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 basement restaurants, meat lovers restaurants, French cuisine, and American diners in Shoreditch, Old Street, Hoxton, Old Street, Brick Lane and that bit in the middle near Curtain Road provides plenty of cool, trendy and hot-right-now dining options for those looking for a restaurant in east London.
Shoreditch
Restaurant
British
Lyle's is an all day restaurant from James Lowe (Young Turks, St John) and John Ogier (St John). Lunch is a list of 12 dishes, while dinner is a set menu that changes daily. The food is British, simple and driven by a common sense kind of mentality. 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 a small selection 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
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
American
Boneyard serves as a much more than an eatery on Shoreditch's High Street. The converted petrol station and adjacent timber yard become a place for people to hang out and enjoy its unique décor and famed food. The Americana influence is present in the industrial interior, with iconic Coca-Cola crates and self-service food counters, as well as the menu, which contains classics such as tatter tots, buttermilk fried chicken and slushies alongside newcomers like Boneyard's bone marrow burger.
Shoreditch
Restaurant
Asian
The industrial interior of 100 Hoxton is typical East London hipster - dark and brooding. Thankfully the staff are the opposite - bright and cheerful. The chef, Francis Puyat, worked at Yotam Ottolenghi's NOPI, and this shines through in the vibrant Asian-inspired menu of small plates. The braised octopus and roasted butternut salad are stand out dishes, but there is plenty to satisfy carnivores too. The bar menu is designed to complement the food, with inventive cocktails to choose from - take advantage of the daily happy hour. Combine this with the great value early bird and this restaurant is excellent bang for your buck. Great brunch at weekends (booking advised).
Shoreditch
Restaurant
Cafe
In need of some good old fashioned home cooking, but nowhere near home? Head to Albion Cafe, hidden in the back streets of Shoredtich, where it'll feel exactly like that. While it's a great place to dine any time of the day or year, we love Albion during the winter, simply because its cosy atmosphere and the home cooked love mean we don't miss our mummies quite so much (soz Mum). That winter we had dreadful amounts of snow, we remember slipping in for slow cooked pork belly in apple sauce with a few Bloody Marys sloshed with a few hints of lemon. It was a shame we had to go outside again. Bring back the mash, greens and rabbit stew, Momma Albion!
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.
