London's best barbecues

Cue Point has been one of London’s best-loved (and most nomadic) eateries for a decade. BBQ pros Mursal Saiq and Joshua Moroney have now found their forever home at the heroically spacious Notting Hill boozer Garden Bar & Grill. It’s the ideal location in which to devour this acutely honed and brilliantly over-the-top Afghan-spiked and technically Texan feasting menu. Order the fist-sized brisket burnt end skewers and Wagyu brisket steak. A non-negotiable order, it’s maybe the best barbeque we’ve ever eaten on UK soil, soft to the point of melting off the plate and oozing down Latimer Road.

From The Ashes, the barbecue-cooking duo behind some sizzling pop-ups and festivals, have found a permanent home at Hackney’s Five Points Courtyard. Get down to the roomy outdoor brewery for moreish, veggie-friendly starters and sides and all the delectable, smoky meats you can fit in your belly.

If you know, you know. Find Maureen's Brixton Kitchen at 52 Railton Road, a community hub serving up serious Jamaican jerk. Find oxtail, curry goat, rice and peas and all manner of incredible BBQ cooked on jerk pans and coal burners in Maureen's very own yard, as well as sides of mac and cheese and dumplings. An institution.  

Local couple Sufia Khan and Abidur Tarafder have teamed up with Romanian-born American barbecue expert Tiberius Tudor for this serious smokehouse. A huge favourite within the local South Asian community, it’s halal and unlicensed, but they don’t care if you bring beers over from one of the nextdoor taprooms. Aside from the brisket (which is so soft it’ll melt through your fork,) the smash burgers are spectacular, the ‘ribwich’ is indomitable and the chicken-fat fries are some of the best we’ve ever eaten.

Setting up at this Walthamstow brandy distillery are pop-up supremos Black Cactus. With their industrial smoker, they offer up burgers on Fridays, before getting stuck into smokehouse cuts at the weekend, with plates of slow cooked meats – crispy Caribbean brisket, pork belly burnt ends, and a short rib pastrami crossiant – and as well as huge Texan-style sharing BBQ trays as a serious Sunday roast substitute. 

The big thing at this Texan BBQ joint is authenticity. It’s serious stuff, with a focus on hefty hunks of precision-cooked animal (and a sign announcing what wood they’re currently smoking with). Add in unusual sides like bone marrow or cheese-stuffed, bacon-wrapped jalapeños and, basically, it looks as Texan as rodeo dudes trying to sit on angry cows.

A live-fire restaurant in a dusty car park next to 40FT Brewery and Dusty Knuckle bakery. The live-fire concept idea is a simple, sustainable and collaborative one. The brewery and the restaurant work together to use beer by-products like yeast and grain that go into ferments and hot sauces, while leftover spices are used in the drinks. There’s actually not that much meat on the seasonal changing menu, and vegetables are the stars of this show, with charred leeks and grilled cauliflower just as impressive as seven day-aged red mullet with crab caramel and wild garlic.

A Japanese steakhouse that celebrates the elite cattle known as wagyu, the room is fittingly butch; black, glossy marble walls and tables hench enough to contain the ungodly amount of food set to descend upon them. There’s a downstairs room too, a kind of yakiniku take on a Berghain-style sex dungeon. But Kanpai Classic isn’t just about a serious slab of steak on your plate, this is a whole wagyu experience, with various cuts, all imported daily from Japan, grilled tableside by pros. 

A longstanding cult joint for smokehouse meats, a visit to this stygian, semi-industrial space with a hum of throbbing beats, is a bit like eating in a medieval nightclub. Beef brisket is a signature dish; moist, smoky, sweet and salty (the brisket is smoked overnight, for 12-14 hours, over English oak) snuggled inside a pillowy, slightly sweet bun, brushed with a lick of barbecue sauce and bone marrow butter. Outrageous. 

This no-bookings Greek-ish restaurant is run by chef and Manteca mastermind David Carter. Agora translates as ‘market’, and you can casually window shop as if you’re at one before you enter, with large hatches providing front-row viewing of the products of a two-metre charcoal rotisserie, such as lamb kebab skewer, chicken thigh and immaculate porchetta – all herby on the inside and crunchy on the outside, complete with gleaming golden crackling.

Kintan claims to be have been London’s first dedicated ‘yakiniku’ restaurant. Yakiniku is Japanese for barbecued grilled meat and it’s all DIY here: they bring you a small plate of lightly marinated fish or meat and you cook it on an electric grill sunk into table. Pick from prawns and chicken thighs, or go meatier with pork belly, beef skirt and short ribs among other things. 

A buzzy, constantly packed Korean barbecue palace in Chinatown. Interiors and aesthetics are modelled after trad barbecue joints in South Korea with retro neon lights, disco balls and splashy murals. Start with excellent picky bits like tofu kimchi, dak dong jib (chicken gizzards), osam-bulgogi (spicy squid and pork stir fry) and rabokki (ramen tteokbokki rice cakes). Then barbecue and bibimbab are your go-to options for a good time, alongside many rounds of Korean beers, makgeolli Korean rice wine and soju cocktails.