Hyde Park Corner Restaurant Guide

“Chef Shay Cooper has upped the ante here”, in the “magnificent” dining room (with “large, well-spaced tables”) of this extremely plush hotel on Hyde Park Corner: a gracious space, with a domed glass ceiling (lit naturally). His modern British cuisine won the venue much more consistent praise this year, including for a “wonderful – and surprisingly reasonably priced – Sunday lunch”. Top Tip – the £40 menu du jour is a steal here – but you must book online.

“Brilliant” Italian dishes “cooked to perfection” inspire rave reviews for chef Theo Randall’s well-known HQ, by Hyde Park Corner. For many diners, “the fact that it’s a large, bare, windowless hotel restaurant is completely irrelevant” – “there is good space between the tables”; “the kind staff all try really hard”; and “it always feels like a treat (that’s not as expensive as some other places)”. The odd meal doesn’t go well, at which time the “soulless” space seems more significant, but bad trips here are quite rare. Top Menu Tips – “at weekend lunchtime, Theo Randall does an excellent buffet antipasti followed by a set lunch with bottomless prosecco or Aperol spritz. The restaurant always has a buzz when these meals are on with lots of large families. And the business three-course set lunch at £33 is amazing value!”

2022 Review: Mexico City chef Martha Ortiz was creating a good reputation for her street-food-inspired menu at this venture, within a large hotel right on Hyde Park Corner. ‘Temporarily closed’ as we go to press: a call to the hotel in September 2021 showed no fixed time had been set for a re-opening.

2021 Review: Since 1971, this age-old rocker has grown from its first site, near Hyde Park Corner, to 186 globally, and 2019 saw the group reinvest massively in the capital, with not just a new hotel (on the site that was once The Cumberland) by Marble Arch, but also with the July 2019 opening of a 19,000 sq ft, multi-level, new London flagship at Piccadilly Circus. The latter opening includes a menu shake-up, which introduces an unsuspecting world to new culinary delights, including the ‘24-Karat Gold Leaf Steak BurgerTM’; (as well as the retail opportunities of ‘the world’s largest Rock Shop”’). For silver-haired reporters (who were alive for the chain’s founding) – a generation by-and-large untroubled by the hipster burger revolution – the “generously meaty” patties of the original are “still the best”, and one early report on the hotel says its restaurant “really rocks” too…. Even allowing for cynicism about the effects of nostalgia on the tastebuds, the brand fares better in the survey than most mass-market offerings.

2024 Review: Hermès, Loewe and Zimmermann help inspire the Spring/Summer 2023 Prêt-à-Portea collection on the ‘cakewalk’ of this Belgravia chamber, which takes annual inspiration for its wizard patisserie selection from the catwalk of the fashion industry. If you have money to burn, it’s an impressively skillful and witty twist on the afternoon tea experience – tuck into “Hermès’ tasselled bucket bag, crafted out of Victoria sponge sandwiched with apricot jam, wrapped in chocolate and finished with a chocolate feather plume!”

“An oldie but a goodie” – Nobu Matsuhisa‘s first restaurant in Europe when it opened in 1997 on the first floor of a Park Lane hotel remains “a truly special place” that still offers “the same excellence after all these years”. It’s “expensive” (always has been), “doesn’t have the best decor” (a long-running complaint), “but it hands-down serves some of the best Japanese food in London”, from a menu of Nikkei-fusion dishes including the signature miso black cod that spawned a thousand imitators.

2023 Review: Tucked away in a mews townhouse, this “dependable” Belgravia haunt has served upscale Pakistani cuisine to a wealthy crowd for 45 years. It particularly hits the spot for “meat-lovers” – “the lamb chops are seriously loveable” – while “the friendliness of the staff makes up for the rather boring Gulf and Russian clientele”.

“It always takes hours to decide on the wine!!” for fans of the grape at Gordon Ramsay’s mutedly luxurious Belgravia haunt, which is built around a wine cage and, of course, named for the famous Bordeaux appellation whose vintages contribute to its list. Though primarily nominated in our annual diners’ poll in the category for ‘Best Wine List’, its modern French cuisine under head chef Orson Vergnaud (at the helm since 2022) returned to stronger form this year and in a quiet way this is again one of the better restaurants in Gordon Ramsay’s stable.

2023 Review: This smartly kitted-out pub with a “nice outdoor terrace” on a cobbled Belgravia street has a “short, simple and well-executed menu”, providing “Sunday roast and fish ’n’ chips of quality”.

This “bustling” spot, tucked away in a Mayfair side street near Piccadilly and Green Park, is a “perennial favourite” (“great for a gossipy catch-up!”) on account of its “fun, welcoming” atmosphere and prices that are notably kind for the area. Over its three decades it has attracted a long list of swashbuckling guests, ranging from Johnny Depp to Fred Sirieix.