10 London Restaurants to Visit in 2020

From the city's first venture into West African fine dining, to the no-waste concept restaurant set to take Hackney by storm, these are the restaurants to have on your radar this year.

Hot new openings from Michelin-starred chefs (and a few newcomers), globe-trotting kitchens and the restaurant pioneering the sustainable future of food. These are the restaurants to have on your culinary radar for 2020.

Book these top London restaurants - before everybody else does

restaurant

Silo

Silo's more than just a no-waste restaurant; it's a culinary vision of the future rooted in the past. Many ingredients are grown on-site in Hackney Wick or sourced locally, and prepared in the most environmentally sensitive of ways as part of what it calls a "pre-industrial food system". The menu is a tight edit of culinary experiments that can be ordered as a series of sharing plates or as a six-course tasting menu. No-waste, no-guilt, no-fuss food.

Address

Unit 7 Queens Yard E9 5EN

restaurant

Flor

Given that Flor's sibling restaurant, Lyle's, crept into the top 50 restaurants in the world last year, it's unsurprising that Londoners welcomed this restaurant-cum-bakery to Borough Market's hotchpotch of elegant fine-dining spots with open arms. Inside, dusty brick walls and bistro-style chairs echo the buvettes of Paris and the pintxos bars of San Sebastian. Plates are small - puntarelle with lemon and bottarga, or speck flatbread with shallots and stichelton, for instance - so order a few before mopping them up with sourdough, all the while sipping on sustainably sourced wine, of course.

Address

1 Bedale Street SE1 9AL

restaurant

Akoko

Ever since clinching top spot in the final of the Masterchef: The Professionals 2018, William JM Chilila has been working on Akoko, a West African fine-dining restaurant which will open to guests on Berners Street this spring. "Akoko" translates as "the first" from Yoruba: an apposite name for a restaurant which promises to surprise Londoners with an elevated take on West African dishes. Expect delicately smoked goat consommé, spiced jollof rice and grilled, aged beef suya (kebab) with caramelised onion and confit tomato.

Address

21 Berners Street W1T 3LP

This image is on holiday

restaurant

Dominique Ansel

Those who have yet to come across the cronut (erm, how?) are in for a treat this year as Dominique Ansel, the brains behind that headline-grabbing croissant-donut hybrid, launches a full-blown, sit-down restaurant on Covent Garden's Floral Street. While the à la carte menu is expected to be primarily pie, bread and pasta-based, fans of the cronut need not fret; visitors will be able to get their pastry fill from the restaurant's ground-floor bakery.

Address

Floral Street WC2E

restaurant

Norma

Think you know Italian food? Think again. This new opening from the team behind The Stafford London picks apart Sardinian food as we commonly know it, and repackages it with all of its Moorish influences deliciously intact. Its Trapani-style seafood stew with fennel, chilli and saffron couscous is exemplary of the menu's East-meets-West sensibility.

Address

8 Charlotte Street W1T 2LS

This image is on holiday

restaurant

Muse London

After a five-year hiatus from London's culinary scene, Tom Aikens, the Michelin-starred "enfant terrible" of British fine dining, returns this January with Muse, an intimate, 25-seat concept restaurant tucked away in a mews house off Belgrave Square. The as yet undisclosed menu has been described by Aikens as "a gastronomic autobiography", which will draw upon sentimental places and people in his life. We look forward to eating his words, cover to cover.

Address

38 Groom Place SW1X 7BA

restaurant

Bubala

Bubala means "darling" or "sweetheart" in Yiddish, and its namesake restaurant has been hitting the sweet spots of many East Londoners since its opening last summer. Head chef Helen Graham's menu is speckled with echoes of Ottolenghi - think: pomegranate, tahini and ras el hanout - but occasionally dips into more traditional Middle Eastern fare, serving pumpkin tirshy (a type of dip) and homemade malawach (Yemeni flatbread).

Address

65 Commercial Street E1 6BD

This image is on holiday

restaurant

IT

A former art gallery in Mayfair might not sound like the most obvious setting for the London outpost of an Ibiza-themed restaurant, especially if your idea of Ibiza means EDM raves and sun-downers in San Antonio. IT is fine-dining old-school Ibiza-style, which means Balearic DJs and spectacular showpiece dishes. True to the restaurant's original site, it will also double up as a gallery space for emerging artists.

Address

28-29 Dover Street W1S 4LX

This image is on holiday

restaurant

Four Legs at The Compton Arms

The Compton Arms might look like your typical British pub, but don't let the run-of-the-mill decor fool you. When chef duo, Four Legs, started sizzling away in the kitchen last year, it quickly gained a reputation for serving up the best burger in London. The menu here places an emphasis on British produce and meat - lots of it. Vegans, take note.

Address

4 Compton Avenue N1 2XD

This image is on holiday

restaurant

Torshi

Over the past year, Londoners have been nudging northwards as creative spaces such as Five Miles and Grow Tottenham have gradually started to repurpose N15's industrial warehouses as cafés and nightclubs. Torshi is one such hangout, serving food inspired by the Levant in a pared-back setting. On weekends, the restaurant transforms into a techno club. Either leave at a sensible hour or hunker down for a digestif, of sorts.

Address

39b Markfield Road N15 4QA