Tabitha Joyce

Designer Anya Hindmarch’s village is a collection of joyful and evolving stores on the Pimlico side of Pont Street. There’s been a mesmerising stationery shop and a kitsch scuba store as well as annual installations including a magical Christmas grotto and an ice cream project serving mad flavours such as Heinz baked beans and Branston piccalilli. Year round, head to Anya Café for a shopping pit stop of playful Battenberg slices and googley-eyed cupcakes. 

There’s always an interesting crowd huddled under heaters on the busy pavement terrace outside this Bloomsbury trattoria. The menu may be an AngloItalian mix of salmon tagliatelle and bolognese, and the pepper grinders comically large, but there are few spots in the city quite this cheerful. Generous plates of pasta and a rabblerousing piano player on weekends.

Regularly touted as "the best pizza in London," Crisp, used to be served inside The Chancellors on Crisp Road in Hammersmith. There hadn’t been so much hype about a pizza place in London for a long, long time – and then the team joined forces with The Devonshire crew to dish up their pies inside a Mayfair pub. While elsewhere in the city it’s all about scorched sourdough, at Crisp the thin crust and crisp base are fully intentional. The best New York-style slices in town – book ahead.

Discover divine rambling roses and wild poetic planting in London's oldest botanical garden, a walled oasis tucked away in historic Chelsea. Enter through a set of tiny doors and it feels like sneaking into somewhere private. On Saturdays the marquees might go up for lucky Londoners getting married here but on any other day there are few places more delightful, or peaceful, for a cup of tea. 

In the morning there are queues for some of north London’s best pains aux raisins. At lunch, it’s for fat ciabattas filled with courgettes, ricotta, hot honey and pangrattato. And in the evening, a changing menu that includes comforting, homemade plates of orzo with pork and beef ragù. The restaurant everyone wishes they had in their neighbourhood.


Australian chef Skye Gyngell has always been ahead of her time when it comes to low-waste cooking. Alongside the a la carte, her scratch menu, served between 5.30pm and 6.15pm from Tuesday to Saturday at Spring in Somerset House, makes the most of leftovers from the night before, and might include charcuterie croquettes with lovage aïoli or lemon and ricotta pudding. It’s hard to differentiate this innovative offering from the à la carte, which is fabulous too.

Even more exclusive than London stalwart The Berkeley is its sister property, glass-box-like The Emory. With a unique identity of its own, the hotel steps things up another notch with its members’ spa Surrenne and New York restaurant implant ABC Kitchen. Sip a cocktail from their glass-fronted rooftop bar and watch the hustle and bustle of sleek Belgravia below. 

Notting Hill is surprisingly short on standout hotels; and so when the Laslett arrived in 2015 it was the first boutique stay to really shake its tail feathers. Set across five Victorian mansions, it has antiques from stalls on Portobello and Golborne roads in the bedrooms and photographs by Barry Kamen on the walls. A space for those who want to feel like they live in a glossy part of London for a few days, which happens to be refreshingly affordable too.

Ikoyi is responsible for a new wave of West African dining in the city. Chef Jeremy Chan’s surprise tasting menu is made up of flavours such as jollof rice (reimagined with a lobster custard) and plantains (topped with a spiced efo emulsion). Game-changing cooking for a blow-out supper.