American Restaurants in Chigwell
1. SOLA
American restaurant in Soho
64 Dean Street - W1D
“THE place to go for top-class Californian cooking in London” – Victor Garvey’s Soho five-year-old may be “eye-wateringly expensive” (“the price, ooh la la!”) but serves “top-notch cooking well deserving of its Michelin star”. “SoLa is that rare place that sources genuinely top-class ingredients and cooks them to perfection”: presenting them in either a 10-course tasting menu for £139 per person, or 17-course tasting menu for £229 per person. There are also drinks pairings to the above (at £170 and £230 per person) and a “fabulous” wine list drawn mostly from the US (and primarily, but not exclusively, from the West Coast). Despite refurbishment two years ago, the café-style ambience is the weakest link in the experience.
2. Colony Grill Room, Beaumont Hotel
American restaurant in Mayfair
8 Balderton Street, Brown Hart Gardens - W1K
“A private, discrete setting” with “reasonably spaced tables and no music”, together with “no-nonsense good grills and fish” win a fair number of recommendations – including for business meals – for this Art Deco hotel dining room, a short walk from Selfridges, which features striking murals above its plush banquettes and wood panelling. It consciously aims to import Manhattan style down to the slant on its menu of salads, crustacea and steaks.
3. The American Bar, The Stafford
American restaurant in St James's
The Stafford, 16-18 Saint James's Place - SW1A
Ties festooned from the ceiling is the signature look of this veteran St James’s location, which makes a civilised launch-pad for an evening in the West End. With help from Northcote’s Lisa Goodwin-Allen, the menu – well-rated in reports – offers light US-inspired bites (ribs, jambalaya prawns, mac ’n’ cheese).
4. Passyunk Avenue
American restaurant in Stratford
Westfield Stratford, Level 1, World Food Court - E20
2022 Review: This ‘Philadelphia dive bar’ in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, has certainly “got the American vibe”, with “US-style beer and bar food” giving a real taste of the City of Brotherly Love. Philly street food classics such as the hoagie and cheesesteak are on the menu – and “it’s not health food, that’s for sure”. Reporters are divided on the results – “defining the category” for fans, “pretty underwhelming” for sceptics. There’s now a second site at Westfield Stratford, complete with baseball batting cages, but a 2021 crowdfunding bid to raise £150,000 for a massive bar under the railway arches in Leake Street, Waterloo, struck out.
5. Shake Shack
Burgers, etc restaurant in Stratford
The Street, Westfield Stratford - E20
2021 Review: In less than 20 years, Danny Meyer has transformed his New York City hot-dog cart into a global fast-food brand giant with eight outlets in London – including a Covent Garden flagship that was revamped earlier this year. Ratings remain remarkably solid for “a chain that does what it’s supposed to do”.
6. Fugitive Motel
Pizza restaurant in Tower Hamlets
199 Cambridge Heath Road - E2
2021 Review: A 140-seater ‘craft bar and kitchen’ near some soon-to-be developed railway arches in hip Bethnal Green that opened in June 2019, too late for any survey feedback. It’s open from breakfast on – at lunch and thereafter the main menu offering is pizza.
7. Big Easy
American restaurant in Canary Wharf
Crossrail Pl - E14
Giant nachos, a bucket of beer and a platter of jumbo shrimp – if that sounds, good head off to these “large and vibrant” US-style ‘Bar.B.Q & Crabshacks’, which have multiplied in recent years from their age-old Chelsea home to colonise Covent Garden, Canary Wharf and Westfield Stratford. They are the kind of places you can make a reservation for 20 and they won’t blink. Top Menu Tip – “great lunch and weekend deals”: e.g. “lobster, salad and chips with a glass of Prosecco for £15 in WC2 – what more could you ask for!”
8. Breakfast Club Hoxton
American restaurant in Hoxton
2-4 Rufus St - N1
“What is better than an amazing breakfast?…” and you are certainly spoilt for choice all day long at this greasy-spoon-esque chain, which is celebrating its 20th year in 2024 with the addition of a St Pancras branch to its empire of 16 caffs (11 of them in the capital) and 3 pubs.
9. Cincinnati Chilibomb
American restaurant in Hackney
26 Curtain Road - EC2A
2023 Review: “US-style dive bar” in Shoreditch “serving what may well be the finest bar-meal/hangover-cure in London – beef chili in a hollowed-out brioche bun, topped with cheese and your choice of chili sauce in varying levels of insanity”. Tim Brice, aka ‘Captain Chili’, took over the former site of Rok (RIP) to open his little corner of Americana in February 2021. Apparently the Cincinatti chilibomb was developed by Greek immigrants who adapted Tex-Mex chili con carne in the 1920s.
