Top 10 Best Restaurants in Shoreditch, London
Shoreditch is probably one of the hottest areas for drinking, dining, and dancing in London. From underground basement cocktail bars, to rooftop sun terraces, to gentleman’s clubs and base-heavy dance clubs; Shoreditch has it all. This guide to the best Shoreditch basement restaurants, meat lover restaurants, French restaurants, and American diners includes Hoxton, Old Street, Brick Lane and that bit in the middle near Curtain Road which provides plenty of cool, trendy and hot-right-now dining options for those looking for a restaurant in east London.
Shoreditch
Restaurant
British
Each summer, the World's 50 Best Restaurants is announced. This is the official top 50. The Clove Club in Shoreditch is the highest placed UK restaurant in that top 50. That makes it THE BEST RESTAURANT IN THE UK, let alone Shoreditch. Set in Shoreditch Town Hall, the Michelin star restaurant serves modern British cuisine across a variety of menus: tasting menu; 6-course menu; 4-course lunch menu; 6-course lunch; and a 9-course lunch. Be prepared, it is not cheap. But if you're looking to at least try these plates of perfection, lunch offers the best value for money. You need to purchase a ticket in order to dine. An ideal birthday or Christmas present for someone VERY special?
Shoreditch
Restaurant
British
Lyle's is an all-day restaurant in Shoreditch from previous Young Turks and St John staff. Lyle's is also placed in the World's 50 Best Restaurants. Lunch is a list of 12 dishes, while dinner is a set menu that changes daily. The food is British, simple and driven by common sense. The menu features dishes such as: raw beef & mussels; turbot & sea aster; and treacle tart & milk ice cream. There is also a daily offering of items made in-house including bread, charcuterie, butter, preserves and pickles. A rotating house coffee is supplied by people including Koppi from Sweden and London's Square Mile. The wine list is small with low mark ups regularly adapting to the menus and season.
Shoreditch
Bar / Restaurant
Meat
The Jones Family Project restaurant and bar offers contemporary quality grilled meats (cooked on a Josper) and seafood with a global twist in terms of the seasoning, ingredients and cooking methods. Its lower level restaurant is open for lunch and dinner and can be reached from both Great Eastern Street and Rivington Street. It is a very flexible space with areas of different sizes that, if required, can be screened off for private lunches/dinners/parties. Its ground floor bar, which is light an airy having a 5m glass entrance and full length windows on Great Eastern Street, is open from breakfast to midnight.
Shoreditch
Bar / Restaurant
Imagine an old farmyard shed, all rusted, darkened metals and scratched timber. Now place a heaving, bellowing, BBQ behemoth at its centre, chucking out burning wood, coal and fat smells and a whole lot of fragrant smoke. Put that shed in the inner city, next to Shoreditch High Street station, Boxpark and Brick Lane and fill it with as many carnivorous hipsters as you can find. You have just created the vision that is Smokestak. Vegetarians, look away now. We're only talking to the meat feasters with this suggestion. Put the brisket bun and ox cheek cubes high on your shortlist. Best swilled down with whisky or rum based cocktails and locally produced beers.
Shoreditch
Bar / Restaurant
Scandinavian
Rök Smokehouse & Bar is a casual, hip Scandinavian restaurant and bar that specialises in preservation techniques like pickling, fermenting and smoking; the centrepiece being their custom-made open wood-fired grill. They try and produce most things in-house where possible including their culturing their own dairy products and brewing their own probiotic drinks. They use local, small independent suppliers for their menu; their meat comes from farms in the north of England and Bedfordshire. Highlights on their menu include scallop roasted in the shell and Aylesbury duck with lingonberry and bacon jam.
Shoreditch
Bar / Restaurant
British
Forge & Co. is a British brasserie, lounge, bar and gallery set in the heart of East London's creative start-up district. Forge & Co. combines the building's post-war aesthetic with glass walls, bespoke pinewood tables and vintage cutlery and crockery, to stunning effect. The Canteen, on the ground floor, embodies a brasserie and bar offering classic British dishes as well as breakfast, lunch, dinner or drinks. The ground floor also holds The Lounge, a perfect place for cocktails and bar snacks, coffees, or a light meal, with the full bar menu available to guests. In the basement, Forge & Co's Gallery space hosts exhibitions and talks.
Shoreditch
Restaurant
Meat
The team at Fluid London are a simple lot. We love simplicity. Large, lengthy menus confuse us. We much prefer a menu that offers only two main options, barn-reared Devonshire Red chicken or Shorthorn, Hereford and Aberdeen Angus steak; the former with wild garlic sauce & chips; the latter served as sirloin, rib on the bone, or porterhouse with chips and béarnaise sauce (there are 6 choices for dessert though). Regarded by many as the best meat restaurant in London, Tramshed (pictured above), pleases all meat-eaters who have trouble making decisions. Art lovers will also enjoy the Damien Hirst centrepiece and the basement art gallery that changes its exhibition every six weeks.
Shoreditch
Restaurant
Asian
100 Hoxton is a sparsely-decorated, achingly hip little restaurant in deepest, trendiest Shoreditch, whose menu revolves around a series of tapas-sized sharing plates. These Instagram-friendly portions include delicacies such as sea bream with tigers milk and beef ssamjang, and are overpoweringly tasty even when split among friends. Less adventurous options are also available, but make sure you try the homemade mango and passion fruit brûlée on your way out. A worthy pit-stop on your way to a night out in the East End, or on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Shoreditch
Bar / Restaurant
Caribbean
Cottons on Curtain Road in Shoreditch is a boutique Caribbean rum shack and restaurant which features a menu of vibrant street food alongside 235 different rums - that's 235 rums!! - at the bar. Drinks are served in true tiki style. Sample some authentic Caribbean food, such as fiery ebony wings with char-grilled pineapple; creamy crayfish & lobster mac n cheese; or, from the jerk pit menu, everything from chicken to red snapper, grilled, smoked over coals and oak wood chips with hickory and piemento, and covered in Cottons' homemade jerk sauce.
