The best restaurants in London open for Christmas Day lunch and dinner

This Hackney gastropub is open on Xmas Day, and you'll get some serious seasonal treats as well as the smug feeling you only get by knowing you're dining at one of the coolest pubs in town. Food is fabulous and leans ever-so-slightly French, with mackerel Rillettes and celery salad, chicken parfait and grape jam on toast or celeriac remoulade with walnuts and apple to start, before mains of roast turkey, beef or delica squash filo croustillant with oh-so-many trimmings. Three courses and a side is £100 per diner. The Prince Arthur means serious buisness this Christmas. 

Piccadilly's grand dining room will be open on Christmas Day from 11.30am to 4.30pm, with a festivie lunch that does all the classics: think smoked salmon, turkey with the finest of trimmings and Christmas pudding with brandy butter. Want to go off piste? Pump for beef wellington, baked cauliflower gratin and fig and apple sticky toffee pud.

Want to escape all things Christmas, but still fancy eating well on December 25? Head to Tayyabs. It’s business as usual at this Whitechapel stalwart – the owners aren’t Christian, so there’s not a whiff of turkey in sight, just their regular, extensive menu of Punjabi dishes to pick from. The kebabs are fiendishly good, as is the chilli-spiked lamb served simmering in a karahi. Remember to bring your own booze as it’s unlicensed.

Chef Sally Abé’s fine dining spot The Pem is open for Xmas lunch. Tucked away inside Conrad London St. James Hotel, here you can expect a beaut of a British spread, with Devon crab royale with winter greens and pomegranate to start – or an elegant-sounding sweetcorn velouté topped with Exmoor caviar. Go big or go back home when it comes to mains; there’s golden-crusted beef fillet wellington or roast goose breast with cranberry, before christmas pudding soufflé. It’s £185 a head, with a wine pairing at £80 (or £160 if you're feeling fancy and want the super high-end stuff).

Plough face-first into the festive set menu from Dinner by Heston Blumenthal alumni Will Murray and Jack Croft, whose St James’s Market space is all about being sassily sustainable, growing their own produce and doing their own whole-animal butchery. At £195 a head for seatings on December 25, expect hash brown with Exmoor caviar, pigs in blankets with devil sauce, a mushroom parfait with Wiltshire truffle, salmon belly terrine with yet more Exmoor caviar before the main event of turkey ballotine with smoked bacon and apricot or venison wellington. Save space for a special pud of yule log with chestnuts and candied mandarins. 

London’s oldest Indian restaurant – it opened way back in 1926 – Veeraswamy scored their first Michelin star in 2016. Open for Xmas Day – alongside sister spots Chutney Mary in St James’s and Amaya in Belgravia – their three course a la carte menu is £120 a head and if you opt for the lunch seating, a live band will be playing. Who needs turkey when you can have meltingly soft paneer and Travancore prawn curry? 

This modern Ukranian bistro is open for Christmas Day, serving the likes of oysters with black pepper and horseradish infusion; lamb chops with smoked kale, carrot, and radish; chicken and mushroom pie and oxtail consommé & oxtail pastry. Watch out for many, many mandarins too, a festive tradition in Ukraine.

Feel uber chic as you stumble down this Mayfair mews to discover a classic London bolthole. This historical gastroboozer goes back at least 500 years, and is the ideal spot to chow down on a three-course Christmas dins. First is pork terrine, smoked salmon or prawn cocktail, before butter poached ballotine of Norfolk turkey or carved dry-aged rib of beef with lamb cutlet. It's £175 each. 

The flashiest spot in town, The Ritz’s Michelin-starred dining room, complete with floral swags, crystal chandeliers and massive pink marble columns is of course open on Christmas Day. Black-tie lunch is six-courses, with a live band and a visit from Santa with gifts for all the kiddies. It’s a whopping 
£650 per adult and £340 per child, but if you want a slighty cheaper option, come for dinner in the evening instead, where it’s a mere £455 per adult and £250 per child. 

