The best Liverpool Street restaurants

This St John’s offshoot has the same workaday style as its Smithfield parent: a bright, white, canteen-like space, no-frills furniture, walls lined with coat hooks, and a utilitarian bakery counter in one corner. Open for lunch and supper, expect magnificent British cooking, with seasonal, ever-changing and bracingly old school dishes such as John Dory with purple sprouting broccoli and anchovy, or rabbit saddle with dandelion and roast shallot. Mince and mash might also make an appearance. Wine is unsurprisingly plentiful and spectacular and only a fool would steer clear of their signature dessert; eccles cake and Lancashire cheese. 

The cooking at Som Saa will blow you away: literally and metaphorically. This is not somewhere you come for a cheeky green curry and a plate of pad thai. It’s food from Thailand’s north-eastern provinces, where nothing gets dumbed down and you'll find it in what was once an east London garment factory.  

Mayfair’s chicest celeb dining spot, The Wolseley's second London site is quite the looker, with gothic chandeliers, golden Egyptomania touches, and black and white striped columns which make you feel as if you’re eating inside a massive backgammon board. If you can cope with the big Bullingdon energy of the city boys inside, you'll find fabulous food. The menu is European, leaning French, but with a soft spot for schnitzel, and prides itself on classics done simply but well.

The most striking thing about Crispin might be the building – a handsome glass and zinc construction on a Spitalfields backstreet – but its food comes a close second. Potato sourdough from Hackney bakery The Dusty Knuckle came with terrific whipped butter. Folds of meaty Secret Smokehouse salmon were teamed with homemade pickles, and the creamy burrata was lavished with olive oil from Senia. The kitchen’s skills are also strong, from celeriac croquettes with moreish sage aioli to pork belly in broth with pickled daikon.

Fun, lively and totally vegan, this branch of Club Mexicana is the biggest yet. Enjoy chef and founder Meriel Armitage's unique plant-based take on tacos, nachos and burritos – as well as a giant mirror ball and iconic frozen margs. Read our review of the Kingly Court location here. 

A tiny home-style Indian just round the corner from Brick Lane, Gunpowder stands head and shoulders above the rest of the curry mile. It’s ditched stomach-bursting breads and creamy sauces in favour of complex, imaginative small plates: think spicy venison and vermicelli doughnuts, sigree-grilled mustard broccoli and Nagaland crispy pork ribs with tamarind kachumber.

José Pizarro's Spanish food is known across the capital for being almost too tasty for its own good. Here food is quick to arrive and thoroughly delicious: gooey croquetas; tender, paprika-sprinkled octopus; crisp-edged fried egg with grilled asparagus and romesco sauce; sardines cooked in oil and served in a tin; and juicy prawn buñuelos (stuffed and fried dough balls). José Pizarro offers sherry and cava to whet the appetite as well as a selection of Spanish-style G&Ts – perfect for quaffing on the terrace.

The granddaddy of upmarket steakhouses, this original Spitalfields branch of the beefy Hawksmoor chain is a ruggedly masculine beast complete with an exposed brick bar that makes you want to order a thousand Martinis. Get slabs of prime British-reared beef, yes. But also remember that the menu touts velvety grilled bone marrow, Old Spot belly ribs, lamb tomahawk steaks and no fewer than 16 amazing sides – including triple-cooked chips, mac ’n’ cheese and a brilliant Caesar salad.

Tom Brown is the man behind Cornerstone, the Michelin-starred Hackney Wick seafood favourite – and this, his second London restaurant. Pearly Queen is all about oysters, which come both fresh and interfered with. Of the dressed oysters the star was the pate with champagne jelly, transporting you joyfully to the French riviera. Still good, if a little dry, was the fried oyster with Frank’s Red Hot-style buffalo sauce. If you don't mind eating underneath a purple-hued, post-impressionist portrait of the chef, then this place is worth a shuck. 

La Chapelle is an awe-inspiring architectural behemoth with ecclesiastical overtones and a menu of impressively rendered modern French cuisine. Service is as smooth as the silkiest béarnaise sauce – as you’d expect from a Michelin-starred high roller.

There are all manner of restaurants and bars in this cathedral to Italian food right by Liverpool Street station. Terra offers a wood-burning grill and bar, the Aperol Spritzeria Terrazza is open from the spring and throughout summer for al fresco cocktails and Pasta e Pizza offers exactly what it says on the tin. Central Bar is where you'll find all-day aperitivo. 

Patisserie chef Cherish Finden knows her pastry, and her passion for it has taken her from tough beginnings working in a kitchen as a 14-year-old Singaporean school leaver, to illustrious gigs as a pastry chef at some of the world’s swankiest hotels. Her cafe Shiok! (pronounced ‘shook’) is named after a word meaning ‘pure pleasure’ in Finden’s native Singapore. Try her transcendental take on French classic the Paris-Brest, a glistering royal crown of golden pastry, haphazardly studded with caramelised hazelnuts, and pleasingly rustic next to the other almost-pathologically perfect confections also on offer here.

There’s a dedicated entrance for the restaurants in Heron Tower, from where a glass lift will whizz you in seconds up to Duck & Waffle on the 40th floor, or its glitzier sibling Sushisamba two floors below. The views are, as you might expect, stunning. Food is an on-trend mix of small plates, raw offerings (oysters, ceviche) and a few main courses (including roast chicken and the namesake duck confit and waffle). Warning; prices are as sky-high as the setting, but D&W is open 24/7, which is a rare treat.

Japan, Brazil and Peru come together here in the food while the double-height glasshouse of a restaurant, with its magnificent bamboo-lattice ceiling, has views which face north across Spitalfields towards Alexandra Palace or east over Stepney and out to Essex. It’s all tough visual competition for the menu, but the sushi does its damnedest to catch the eye with cloaks of red or green yuba (soybean curd skin). Rather than leave all the fillings to battle it out in one big, bursting-at-the-seams futomaki, the Samba London roll makes a starlet of each one (crab, tuna, salmon, yellowtail, prawn, scallop, beef, avocado) by placing it on a rice-slice pedestal. With that view – impressive in daylight, awesome by night – this is a special-occasion destination. 

The all-day menu ranges from Aussie-rules brekkies such as bacon and egg wraps or broccoli and sweetcorn fritters, to fresh, hearty salads and the sort of filling, protein-rich snacks that go hand in hand with the Australian reputation for healthy living. Think huge ‘power balls’ of meat and pulses, skewers and berry and nut smoothies. There are also plenty of sweet treats ranging from feather-light lamingtons (sponge cake with chocolate and coconut) and slabs of marshmallow-laden rocky road, to broccoli loaf cake and sticky ‘energy balls’. For after-work lingerers, there’s a sizeable drinks list, including cocktails.

Stretching across one bendy swathe of multi-storey foodie development Broadgate Circle, the City branch of the Cantonese dim sum chain looks a bit like an extremely glamorous spaceship. Score the sublime venison puffs – tiny parcels of intensely caramelly pastry stuffed with rich, dark meat – and crab dumplings then plump scallop shumai. There’s also a bakery downstairs serving fancy French-Asian patisserie.