The Good Food Guide along with the Michelin Guide is one of the Bibles for choosing where to dine in the UK. Its choice of the top eleven London restaurants tells both London visitors and residents, who the current movers and shakers are on the capital’s dining scene – and reminds people who has maintained consistently good quality, year on year.
Why eleven? Because eleven restaurants receive the highest marks of 7/10 and above for their cooking.
Anyone planning a London vacation or wanting a memorable meal for a special occasion like a birthday, honeymoon or anniversary knows that any of the following is a safe choice. Prices aren’t cheap, but the food will be sensational.
The Good Food Guide’s top eleven best London restaurants for 2011 are:
Gordon Ramsay gets 9/10 for cooking, making it the second-best restaurant in the UK, according to the Good Food Guide. The only restaurant to score a perfect 10 is The Fat Duck at Bray in Berkshire. If you only have time, or money, for one blow-out meal in London it probably ought to be at Gordon Ramsay.
Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley scores 8/10 and the GFG reviewers say this is one of the best Menus in London, and there is also an inventive vegetarian Menu Gourmand.
Pied-à-Terre is another of several London restaurants rated 8/10, here for the modern French cooking of Shane Osborn. ‘Serious dining for serious people’.
The Square is also Modern French and Philip Howard is praised as one of the most gifted chefs in England, perhaps because he focuses on his kitchen rather than a TV career. 8/10.
Hibiscus is described as producing ‘Extraordinary cooking from a free spirit’, where chef Claude Bosi produces his own modern versions of classic French dishes. The good-value set lunch is an affordable way to find out what the fuss is about.
Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester. French culinary genius Ducasse shows that it is possible to build a world restaurant empire and still keep standards high. The service is impeccable too, and the rating of 8/10 shows that it is up there with the best in London.
Le Gavroche has been one of the best and best-known London restaurants ever since it was opened by Michel and Albert Roux in 1967. That’s over 40 years of consistently good French cooking, an astonishingly reliable record. 8/10.
Tom Aikens produces dazzling flavours and ‘his food can still blow your socks off’, is the Good Food Guide’s verdict, giving 8/10 to his fairly intimate 54-seat restaurant in Chelsea.
L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon is another example of a stellar French chef coming to London and making a roaring success of his restaurant here, based on his Paris original. It’s modern French cooking at its best, and one attraction is that it’s surprisingly affordable, given its cooking score of 7/10. The Good Food Guide estimates £40 a head - half what some of these fine dining experiences will cost you.
Murano is the most highly rated Italian restaurant in London, thanks to the cooking of Gordon Ramsay’s protégée Angela Hartnett. The good-value set lunches at £30 are praised here, and the cooking score is 7/10.
The Ledbury also scores 7/10 for Australian chef Brett Graham’s modern European cooking, which mixes an ever-changing range of flavours to great effect. His cooking has been described as dazzling and exciting, and here again the fixed-price lunch receives high praise: ‘a real diamond for outstanding value and unabashed quality’.
Those, then, are the Good Food Guide’s choices of the very best restaurants in London. Choose any of those for that very special meal and you will not be disappointed - if you can get a table. Book well ahead!
Buying the Good Food Guide 2011
The Good Food Guide 2011 can be ordered for £16.99 (p&p free) at the Good Food Guide Shop. It is also available in bookstores, and from online booksellers.
Mike Gerrard - Mike is an award-winning travel writer who has worked for National Geographic, the London Times, and many other clients. ...
