F&B

Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte

120 Marylebone Lane · No bookings

A Pietsch family favourite. Born in Paris at Porte Maillot in 1959 and still run by the founder’s descendants, the menu is one walnut salad and one steak frites, served with the best sauce you will have, its recipe never published. The steak arrives in two waves so the second half stays hot, and the frites do not stop coming. Not to be missed, but be prepared to wait. There are no reservations and the room fills in a single go, so arrive thirty minutes before opening or plan on queueing.

Fischer’s

50 Marylebone High Street · Austrian

Austrian, and committed to it. Dark wood, brass, a boar’s head on the wall, and a menu that will make no sense to you at all if you did not grow up with it. Ignore most of it and get the schnitzel, which is enormous and excellent, then the Sachertorte, which you will insist you do not have room for. Cosy in the way that makes you order another round instead of leaving.

Hoppers

77 Wigmore Street · Sri Lankan

Sri Lankan, not Indian, and better than most Indian food you will eat. Really, really good. Get the bone marrow, which comes roasted in a sauce with roti to scoop it out with, and which is the whole reason to come. Then hoppers, mutton rolls, whatever else looks good. It is properly spicy, so be warned. Ask to sit downstairs.

Bombay Spice

50 Paddington Street · Indian

Proper food, fair prices, and no fuss. Haifleigh’s mum lives around the corner, and you will find her and Barath in here about twice a week, which tells you everything you need to know. Order generously and share it all.

Brasserie of Light

Selfridges, Duke Street · Modern European

A wow place. It is inside Selfridges, with its own door on Duke Street, and there is a giant crystal Pegasus by Damien Hirst hanging over the dining room that you will not be able to stop looking at. Go for lunch, when the light comes through the windows and the whole room glows. The food is good too, which honestly it did not have to be.

Nobu

Old Park Lane, Mayfair · Japanese

Haifleigh’s favourite, and a fixture whenever we are in London. Old Park Lane, looking out over Hyde Park. Order the black cod with miso because you have to, then whatever the counter suggests. We once spent an entire dinner sitting beside Robert Downey Jr. and behaved impeccably about it.

Sexy Fish

Berkeley Square, Mayfair · Japanese

Loud music, a DJ, bottles arriving with sparklers, and a bill that will make you laugh. You already know whether this is your kind of night. But the sushi is actually good, and we have had a lot of fun here. Same people behind Brasserie of Light, so expect another room full of Damien Hirst, plus the biggest Japanese whisky collection in the world behind the bar.

Connaught Bar

Carlos Place, Mayfair

Genuinely one of the best bars in the world, and it has the titles to prove it. Order the martini. They wheel a trolley to your table and make it in front of you, and it is a bit of theatre that never gets old. Expensive, worth it, go once.

Claridge’s Bar

Brook Street, Mayfair

The sort of room that makes you sit up a bit straighter. Behind it is the Fumoir, a tiny dark bar that seats almost nobody and is worth the effort of getting into. This is also where we are staying, so the odds of running into us are decent.

Artesian at The Langham

Portland Place

Another former World’s Best Bar, and still one of the most inventive. The menu is usually built around some concept rather than a list of drinks, which sounds insufferable and somehow is not. Big room, big ceilings, very good at what it does.

The Cocktail Bar at The Marylebone

Welbeck Street

The local one, and the one you will actually end up at. Small, warm, low-lit rooms off the hotel lobby, easy to fall into after dinner. Round the back on Marylebone Lane, 108 Bar is the livelier version with a terrace and a lot of gin.

Chiltern Firehouse

Chiltern Street · Closed until 2027

Here because everyone asks. The old fire station turned celebrity canteen actually caught fire on Valentine’s Day 2025 and has been shut ever since. Current word is 2027, so it will still be boarded up while you are here. Walk down Chiltern Street anyway, it is one of the prettiest streets in Marylebone.