashell of Lisson Grove, Sherlock Holmes Pub near Charing Cross, and the Granary Square Brasserie in Granary Square (near Kings Cross).

2 Meat Pies

Steak pie with mash and gravy at The Counting House

Meat pies are great as hand held food but if ordered in a pub it’ll come with mashed potatoes and gravy, which adds to the whole experience.

Pasty - eating on the go

Cornish pasties can also be purchased at a stand in the train stations and make great snacks when you’re on the go.

Meat pies can come with all sorts of different fillings such as beef, lamb, chicken, and mushroom. There is even a fish pie that comes with mashed potatoes on top!

3 Sausage Rolls

Sausage rolls are similar to meat pies, but the meat isn’t completely encased in the pastry. They are usually cylindrically shaped and a good one will have a savory juicy sausage filling.

Sausage Roll from the Ginger Pig

One of the best places to get one is the Ginger Pig at the Borough Market.

4 Bangers and Mash

Another way to eat sausages is a dish called Bangers and Mash, which is sausages and mashed potatoes with gravy. This is a dish most often found in a pub. Flavorful Cumberland sausages can be the type of sausage used and are a tasty treat.

Bangers and Mash with gravy, at the Scarsdale Tavern

5 Sunday Roast

On Sundays, most pubs will serve a Sunday Roast. The roast part can be roast beef, pork, or chicken, served on a bed of roast vegetables. The best part is the Yorkshire Pudding served with the roast. If you’re not familiar with this, it’s not a pudding as we know in America, it is more of a large popover type “bread”. Gravy - always ask for extra - is poured over the pile and the whole thing is eaten with gusto. You can probably get a vegetarian version too, which could be more roasted vegetables or a different vegetable like squash.

Slices of roast beef are part of this Sunday Roast - topped with a Yorkshire Pudding

6 Full English Breakfast

A “Full English” breakfast is quite the plateful of food, so go in hungry! The most common ingredients to be found on the plate are eggs, cooked tomatoes, roasted mushrooms, potatoes (like hash browns), and baked beans. It could also come with blood pudding, which is a slice of blood sausage. And some buttered toast.

Full English Breakfast - a great way to start the day!

7 Afternoon Tea

The tray of goodies that comes with Afternoon Tea

There is nothing quite as quintessentially British than Afternoon Tea! The three-tiered tray with tea sandwiches at the bottom, then scones with clotted cream and jam, topped off with the sweet treats of cakes, tarts and cookies. You can select what tea you would like and get your own individual pot of tea, or if you don’t want tea you can get some sparkling wine to go with the treats.

There are many types of places to get afternoon tea — hotel restaurants, department stores (like Fortnum & Mason), restaurants, on a double decker bus (Brigit’s Bakery) or in our case the Great Court Restaurant in the British Museum. Just be sure to make reservations ahead of time.

Great Court Restaurant at the British Museum

8 Indian Food

Some of the best Indian food can be found in London! One of our favorite restaurants to go to is Dishoom. Their black dal, one of their signature dishes, is creamy and savory and unlike any dal we’ve had. Samosa, fried okra, and chicken tikka are some of the other dishes you can order.
Dishoom has several locations and each one has a different decor. No matter which one you go to chances are you have to wait in a long line. They help to improve this experience by passing out lemonade or hot chai. And yes it’s worth the wait.

If you’re not near a Dishoom, or don’t want to wait in line, check your neighborhood as there is usually a local Indian restaurant.

Another area in London to go to for Indian food is Brick Lane where there are many curry restaurants to choose from.

Plates of food at Dishoom Covent Garden

9 Dim Sum in Chinatown

Colorful Gerrard Street, pedestrian only area in Chinatown London

When in London, a visit to Chinatown is a must! It’s a colorful area with the strings of red lanterns going across the streets. The main area on Gerrard Street is a pedestrian street, making it easy to stroll around and look at the various shops and restaurants.

There are several dim sum restaurants, and our favorite is Lido, for the variety of dim sum and the quick service.

A variety of steamed dumplings at Lido

A new place we tried out this last visit was the Bun House. We noticed several places in Chinatown with steamed buns as their focus. At the Bun House, you can either go to the take away window or sit down in the restaurant. They have 6 different types of buns - pork, chicken, lamb, beef, vegetable, and custard - as well as fried rice or stir fries.

Bun House in Chinatown London

Have you ever ordered steamed buns, or bao, and not known which one has which filling because the white dome shaped buns all looked the same? Well at the Bun House, the tops are stamped with a red design - a Chinese character - that denotes what type of filling is inside. There is a key on the takeaway box so that you can figure it out later. We tried the pork and egg custard. The soft oozy egg custard was delicious!

Bun House take away box with chopstick handles

Bun House take away box with symbol key to identify bun fillings

Three steamed buns - 2 egg custard and one pork - from the Bun House

10 Cheese from the United Kingdom

So many cheeses at Neals Yard Dairy

Cheese produced in the United Kingdom is on another level. And there are fun places to try the different varieties. It’s not all cheddar cheese or Stilton, there are ones similar to gouda, camembert, and ricotta.

Cheese plates on a conveyor belt at Pick & Cheese in Seven Dials Market

Pick & Cheese is a conveyor belt restaurant in the Seven Dials Market, a food hall. It’s a fun experience to watch the plates go by with pieces of cheese matched with different food items such as brown butter cookie, onion marmalade, or clotted cream fudge.

There’s also non-cheese plates to round out your meal, with charcuterie and also desserts.

At Neals Yard Dairy, (they have two locations, Seven Dials and Borough Market) you can try different cheeses, and learn more about UK cheeses from the cheesemongers. It’s fun to find a favorite one and purchase a chunk of it to snack on later.

Kappacasein Dairy at Borough Market

At Borough Market is Kappacasein Dairy, where you can get melty London raclette cheese over potatoes or a cheese toasty (grilled cheese) unlike any other.

Melty raclette over baby potatoes from Kappacasein Dairy

As you can see, there is no shortage of food in London. If you’re there for a week, it is easy to fit all these in. If you’re visiting for a shorter length of time, you definitely have to have some Fish & Chips at the very least.

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