Joel Hart

Thai cuisine is one of the world’s most complex. It can deliver relentless, tongue-chest-and-stomach-busting fireworks for serious chilli-chasers, but harmoniously balance these formidable levels of heat with sweet, salty, umami, sour, and bitter tones. It does all of this whilst showing off a vast repertoire of zesty, herbal, and pungent aromatics. With its blend of fresh, grilled and richly stewed dishes and palate-journeying energy, a Thai meal is a thrilling game of contrasts.  For Londoners, chasing the ecstatic heights Thai food can offer has never been a more viable pursuit, with London’s Thai-obsessed British chefs behind the acclaimed likes of Begging Bowl, Som Saa, Farang, and Smoking Goat. The increasing diversification of Thai food has also meant greater attention to hyper-regional cooking. Northern Thai spots have clustered around Hammersmith, while southern Thai food is also being pushed by Thai-origin chefs across the city, including a business operating out of a rackets club in Wimbledon, and the extremely-hard-to-get-into Singburi in Leytonstone – which is currently closed for the winter season, but that doesn’t stop it from being the best in town. Pop-ups too, including Ginn Khao, Rice Paddy and Laam Thai prove just how much Londoners have the hots for Thai food right now. Joel Hart is a London-based writer, anthropologist and culture journalist focusing mainly on food, restaurants, and artisanal drinks.  RECOMMENDED: The best Indian and South Asian restaur

Finsbury Park – not just home to the relentless palace of fun (aka karaoke, bowling and booze slushies) that is Rowan's – but over recent years, it's become one of London's most interesting areas to grab an extremely good meal. In this busy pocket of north London you'll find restaurants serving up unsung global cuisine, impressive small plates at classy little wine bars, wildly cool gastropubs and some of our favourite cheap eats as well (shout out to the legendary Baban's Naan on Blackstock Road). RECOMMENDED: The best restaurants in Islington and Angel. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. 

Lebanese food has been available in London for roughly a half century, with Fakhreldine opening in Mayfair in the 1970s and the first branch of Maroush on Edgware Road in 1981. While there is still plenty of decent Lebanese fare on Edgware Road, it is further west in Park Royal, that some of the best Lebanese – and Middle Eastern food in general – can now be found. But what is Lebanese cuisine anyway? And what makes it distinct from Syrian or Palestinian food? In the late 1990s, when the Arab world’s first TV chef Ramzi Choueiri began chronicling rural culinary traditions across Lebanon, a more coherent nationalist idea of the cuisine emerged, while the urban restaurant culture of Beirut was exported across global cities with an idea of Lebanese cuisine as a uniquely elegant take on Middle Eastern cuisine. While this image of Lebanese food has stuck, it is at its core characterised by the Arabic saying baynatna khubz wa-milih (between us there is bread and salt). In other words, it is food to be eaten communally; dishes to be shared. The interesting thing about Lebanese restaurants in London is that the differences between menus can be so subtle they’re hard to notice. Menus are often organised the same way: cold mezze, hot mezze, and then mains, often organized into stewed dishes and charcoal grill items. So the differences can be put down to three things. First, service style. At the more upmarket end of the spectrum, home-baked pita or taboun bread are served over industr