10. Bodean’s
American restaurant in City
201 City Rd - EC1
2021 Review: “A nice, laid-back American buzz” has helped win a loyal following over the years for this small chain of Kansas City-style diners: one of the first in London to bring BBQ indoors. “It’s a fun place” (in the right mood) and the food is “decent” and in man-sized portions, but “not particularly special”.
11. Breakfast Club
American restaurant in Spitalfields
12-16 Artillery Ln - E1
“What is better than an amazing breakfast?…” and you are certainly spoilt for choice all day long at this greasy-spoon-esque chain, which is celebrating its 20th year in 2024 with the addition of a St Pancras branch to its empire of 16 caffs (11 of them in the capital) and 3 pubs.
12. Breakfast Club Angel
American restaurant in Islington
31 Camden Pas - N1
“What is better than an amazing breakfast?…” and you are certainly spoilt for choice all day long at this greasy-spoon-esque chain, which is celebrating its 20th year in 2024 with the addition of a St Pancras branch to its empire of 16 caffs (11 of them in the capital) and 3 pubs.
13. Bodean’s
American restaurant in City
16 Byward St - EC3
2021 Review: “A nice, laid-back American buzz” has helped win a loyal following over the years for this small chain of Kansas City-style diners: one of the first in London to bring BBQ indoors. “It’s a fun place” (in the right mood) and the food is “decent” and in man-sized portions, but “not particularly special”.
14. Hubbard & Bell, Hoxton Hotel
American restaurant in Holborn
199-206 High Holborn - WC1
2021 Review: Actually in Holborn not Hoxton – “an all-pleasing place, with a cool bar area” that’s part of the Soho House group, tipped for its “excellent breakfasts” and “simple, classic burgers”.
15. Christopher’s
American restaurant in Covent Garden
18 Wellington St - WC2
Opened in 1870 as London’s first licensed casino, this impressive Covent Garden mansion is proof that it takes more than a fine space in a handy location to make a terrific eatery. Relaunched as a luxurious American restaurant in 1991 (by the son of a Tory grandee), it aims to import Manhattanite sophistication, top-quality surf ’n’ turf and high-class brunch to the capital, alongside a popular Martini bar. But, while it does still receive the odd nomination as a place for a business lunch, it’s largely ignored in our annual diners’ poll nowadays.
16. NoMad London
American restaurant in Covent Garden
28 Bow Street - WC2E
The Atrium – a “beautiful” glass-ceilinged space in a New York-style boutique hotel carved out of the former Bow Street Magistrates’ Court – is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular and “atmospheric” settings for a meal in Covent Garden. But one or two reporters feel that “they need a better menu” as the current one is “underwhelming” (“food was average with a few honourable exceptions”).
17. Balthazar
British, Modern restaurant in Covent Garden
4 - 6 Russell Street - WC2
This “big, buzzy faux-Parisian brasserie” in the heart of Covent Garden certainly looks the part, but it “can get very busy” and “extremely noisy” as a result. It provides “lots of classic French cuisine”, but with very mixed results: fans say it’s “executed pretty well” but reviews overall are often jaundiced – for example: “dull food, impossible to chat… really bad experience and a ridiculous bill”.
18. Joe Allen
American restaurant in Covent Garden
2 Burleigh St - WC2E
This Theatreland relic retains much of its 1970s Manhattan charm – it’s the long-established sibling to a famous NYC brasserie by Times Square, and moved five years ago to a new Covent Garden site just around the corner from the old one (though you’d never know: it looks just the same). As a destination for “great cocktails” it’s superb, but as a restaurant its retro American brasserie fare and steaks (with famous off-menu burger) is decidedly “tired and past its sell-by date”… as it has so often been over the decades.
19. Shake Shack
Burgers, etc restaurant in Bloomsbury
80 New Oxford St - WC1
2021 Review: In less than 20 years, Danny Meyer has transformed his New York City hot-dog cart into a global fast-food brand giant with eight outlets in London – including a Covent Garden flagship that was revamped earlier this year. Ratings remain remarkably solid for “a chain that does what it’s supposed to do”.
20. Shake Shack
Burgers, etc restaurant in Covent Garden
24 The Market - WC2
2021 Review: In less than 20 years, Danny Meyer has transformed his New York City hot-dog cart into a global fast-food brand giant with eight outlets in London – including a Covent Garden flagship that was revamped earlier this year. Ratings remain remarkably solid for “a chain that does what it’s supposed to do”.
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