37 brilliant London restaurants that are doing walk-ins

Bar Douro – a stylish spot bringing Portuguese small plates to Southwark’s Flat Iron Square – makes a great first impression. Design-wise, the attention to detail is marvellous, with a broad open kitchen, two shiny marble counters lined with stools and some lovely tiled walls, like those you see in Lisbon and Porto. It’s a gorgeous space to while away an evening over a bottle of vino.

From the street it looks small. Easy to miss. But this casual Persian joint on Soho’s Romilly Street is mightier than it looks. The head chef is Iranian-born Kian Samyani, who has previously worked at the group’s more grown-up powerhouses, Gymkhana and Brigadiers. Here, he’s running the vibrant open kitchen, where there’s a chap making bread for the tandoor at one end, and another at a rotating spit.

All Bone Daddies restaurants accept walk-ins only.

Cock scratchings are not the first thing you expect to see on a ramen bar’s menu. But Bone Daddies is not your average noodle joint. Instead, it’s a New York-inspired, butched-up ramen-ya with gutsy noodle soup dishes that don’t skimp on flavour. As you open the door you’re met with a barrage of belting rock guitar, walls covered in images of quiffed and tattooed Japanese rockabillies, and a room full of diners seated on high stools soaking it all up.

A veggie rather than vegan restaurant? Bit outdated, no? But wait, Bubala is more than just vegetarian. It does small plates. Middle Eastern small plates. Now you’re talking. And if that wasn’t trendy enough, it’s also a bijou but buzzy Spitalfields spot with only 30 seats: a handful of designer-ish tables and a counter you can perch up at.

With the opening of Café Murano, proprietor Angela Hartnett has come full circle. It’s on this site, at 33 St James’s Street, that Hartnett honed her craft with Marcus Wareing and Gordon Ramsay when it was still called Pétrus. She has now returned with her fellow sous chef Samantha (Sam) Williams in the role of head chef. It’s deceptively simple food, but as the cuisine spans the coastal regions of Liguria and the Veneto and the plains and mountains of Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy. 

Carousel’s home team serves approachable lunches along the lines of rich agnolotti with caramelized onion sauce, baked whole celeriac in sourdough or mussels with slivers of rhubarb and chilli. The restaurant is just one part of a sprawling creative hub that also features yoga classes, live music, film screenings, exhibitions and even a bit of opera.

Claiming to be the 'the world's first Nigerian tapas restaurant', Chuku's first bricks and mortar site in Tottenham follows successful pop-ups in the capital and a crowdfunder campaign which bagged more than £30,000 in 30 days. Run by brother-and-sister duo Emeka and Ifeyinwa, expect London-inspired twists on classic Nigerian dishes, from jollof quinoa to plantain waffles. 

Cocotte holds tables for walk-ins at the Notting Hill and Parsons Green restaurants.

A French rotisserie chicken restaurant.

If there’s one thing this slip of a Soho spot is not, it’s boring. And not just because it has an is-it-cool-or-is-it-cringe name. Let’s deal with that first: I’m sure it’s distracting you. Fatt Pundit, so their website tells us, is the ‘playful’ fusion of words from two different countries: one being the Chinese surname ‘Fatt’, the other, pundit, the Indian word for a scholar. Whether you love it or loathe, the name does at least give you a sense of what kind of food to expect: namely, Indo-Chinese. Or, more specifically, the ‘hakka’ cooking of migrants to India originally from southern China.

This is the first UK outlet from Australian Bill Granger (restaurateur and author of a number of cookery books). Notting Hill has taken to this simply decorated, no-bookings eaterie with a passion – queues form at weekends for brunch, and even early in the week the tightly packed tables and stools along the bar are fully occupied. It’s no wonder: the room is appealing and light-filled, the global menu inventive without being alarming, and the cooking assured.

A small, unshowy restaurant that’s made a name for itself with a short but perfectly formed menu and an easy-going conviviality. Dishes are seasonal – ricotta-stuffed courgette flower with lentils, wild mushrooms and truffle, and chilled asparagus and pea soup with crème fraîche were exemplary starters. And it’s value for money too – the soup cost a fiver. The kitchen (under Australian Cameron Emirali) produces lots of interesting but ungimmicky combinations: notably a special of halibut fillet with yellow beans, chilli and garlic, on a vivid romesco sauce.

Hakkasan Mayfair may not be the original – that’s Hakkasan Hanway Place, over in Fitzrovia – but it’s pretty much a clone of the first, right down to the Michelin star. Plus, thanks to its snazzy location, is the one we’re always asked about. Once again, it’s a high-end Cantonese restaurant in a sexy basement: you’ll blink as your eyes adjust to the moody lighting (spots dangling over tables, very little anywhere else). Picture a cross between an opium den and ‘The Matrix’ and you’re there. Service, too, is as polished as it gets.

