May we not live in interesting times, goes my internal 2025 chant. Part of my day job is to look at restaurant trends – a trickier job than ever in the Upside Down of nowadays. There is the stuff you know, the stuff you hope for, and the guff that you hope goes away.
I know 2026 will be another year of M&Ms: martinis and mince. Burgers, pasta with meatballs, mince on toast, maybe sausage rolls, all paired with martinis as cold as an Eskimo’s nose, many with Manhattan vibes.
We will have more pubs doing proper food. There will be classier Korean food about the place. Pizza by the slice isn’t going anywhere. Smash burgers will become fatter. On the other side of the divide, tasting menus are becoming thinner, as weight-loss drugs drive more decisions.
I dream of consommé becoming a competitive sport. I’d love a convoy of boozy crêpe Suzette trolleys heading to a restaurant near you. I wish natural wines as a cult would become more secular, and be based on, you know, flavour. Also more restaurants with actual phone numbers would be nice.
RM Block
The first of the first-world problems that I wish would feck off back to where they belong are caviar and gold leaf. Omnipresent, both have made it on to everything bar a Happy Meal upgrade. While I adore caviar (gold leaf is tasteless), lose bougie bumps off smelly or perfumed hands, and return the delicacy to its classical setting – chilled silver service drama, mother of pearl spoons, chopped egg and crème fraîche with fresh, warm blinis.
Our island continues up its steady culinary curve. Despite the obvious obstacles, there are, again, more better places to eat in 2025 than last year, than ever. We should celebrate that. If you don’t want your restaurants replaced with vape and mobile repair shops, then go out to eat, for the love of everything. And if you’re abroad, go out to eat there too.
London
Legado
The sound, generous Nieves Barragán Mohacho had the palate and graft that made Barrafina a seminal name in the industry. She got a star for a bar counter where you could just have a tortilla and sherry. A few years later she moved on and opened Sabor, won all the love, and another star. Legado opened in Shoreditch in September to an Everest of expectations.
It’s big, buzzy but cosy, and I love it to the moon and back. A happy and grand place with a menu that I have been thinking more about since than any other this year. The smart play is a long lunch of small things with a big group, a sos beag of in-betweener drinks in Bar Lina, then back to a very different early dinner in Legado’s next-door neighbour, the super hot Singburi.
One Club Row
The most creative dining is still happening on our nearest neighbour’s island. My last year’s list still stands – there isn’t food in London better than Bouchon Racine. Joké Bakare’s West African flavourpalooza, Chishuru, is as good as ever. Sarah Cicolini’s Santa Palato is as mighty as anything in the Eternal City.
Cut to now, and rumours are that one of Ireland’s finest exports, Patrick Powell, might get his own place soon. As an employee at the glorious Midland Grand, he could do big numbers to perfection. At Allegra, he should have lassoed a star. At Shoreditch’s Knave of Clubs, a magical Irish pub thing happened. You could order a toastie as a side to Rue Mouffetard-level rotisserie chicken. A few weeks later he opened One Club Row above the Knave, converting what looked like an old flat into one of the hottest diningrooms. One Club Row doesn’t have the spendy finish of that other Manhattan love letter, Mayfair’s The Dover, but Powell’s food is better, in a room with looser shoulders and all the craic.
The Ritz and The Arlington
This has been John Williams’s year. Not the composer, but the maestro who heads the kitchen in The Ritz. People in the know would question why this restaurant only had one star. Michelin finally doubled that number this year.
Of course, this all sounds spendy, but your Oasis tickets or posh handbag is my lunch money. The Ritz is not cheap – it’s in the name – but there are hacks. Set lunch is £96 (about €110), three courses, but with extra starry bits and bobs. Match that with the grandest of titles but well-priced Barons de Rothschild, Réserve Ritz Champagne – just over another £100. That is the flashiest of lunches for less than dinner in most of the Michelin Guide. The room is unmatched for drama but the food is whatever the opposite of all fur coat and no knickers is, by one of the best, and sweetest, chefs around.
You can make a day of it now without putting your coat on. Just a top hat’s throw from The Ritz, and squarely on the blue part of the original Monopoly board, is Jeremy King’s recently reopened Arlington. If The Arlington was in New York it would be a local treasure. Sitting at the bar post-lunch or for some classy solo dining food, and laser-cut cocktails that have been around since before you or I were born, is one of London’s great adventures. And you may feel even better when you realise, as I did, that even in my mid-50s, I was way under the average age in The Arlington, and its cast of eccentric characters that make it all the more interesting.
Southwest England
The Seahorse
Bristol is the hub to the belly of England and the start of your road trip. Take a rainy afternoon stop in Bath, spied from a perch in the lovely Dickensian Beckford Bottleshop. Womble for the day, read some Austen.
Head south for an overnight in Bruton, home to Merlin Labron-Johnson’s insta-hit, Osip, and its delicious casual little brother, The Old Pharmacy. Sleep and supper in the cute Three Horseshoes a few minutes away in Batcombe, where the food is under the eye and palate of mighty Margot Henderson.
The region is falling down with English sparkling wine producers, most of it great, and better than the usual subjects in Champagne.
Finally, to the stunning harbour town of Dartmouth, and to Mitch Tonks and his son Ben. The Tonks are not only the family dynamic behind The Seahorse, one of the best seafood restaurants around, but, through Rockfish, they are changing how people eat fish. Pristine Dartmouth is dreamy year round, and with that as its setting and the most precisely delicious and generous food, and brilliant service, I don’t know a better, more complete, casually perfect restaurant in the English-speaking world.
Lisbon
Belcanto
Can you make the sun shine indoors? Belcanto can. José Avillez is a World’s 50 Best regular and his two-starred ode to Portugal is no secret. There at least once a year, I’ve always enjoyed it but, to be honest, for a while Belcanto wasn’t extraordinary. It is now and has grown into itself. What sometimes felt like faff and props seems properly, seriously playful. The menu has never been better. The wine list is the very best of Portugal.
Lisbon, bottlenecked by tourists, has become hard to find anywhere central for even a bica with locals. Still, a blinkered stroll and walking in from the still always empty, quiet, sunburnt square to those tall, elegant rooms, incredible staff, and their easy distillation of Portuguese hospitality (they are the most hospitable of Europeans) is a sunny way to escape the bad things of the world, even for a few hours.
Basque Country
Asador Etxebarri
I remember waking up in a cab after my first trip to Etxebarri, very confused. First there was a taxi from Bilbao to the restaurant, in this Basque hamlet in the middle of nowhere, and then another back to supper in Biarritz. In between, lunch, and Etxebarri has the Swiss backdrop to an Alpen ad. It was like a dream sequence; hard to believe that those once-in-a-lifetime dishes came from that electric and gas-free kitchen, each one better than the next, and all of it a new take on the oldest way of cooking. Elvers, a field mushroom, a beef chop, and a few strawberries, all touched by the fire god, Victor Arguinzoniz.
Etxebarri only does lunch these days, and is one of the hardest reservations to get anywhere. If you can’t get in, go to Bilbao – it’s more real life than San Sebastian with food just as good.
