In London, it’s no secret the hype cycles are now faster than the seasons. A restaurant can go viral before the door. New openings can feel like limited edition vinyl drops. A residency can come and go before your group chat can find a date. If you blink for a month, you return and there may well be a Pret in your wanton restaurant’s place.

Not that it’s all bad. We are living through a golden age of restaurant micro-moments, where the places that really speak to your tastes, and therefore genuinely deserve your money, your time, and your paid babysitter, can now turn hype into staying power.

This month’s edit reflects that. These are the places that aren’t just serving food for food’s sake, but all giving us something a little bit more. We have cavernous new openings designed for slow evenings. Dining experiences that feel more aligned with punk art than any form of Michelin star. A fast-casual chain that is–shockingly!–out-cooking half the carb-heavy Soho scene. And that’s just the start.

Where to Eat in London This Month

1. Oui Madame

Oui Madame, London

Sonya Metzler

Highbury & Islington is not a place I go to feel surprised. It’s commuter busy, it’s got some good little spots—sometimes great—but we’ve been fed variations on the same neighbourhood-dining trope for years. Making newly-opened Oui Madame the bolt of voltage the postcode needs.

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What Martin Lange and chef Jacob Buckley have created here is the sort of intimacy Londoners are starved of. It’s built to be somewhere you take someone you actually want to spend time with. It’s European in the grammar of the plates, London in the pitch of the room.

Buckley’s French-ish cooking is serious and studied, but delightfully un-serious. The kind of flavour-first cooking that makes you reappreciate the value of a dish assembled with intention. The beef tartare deserves early cult status – the gochujang and nashi pear interplay is intelligent and thrilling– and the green potato gnocchi with corn espuma–elegant, playful, the sort of thing you hope they never take off the menu.

But what really sealed this list placement for me was downstairs. The cave. Dim, stone-walled, thick with scent intoxications from the kitchen. The exact birthday-room-energy I like: private-enough, but not cut off from life.

Address: 290 St Paul’s Rd, London N1 2LH

2. Punk Royale

Punk Royale, London

Punk Royale

Punk Royale is not a restaurant you discover by accident. You hear whispers. You see someone in Stories doing a bump of caviar off a spoon and wonder where on earth they are. You hear someone mutter “why do I feel like I’ve just left a wedding” as they wander, half-drunk, into the streets of Soho and–suddenly–you’re googling table availability.

This is the sort of place that reminds you London still has mischief in her bones. Each evening unfolds like a piece of performance art that happens to be dinner. Servers spoon-feed you bites. Diners lose their inhibitions in real time. Strangers become conspirators over the course of fifteen, twenty, thirty plates (it’s truly hard to keep track).

Some dishes are extraordinary. Some are nuts. But the point is not perfection. The point is tasting menu provocation. Shock. Excess. A sense of occasion that doesn’t rely on white tablecloths, but on the shared willingness to go somewhere strange and silly together.

As I alluded to in my newsletter, my expectations were compromised, but the reality was a truly phenomenal.

Address: 6 Sackville St, London W1S 3DD

3. Nobu London Portman Square

Nobu London

CPG Photos

I hadn’t eaten at Nobu in what felt like actual years, and then I had two meals in 24 hours–one inside Frieze Masters (arguably the best people-watching spot in all of Artlandia), then one at Nobu Hotel Portman Square for their Frieze Afternoon Tea. Safe to say, Nobu still has its fastball.

The savouries are essentially a Nobu greatest-hits reel: Spicy Tuna Crispy Rice, a Sushi House Roll, the smoky little salmon shokupan club, the truffle tamago. Then miniature Wagyu sliders–because of course—shimmying towards scones and a truly sublime set of sweets. Inspired by John Atkin’s sculptural work (showing in their White Box gallery space), the hotel’s pastry team have created a number of design-forward deserts, including a grapefruit and passionfruit centerpiece, genuinely resulting one of the most conceptually coherent patisserie items I’ve seen a hotel perfect.

Safe to say, I’ll no longer be waiting years for my return visit.

Address: 22 Portman Square, London W1H 7BG

4. House of Louie

Louie, London

Louie

Paris Society’s three-storey Covent Garden townhouse is a flex of hospitality genuis–but more importantly, it’s also now one of the smartest ways to revive weekday evenings that I’ve seen in some time.

To map what it contains, on floor one your have Wani Tzuki–Japanese techniques filtered through French-trained chefs. It has that “sharpness meets softness” thing that modern Japanese-European fusion so often tries to do, but rarely nails at this level.

Then, on floor two, ol’ faithful Louie–soulful French dining with a jazz identity and band to match. The food and lighting are flirty as either could be, and a great precursor to The Alligator Bar on floor three. I hesitate to tell too many people that this is one of the rare bars in central London that actually knows what “late” should feel like. But it is. And they’ve nailed turning all three concepts into a living, ascending ecosystem.

Address: 13-15 West St, London WC2H 9NE

5. Oranj

Oranj, London

Oranj

Oranj, in its new Dray Walk chapter, is a strong wine bar-ification of ambitious ideals. See: a natural wine bar that has graduated from rotating residencies into a serious, permanent kitchen identity.

The truth: I think the wine is better than the food. But that doesn’t mean the food is not good–it just means the wine programme is one of the best expressions of low-intervention drinking currently happening in the city.

Bringing Hokkaido-born Yuto Fujimoto in as Culinary Director was inspired. His cooking is thoughtful, with European reference points sharpened by Japanese instinct. A monkfish dish here will make you order another glass of the skin-contact beauty you kicked things off with. The gnocchi with sage and cep is a sleeper star might tempt you towards a red. And, while the room is huge, it retains atmosphere. Big, buzzy, industrial and candlelit. The kind of place that actively encourages a third bottle.

Address: 15 Dray Walk, London E1 6QR

6. Leon (yes, actually)

Leon

Tamin Jones

Curveball time. If you’d told me even six months ago that I’d be openly praising a “fast-food” chain in my monthly London food guide, I would have assumed I’d finally broken. But the new LEON menu is legitimately excellent. And they’ve never been the wrong kind of “fast”.

Sans mystery meats and bleached-out ‘salads’, its nigh-on impossible for other chains to compete with Leon’s regularly-updated menus. Recent additions include chef-y, protein-forward breakfast sandos and new ‘Bowl’d’ bowls with spice, crunch, pickle, acid, freshness, et al. The satay chicken Bowl’d bowl is excellent in a way that is almost disruptive, because it delivers the thing that Londoners might spend £18 and an hour queueing for, at a fraction of the price, in minutes.

And at a time when restaurants are needing to justify every single penny of their pricing, it’s a little refreshing to remember that fast casual, when done with actual culinary brains, can sit alongside the city’s most serious rooms. I eat here at least once a week, and you better believe I have my fingers twitching for a taste of the new Christmas sandwiches today.