An absolute joy. As you might expect from a no-bookings joint in Soho, it’s small but stylish, effortlessly mixing old and new. Exposed brick meets wood panelling; pretty patterned tiles meet carved-wood devil masks. The menu, likewise, gives traditional Sri Lankan street food a fashionable lift. Slender breaded and deep-fried mutton rolls came with a ginger, garlic and chilli ‘ketchup’. A dinky dish of roast bone marrow with a fiery ‘dry’ sauce and buttery roti is disturbingly delicious. 

All Honest Burger restaurants are doing walk-ins. 

‘Honest is as honest does’, and this stripped-backed burger chain keeps things simple: join the queue, take your seat at one of the rough-hewn benches, choose your patty and add-ons from the pictogram menu, and get stuck in. 

Welcoming walk-ins at lunch time. 

Sri Lankan signatures are the strongest here, like fish cutlets – aka spiced mini fishcakes with deep-fried coats – that were good enough to rival my dad’s (which are legendary). Also: the patties, aka fiery mini pasties, and the monkfish curry, its thin coconut sauce laced with tamarind, cloves and cinnamon. Best of all: the creamy and comforting cucumber curry. You Must Get This. (At £5.90, it’s also a steal.) Hoppers were decent, string hoppers – that rarest of steamed delights – even better.

Accepts walk-ins before 3pm.

Koya’s udon noodles have had a cult following ever since its first Soho restaurant opened in 2010. The original has since closed, but its next-door spin, Koya Bar, remains, and now there’s this branch in the City. Decidedly more corporate than the others, thanks to its position within Bloomberg Arcade, this one has Tokyo-style light wooden walls, a smattering of small tables and a massive two-page udon menu with every combination of hot or cold soup and noodles.

A seafood restaurant with a head chef formerly at The Fat Duck.

A 'modern kebab house' from the founders of kebab restaurant Le Bab.

A health-conscious Mediterranean and Middle Eastern restaurant.

The covered terrace is held for walk-ins. 

A two-week-premature baby who’s three weeks old is actually one week old. When we dined at The Ninth on its second day out of soft launch, there were major problems with service that should have been ironed out before they started charging full price. Premature restaurant. 

The Ninth, which we previewed before it opened, is a new restaurant in Charlotte Street from Jun Tanaka. The ground-floor space is attractive but a little cramped in places, including an awkward space between front door and bar.

Waiting staff were charming and eager to please, vital traits when systems (and probably staff numbers) kept letting them down. We had to wait to be seated, then to get drinks. Starters arrived in a rush, mains while we were still eating our starters. This was not entirely an early-days glitch. The Ninth calls itself a small-plates restaurant, but the cooking doesn’t lend itself to sharing-is-caring. (Of which we are officially sick-to-bloody-death, if anyone’s listening.)

So: miserable meal? Ha ha! The food was, at times, so good that we couldn’t believe we were eating it. Were those oxtail croquettes really so airy in texture yet deeply redolent of the main ingredient? Did salt ox cheek manage to taste at once delicate and powerful? Did Jerusalem artichoke purée distil the essence of this humble tuber into an explosively flavourful cream?

Tanaka has a genius for making every ingredient taste as good as it possibly can and creates complex harmonies on the plate. Note, however, that while we thought seasonings were spot-on, people at the next table (who’d endured really long waits) said they found some of it way too salty. Major bummer: the gents looked shabby. Why? 

Brand-new restaurant: the words don’t always spell happiness. At the brand-new Ninth, the pieces were all in place. They just need to get them working together. 

‘Farm to plate dining’. This has become such a ubiquitous concept, it must be due its own emoji. But at this Battersea restaurant, the description is actually legit. Almost every major ingredient, from the meat, fish and veg, right down to the award-winning wine, comes from one little patch of West Sussex called Nutbourne. If an ingredient does have to come from elsewhere (horrors!), then it’s either foraged, or sourced from another small regional supplier. The Gladwins – aka the trio of brothers whose farm it is – also own and run the restaurant. Yup, I’d say that was fairly farm to plate.

Housed in a former art gallery (which before that was commercial premises) on the corner of Mare Street and Vyner Street, Ombra aims to bring the easygoing atmosphere and casual food/drink mix of a Venetian bacaro to Bethnal Green. (It is next to the Regent's Canal, which is a start.)

Has a little courtyard where you can stop for for hot breakfasts and salad plates. 

This is the original branch of the successful chain. It is largely a takeaway and catering operation, though there is a table at the back seating 10 people. The main branch is in Islington. 

Stays true to its policy of walk-ins only at Borough Market. At Shoreditch, half the seating is held back each day for walk-ins.

