Joe Bishop

For centuries, French cuisine has been considered the world's very best. Although that golden crown might have slipped somewhat, French-accented cuisine is having a real resurgance in popularity. Its emphasis on technique and ingredients-first approach make it hard to beat when you fancy feasting on something rich, complex, and unimpeachably lavish. So whether you want an old-school onion soup or an elaborate, immaculately conceived dish served with undeniable je ne sais quoi, we've got you covered. Here’s our pick of the best bistros, brasseries and fine-dining spots in London spanning every budget, with everything from Michelin-star restaurants to petit back-alley bistros and chic cafes. RECOMMENDED: Here are London's 50 Best Restaurants. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.

Covent Garden is so rammed with restaurants that decision fatigue can easily threaten the quality of your dinner. Weave through the tourists and theatregoing crowds and you'll discover that this area hosts many of the best restaurants in London, including French-styled Story Cellar, and The Portrait by Richard Corrigan, as well as old faves The Savoy Grill and J Sheekey. We’ve compiled a list of the best in the area, from cutting-edge eateries and classy counter joints to party-ready and casual hangouts, with pre-theatre favourites and cheap eats among them. Think of it as your Covent Garden bucket list. RECOMMENDED: The absolute best restaurants in Soho. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.

Sandwiched between the City of London and Shoreditch, Liverpool Street – and its main thoroughfare, Bishopsgate – is packed with high-end spots. Lots of them have breathtaking views due to being halfway up skyscrapers such as the Heron Tower, while you'll find more casual and quite literally more down-to-earth eateries in the Broadgate development. Stroll down in the general direction of Monument and you find The Wolseley City, or go east to Spitalfields for the likes of St John Bread and Wine. Whether you’re splashing your bonus or just killing time waiting for a train at Liverpool Street station, here’s a selection of the area’s diverse eateries. RECOMMENDED: The very best restaurants in London.  Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.

Is France ‘back’ or did it never go away? The globally lauded cuisine of our historically antagonistic neighbours was out of vogue for a while there, but it feels like the last couple of years have seen diners reject modernity and embrace tradition in bouchons and bistros that serve big hearty plates of Gallic comfort food. No more tweezers, no more ramen, no more pizzas; it’s lentil ragout season.  Such is the nouveau saturation of these places that you could argue there’s little need for Henri, a Parisian-style bistro attached to Covent Garden’s Henrietta Hotel. It’s helmed by Jackson Boxer, a darling of the St John school of simplicity and chef behind Vauxhall’s much-loved and much-celebrated Brunswick House. The interior, though very nice, is exactly what you’d expect from a ‘bistro’ in a high end boutique hotel; marble-topped tables, ceiling murals, shiny gold candlesticks on every table. You prepare your body for a thoroughly well done but ultimately standard French-with-a-capital-F dining experience. C'est la vie. Henri reels you in with cocktails named after French culinary legends, then tickles you with something genuinely fun and different But that isn’t what you’re getting here. Fried pied de cochon (pig’s trotter) is served with bier mustard, and it’s like a tonkatsu cutlet mixed with a spring roll, especially with the unidentified hoisin-esque bead of sauce on top. Sour cream filled seaweed canelés topped with trout roe are quiet and delicate to counter-balance

Tom Brown, the head chef and owner of Pearly Queen, a new seafood restaurant in Shoreditch, is staring at me. Well, not the actual Tom Brown, but a purple-hued, post-impressionist portrait of him that sits high up on the wall near the bar. Every time I glance to my left, there he is; a slightly disapproving look in his eye, awaiting my reaction to each dish. A neon sign that says ‘the world is yours’ illuminates the room. It’s the sort of interior design you can imagine the wayward son of a wealthy despot to have; part megalomania, part Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Tom Brown is the man behind Cornerstone, the Michelin-starred Hackney Wick seafood favourite. Pearly Queen features some hits from it, but the menu is largely original, with a specific focus on 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 The bread, sourdough, arrived upright, in the shape of a dorsal fin. It was accompanied by a seaweed butter which, had it not had a dusting of desiccated green kelp on the top, drawing the mind to imagine a flavour of the ocean, would not make it past the Trades Description Act. Similarly, slivers of ‘hake ham’, dry cured slices of hake served with olive oil, were decidedly un-fishy, which for fish is quite the feat. When eating an English oyster right now, you feel slightly like you’re taking your life into your own hands. Deluging our island’s waters with

Uh oh – a new restaurant has opened in Peckham. Set your London discourse phasers to nuclear and prepare for a lumpy and scolding essay.  Only joking. This is all about Little Kudu, the latest gland on the Kudu ‘collective’ udder, which started as a single, South African-inspired restaurant and has now branched out into a grill, a cocktail bar in a Chelsea clothing shop and, somewhat inexplicably, a private dining space that is also gallery. There is no pie on the menu, but you can imagine if there was, owners Amy Corbin and Patrick Williams would have their fingers firmly in it.  More in the traditional Saffa canon was an amazingly tangy slopfest of braaibroodjie, a sort of luxury open-faced cheese toastie. Little Kudu sits unassumingly in the arches under Queen’s Road Peckham station. It’s an unlovable patch of street, thronged by new builds and a graveyard of abandoned e-scooters and bikes. Mercifully the tiny interior, all dusty pinks and light browns and crowned with a rather stunning Murano glass chandelier, is a pokey oasis.  The ‘collective’s signature cocktail, the Smokey Kudu (also the name of their bar – keep up) take on a Manhattan, came in a little pour-it-yourself corked bottle, and, with a blend of Laphroaig and Japanese whisky, was a delicious and blood-thinning way to start a meal.  Little Kudu markets itself as a kind of tapas restaurant, and so not one for anti-small-plates crew. The Little Kudu loaf with Cape Malay butter was a salty brioche accompanied b