At this offshoot of Westminster’s Cinnamon Club, come for a £75 a head slap-up festive Indian feast. There'll be tandoori spiced venison, char-grilled turkey breast tikka with coriander chutney; and Malabar boatman’s kingfish curry with steamed rice. Delicious. 

This grand Mayfair restaurant – open since 1976 – is a London institution and as such, is offering a classic Christmas Day feast. It's £180 a head, and includes chicken liver parfait tartlets and smoked haddock & mustard crouquette canapes before a big ticket roasted norfolk bronze turkey with pigs in blankets, honey-roasted parsnips, roast potato, yorkshire pudding, roasted chestnuts and sprouts. There's also a truffle brie de meaux cheese course and the whole place is getting a Gstaad-themed apres ski makeover, for extra Xmas points.

In a room that simply sighs with art deco elegance, push the boat out with the full £300 Christmas lunch menu, which includes foie gras parfait and lobster and salmon ravioli, alongside your classic turkey and a three-pronged dessert of truffled brie de meaux, dark chocolate and panettone, and Christmas pud. There's also an impressively well thought-through offering for vegetarians, with a menu boasting mushroom parfait, pumpkin and sage ravioli and potato gnocci.

If you're absolutely loaded, then may we suggest the recently re-opened restaurant at London's chicest hotel? Claridge's £525 a head Christmas lunch is far from cheap, but you'll be served a five course meal complete with elegant canapes of roasted Orkney scallop, followed by lobster raviolo, and the requisite roasted turkey with all the classiest trimmings. All in one of the loveliest rooms in town. Millionaires to the front. 

The very bougee, and doubleu Michelin-starred Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal will be open on Xmas Day (as well as Xmas Eve) for slap-up spread at £350 a head. Such dosh will buy you such riches as aged kaluga caviar with brown crab, smoked eel cream and sorrel, and some seriously spectacular sprouts as well as BBQ Brittany lobster and corn fed chicken from legendary French poultry farm Arnaud Tauzin.

Located on the first floor of the Royal Festival Hall in the Southbank Centre, the festive views at Skylon are almost as much of a pull as the food. For £125 a head, the four course dinner kicks off with Cornish crab or chicken liver pâte before your choice of roast turkey breast, beef wellington or celeriac wellington.

Riding House Café offers Christmas dinner in a quirky Fitzrovia setting (think architectural salvage and wall lamps made from stuffed squirrels, for instance). For £95 a head you can get five generous courses, including beetroot-cured gravadlax with caviar and shredded sprouts, before roast turkey with apple & herb stuffing, creamed corn, cranberry sauce and a festive cheeseboard for the whole table. The Bloomsbury branch is also open on December 25.

Step inside the Great Northern Hotel’s Rails Restaurant for a classy three courses, including roasted squash & rocket salad, roast turkey, beef sirloin, or pan-fried stonebass or sweet potato and mushroom tart. It's £109 a head including that all-important welcome glass of something fizzy. Mince pies, as well as cheese and chutney are also on the menu, and it's on from 12-6pm – leaving you time to get home and snooze away in front of a Paddington movie. 

Come to this polished spot off Park Lane for a four-course Italian feast with a Negroni on the side. Theo will be your nonna for the day, whipping up the likes of fresh pasta filled with Dorset blue lobster, beef fillet wrapped in coppa di parma with roasted heritage carrots, and panettone bread pudding with vin santo ice cream. Just don't expect him to give you a cuddle and gift as well. £140 a head, from 12.30–4pm. 

A little bit British and a little bit French, at Bob Bob Ricard you'll get caviar and oysters alongside beef wellington and lobster mac and cheese thermidor for Christmas. Of course, we know you're really just going to ding constantly on their infamous 'Press for Champagne' button, and on a day like December 25, that's absolutely understandable.