LDNGuide
The 13 Best Restaurants In London Fields
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Like a lot of pedestrianised neighbourhoods, the streets around London Fields excel in two key areas: ambling and eating. Feeling worse for wear after a heavy night? There’s a cheeseburger you should know about. Bumped into someone you or your friend vaguely knows? Sounds like a coffee and a pastry opportunity. Feeling a little down in the dumps? It’s a good thing some of London’s udon is just around the corner. You see, London Fields has plenty of delicious and gluggable options if you happen to be passing by. These are the best ones.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Papi calls the ground floor of a shiny apartment block home, but this restaurant brings big house party energy and creative, European-leaning small plates. The walls are bare but the disco ball is hung, and there’s a red chaise lounge in the loo. Staff are excellent hosts, flitting around and pouring tasters from the extensive wine list. Fun and nostalgia runs through dishes like the cheeseburger-inspired tartare with a red plastic bowl of hot fries. But there’s also elegance in tender pollock with leeks and a piquant apple sabayon. The best place to be is at the bar by the chefs at work.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Snapery East’s toasties, breakfast muffins, and pastries are a cut above. We’re looking at you, melted cheese and sriracha ketchup-smothered sausage muffin. This bakery-cum-brunch spot housed in one of London Fields' many converted arches is ideal for escaping the Broadway Market crowds come the weekend—especially given its airy covered (and heated) terrace. Make sure you also leave with a loaf or baguette for the road.
photo credit: Brat
The London Fields location of Brat is a little different to its Shoreditch sibling, but the food maintains its own high wood-fired standard. This covered gourmet greenhouse takes over one of the railway arches to create an atmosphere that’s more casual than the original. There are plastic seats that will give you flashbacks to school assemblies and the airy, indoor-outdoor space has the feel of a particularly bougie barbecue. Yes, it is a sort of glorified gazebo but, particularly in summer, it works. Old British seafood favourites like that butter and vinegar-sprayed whole turbot and bubbling charred anchovy flatbread are still as good as ever.
photo credit: Anton Rodriguez
Few things have fit as comfortably as a pair of Tekla pyjamas as Koya does in its location off Broadway Market. The box-sized Japanese spot has become a reliable go-to for locals with a hankering for hand-pulled English breakfast udon. There’s kara-age and donburi too and, if the sun is shining, the handful of big sharing tables outside makes for the perfect post or pre-pub dinner location.
photo credit: Matthew Eades
Elliot’s is one of London Fields’ safest bets, particularly if you’re partial to off-white tones and atmospheric Instagram stories of your dinner. Just like its Borough Market sibling, the 10-inch pizzas at this buzzing, biodynamic-loving, modern European restaurant are completely wolfable. Crab with lemon and chilli; taleggio, sage, and brown butter; and classics like pepperoni and ‘nduja. There’s a whole wood grill thing going on too. But we can’t help but feel that with its outside seating looking onto Mare Street in all its glory, it’s best placed for sipping drinks, splitting pizzas, and picking on salads.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
For a chic date night or low-key cool group dinner, look no further than Ombra. At the Italian spot by the Regent’s Canal, empty wine bottles find new life as vases for dried flowers and candles flicker on tables. Bottles of wine with cool labels are ferried to tables puncturing puffy gnocco fritto, and spritzes are delivered to couples dissecting a fried artichoke layer by layer. Expect your repressed hoarder tendencies to surface as you guard, sorry share, the excellent food. Especially with the tiramisu. We would cross oceans during a storm for it—and by that we mean, walk across a bridge over the Thames when it’s mizzling.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
If you’re looking to get in and out of Broadway Market with something delicious, all while avoiding the locals and their army of whippets, then Saray Broadway Cafe is your best bet. It’s a straightforward-looking caf that hand-rolls gözleme in the window every day. A blanket-sized roll of spinach and feta-filled flatbread will cost you about £5. Warm, salty, soft, and crisp around the edges, it really is good enough to snuggle up in.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Café Cecilia is one of the most 35mm-photographed restaurants in London. Its entire shebang is very Vogue, dahling. From the minimalist marble-style interior to the canal-side location, perfect for popping by on your VanMoof. This place is not just the flavour of last month or this month, but of every month for the foreseeable future. From the British menu, it’s a tough call on who’s the cover star. The peppercorn sauce-drenched onglet and chips is up there, as is their deep-fried bread pudding with custard. But given the bun fight to get a prime time booking, we’d recommend walking in for a more tranquil breakfast.
photo credit: Mike Tsang - Fresh Mike Studio
Our go-to order at the Hackney fried chicken joint (from the people behind Dumpling Shack) is the hot Sichuan sandwich. Everything works in exquisite harmony: the soft potato bun; the crunchy, juicy, hot chicken thigh; sweet and spicy mala-spiked honey sauce; and tangy pickles and slaw. The surprise hit side to accompany the sando? Not the bag of crinkle fries, but a tub of garlicky, blistered green beans. FYI like most chicken shops, Sichuan Fry’s handful of stools and bouncing soundtrack is set up for a grab-and-go situation.
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
Spend all day and all night (from Wednesday to Saturday) at this cafe, bakery, and dinnertime pasta spot. Pophams’ whitewashed space is filled with long sharing tables, beautiful ceramics in neutral tones, flowers in delicate little vases, and flickering candles. Pastries are where this spot really excels. Even the plain croissant is rich and buttery, but you really want to get involved in some of the savoury combos—Marmite, schlossberger, and spring onion or bacon and maple.
It feels silly to call Mare Street off the beaten track, but in comparison to the perma-London Fields festival, it can feel that way. It’s where you’ll find Caribbean Kitchen and their too-good-to-turn-down lunch deals. The chicken stew with rice and peas is a generous and chilli-warming lunch for one. The same goes for the vegan sweet potato and black bean offering. Or there’s a jerk chicken wrap if you’re looking for something handheld, all for in and around a fiver.
photo credit: The Bagel Guys
The Bagel Guys is one of the few London bagel shops trying to bring a little bit of the NYC bagel game over here. Sure, our New York colleagues would likely roll their eyes and scoff at the Netil Market takeaway spot. Not because it’s bad but because that’s what ‘worldly’ New Yorkers do. Similar to Londoners, come to think of it. Anyway the gooey, salty BEC (bacon, egg, cheese) is a hangover cure extraordinaire—don’t forget the hot sauce. Their lox on an everything sourdough bagel is an always-reliable Sunday morning go-to.
This bougie butchers makes a mean Toulouse sausage, among lots of other things. During the day there are regular butchers of the most trendy east London variety. By night, the marble meat block is (thoroughly) wiped down, dainty candles are lit, and a selection of small plates alongside hunks of meat are cooked and served. The menu is concise and the stars of the show, unsurprisingly, are the juicy chops and blushing steaks.