The ultimate walk-in pasta restaurant. Dishes are small enough – and, at around £5-11, cheap enough – to let you to order three between two. Do this. In fact, bring extra friends so you can order a bit of everything. Who cares if you’ll likely be sat in a row? Talking is so overrated. There’s a changing mix of classics and lesser-spotted varieties such as tagliarini (skinny tagliatelle) or pici cacio, a kind of hand-rolled no-egg noodle from Siena.

A contemporary Sri Lankan restaurant on the former site of Spuntino. Has just got a new terrace. 

Set aside tables for walk-ins where possible. 

We’re not sure what real country folk will make of Rabbit’s jokey, ‘rustic’ interior, but as Oliver, Richard and Gregory Gladwin hail from West Sussex farmland themselves, we imagine they didn’t have trouble sourcing the tractor bonnet decorating the bar, the corrugated iron panelling, or the back end of a fox mounted on a wall. It feels more like a bar that does food, down to the ‘stable door’ entrance where smokers can linger outside. But to see it as a party venue does the cooking a disservice: the Gladwins – who also run The Shed in Notting Hill – can really cook.

Got a pal who’s a designer? Bring them to Rail House Cafe. This airy younger sibling of Fitzrovia’s Riding House Cafe in Victoria’s shiny new Nova development is full of interesting quirks they’ll appreciate. As for the food. Well. Much of it is excellent. Like the addictively salty Marmite butter hanging out with a crusty brown roll. Or the brilliant reuben sandwich, a generous heap of moreish salt beef, melted cheese and mild sauerkraut snuggled between two slices of good-quality toasted rye. Another good choice is a rich Caesar salad, with a creamy, garlicky dressing, soft-centred quail eggs and crispy pancetta. 

Keeps a few tables for walk-ins.

The restaurant – which follows three successful pop-ups – has non-alcoholic beer and a small range of mocktails served in vintage-style glasses. The Apple ‘Mock-jito’ was refreshingly minty, and the ‘Lettuce Spray’ a full-bodied blend of iceberg, lime, wasabi and aloe vera. But it’s the food that really stands out. The grilled aubergine slices with tahini were chewy – almost caramelised. If we hadn’t polished off every morsel of our beetroot-and-barley risotto, and raw courgette spaghetti with walnut-and-sesame pesto, we might have left room for pudding. 

Riding House Café really does have a bit of everything. You can sit at individual settings, or on the grand candelabra-lit communal dining table; in the more secluded dining room, or on low chairs in the lounge – or soak up the action at the buzzing bar. There are antiques, curios (wall lamps made from stuffed squirrels, for instance) and architectural salvage from around the globe.  

All Rosa’s restaurants keep a few tables for walk-ins.

The usual Thai repertoire is executed well here: hot and sour tom yam soup was rich with lemongrass, tangy tomato and a generous amount of seafood. Of the recommended dishes, stir-fried slices of European aubergine were coated in a sweet, salty soya and yellow bean sauce, and laced with plenty of ginger and black pepper. 

As you’d expect from the Hakkasan restaurant group, Sake No Hana is well designed and has slick service. Try the four-course ‘Taste of Sake No Hana’ (£29) – a filling meal, with miso soup, a choice of sukiyaki, tempura or grilled dish, a handful of sushi and a dessert.

Saving its bar and some counter dining downstairs for walk-ins.

A modern Latin American restaurant in Tooting Bec. Expect classics like incredible croquettes with an ice-cold vermouth. 

The outdoor and entrance bar space are left open for walk-ins on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Tucked away behind a curtain of tousled ivy, The Shed serves up small, resourceful dishes built with foraged and locally-grown ingredients from the countryside. Led by the Gladwin Brother trio, who have their own farm and vineyard in Nutbourne, West Sussex, as well as two additional London restaurants, their flagship Shed was quick to become a local neighbourhood favourite when it first opened in 2012.

A handsome joint, which is all the more impressive given the potential awkwardness of the U-shaped site. One side is a bar, the other a dining room proper. The look is farmhouse furniture and oak floors, sure, but ebony walls and antique-style metals too. A couple of dishes – moreish hare ragù over perfect pappardelle, say, or a plate of giant, puffy tempura herbs with chive yoghurt – show the kitchen at the top of its game.

The second site from the high-end Japanese restaurant, on the former site of The Providores.

This small plates spot is just recently refurbished and looking great. 

Yauatcha’s sublime venison puffs – tiny parcels of intensely caramelly pastry stuffed with rich, dark meat – are brilliant. Crab dumplings are juicy and translucent, while plump scallop shumai are so wonderfully slippery we actually dropped one. There’s a bakery downstairs serving fancy French-Asian patisserie.