This red-hot Thai restaurant serves a short, changing menu using impeccably sourced ingredients. Langoustine som tum is made with sour in-season gooseberries and a rich beef-cheek curry with nettles and wild garlic foraged from Mile End. Larger groups can sit downstairs but the best seats are those on the ground floor, with views of the clay cooking pots. Hop over to Bar Termini if there’s a wait.

Owned by interior designer Kit Kemp and her husband Tim, Firmdale has eight hotels in London; among our favourites are the Charlotte Street Hotel and the lesser-known, completely charming Number Sixteen in South Kensington. But when Ham Yard splashed onto the scene in 2014, it felt like something fresh. Both in its big, bright spaces but also in its creation of a new shopping enclave tucked behind Piccadilly Circus. Redefining the city hotel with its own urban hub, this is  a beautiful boutique stay on a big scale.

There was a bit of a wave of small, meat restaurants cropping up in Soho a few years ago, but not all of them have stood the test of time. Kricket, however, remains a golden tip. This trendy charming restaurant focuses on Indian small plates with bright refreshing twists.

There’s a buzz around whatever landlord Oisín Rogers does, but at Denman Street’s The Devonshire, it’s reached fever pitch. In the pub and in huge crowds outside, young things come to split the G – the Guinness drinker’s challenge. While upstairs, Ashley Palmer-Watts (a Heston Blumenthal alumnus) is dishing up prawn cocktails and steaks at a very reasonable lunchtime rate. Reservations (bookable three weeks ahead) disappear in minutes. Fingers at the ready for London’s hottest gastropub.