Top 10 London restaurants of 2014

With London now responsible for setting restaurant trends rather than following them, the UK capital is home to a hotbed of young chefs who are throwing out the rulebook and paying little heed to convention.

This year has been an exciting one for London’s culinary landscape, with newcomer The Clove Club making it onto the prestigious World’s Best Restautants list, and tapas bar Barrafina in Soho picking up a Michelin star after 10 years of service, proving that fine dining need no longer necessitate starched linen and a hushed atmosphere.

Keen to do our own research, we’ve undertaken the arduous task of chomping our way around London’s hottest new openings to bring you our top 10 restaurants of 2014.

From a Spanish site specialisng in smoked meat and an Indian restaurant serving kid goat to a tiny place modelled on Jerusalem’s much loved Machneyuda, the diversity of cuisines within our list reflects the colourful character of the capital, highlighting the fact that London has become the most exciting city in the world in which to eat out.

Read on for our top picks of 2014. If we’ve left anyone out, let us know in the comment box below. Bon appétit!

10: Barnyard

Photo credit: Life of Yablon

Barnyard, the feral baby sister to Dabbous, opened on Charlotte Street amid much fanfare this March. With the Michelin-starred Dabbous still hard to score a table at, Barnyard gives diners a chance to sample wunderkid Ollie Dabbous’ cooking in fun and informal surroundings – waiters wear red and black checked shirts, while bare brick and corrugated iron walls add to the farmyard feel.

The menu is short and sweet, offering simple British dishes executed with aplomb. Among the highlights are the sausage roll with piccalilli; roast beef on toast with warm horseradish buttermilk; crispy chicken wings with smoked paprika, garlic and lemon; and corn on the cob with salted butter.

Drinks have a rustic feel, with the Hedgerow Shandy blending sloe gin, cider, pink grapefruit and tonic, while lemonade is homemade and milkshakes come in quirky flavours like popcorn and blueberry pancake.

Signature dish: Roast suckling pig with celeriac and caraway.

Photo credit Wilkes McDermid

9: Fischer’s

The newest addition to Chris Corbin and Jeremy’s King’s rapidly expanding all-day dining empire, Fischer’s on Marylebone High Street is inspired by early 20^th century Viennese cafés and serves fiendishly good almond croissants. Opening in June, novelist Salman Rushdie and domestic Nigella Lawson are regulars at the chic eatery dotted with portraits picked up at art fairs.

To create the feeling of stepping back in time, Corbin and King have gone as far as to create imaginary owners for the restaurant, middle-aged Viennese couple Otto and Maria Fischer. Open daily from 8am, Fischer’s serves everything from cured fish, schnitzels, sausages and strudels, to ice-cream coupes, hot chocolate and copious cakes.

Lunch and dinner delights include oak smoked salmon with horseradish cream; black pudding with apple christened Himmel und Erde (heaven on earth); and lamb goulash. Wines meanwhile, shine a light on mittel-Europe, flagging up drops from Alsace, Austria, Germany, Alto Adige and Hungary.

Signature dish: Austrian Gröstl – paprika fried potatoes, bacon, onion and fried eggs.

8: Tredwell’s

Michelin-starred chef Marcus Wareing has branched out into casual dining with Tredwell’s, which opened in Covent Garden in September. Set across two floors on St Martin’s Lane, the basement bar serves twists on classic cocktails, including a smoked Tom Collins, Gunpowder Gimlet and “New” Fashioned made with marmalade and rye.

Upstairs in the restaurant, you can settle into a racing green banquette and enjoy modern British dishes that tip their hat to everywhere from India to the Orient. Designed for sharing, the majority available in both small and large formats.

Visiting during the soft opening, we were impressed with the quality and sheer deliciousness of the dishes on offer, from pulled pork, ginger and apple sliders and achingly tender slow cooked beef shortrib to crispy prawns with fennel and sticky chili chicken wings.

Desserts are slightly wild in nature, with many merging the sweet and savoury worlds with varying degrees of success. Both the pain perdu with bacon and maple cream and the house-made salted caramel soft serve are things of beauty.

Signature dish: the devilishly decadent chicken liver mousse with bacon jam on toast.

7: Ember Yard

With the hugely successful Salt Yard, Dehesa and Opera Tavern under his belt, hispanophile Simon Mullins has struck gold again with Ember Yard on Berwick Street in Soho.

The fourth site in the Salt Yard group goes big on barbeque. When devising the menu, chef director Ben Tish took inspiration from the Basque method of cooking over charcoal, wish dishes almost entirely prepared on a custom built charcoal grill that forms the centrepiece of the open plan kitchen.

The team also smokes a number of ingredients on site using different types of wood, including Sherry barrels. Menu highlights include smoked bream carpaccio with blood orange; chargrilled Ibérico pork ribs with quince glaze and celeriac purée; grilled salt marsh lamb with parsnip puree and salsa verde; and applewood smoked bream carpaccio with pomegranate, coriander and bottarga.

Signature dish: Hot smoked Gloucester old spot pork belly with smoked apple and cider.

6: Typing Room

Run by flame-haired Tom Aikens lookalike Lee Westcott, who had big shoes to fill when he took over the restaurant at the Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green from Nuno Mendes after the closure of the Michelin-starred Viajante, having opened in May, the Typing Room was quick to turn heads and delight diners. Aged just 27, Westcott’s cuisine is picture perfect in presentation, each dish an edible art work.

Keen for his food to be comforting, dishes pay attention to the seasons with ingredients sourced largely from Britain. With the choice of a five or a seven course tasting menu for dinner, highlights include smoked roe deer with pear and pine nuts; yeasted cauliflower, capers, raisins and mint; smoked eel, mushroom dumplings, Madeira and watercress; and smoked apple, Jack Daniel’s and dill. Westcott will be one to watch in 2015.

Signature dish: Cold smoked mackerel, passion fruit and burnt cucumbers.

5: Gymkhana

Tricky to land a table at but well worth the holding music is Gymkhana in Mayfair, sister restaurant to the Michelin-starred Trishna in Marylebone. Head chef Karam Sethi’s 100-cover site takes inspiration from the gymkhana clubs set up by the British Raj where members of high society came to socialise.

Scooping a star this May, the modern Indian menu shines a light on the tandoor oven and charcoal grill, offering the likes of veal sweetbreads with wild mushroom dopiaza; wild boar vindhaloo; chicken butter masala; wild tiger prawns and red pepper chutney; paneer tikka with cashew nuts and venison naan with cucumber and cumin.

Venture downstairs and you’ll find a 17th century East India punch house serving spirits from the sub-continent and punches in wax-sealed bottles. Among the cocktails are the Quinine Sour and the Ooty Town Gimlet featuring Hendrick’s and rose water cordial.

Signature dish: Kid goat methi keema.

4: Berners Tavern

Soon to crack the Big Apple, Worksop-born wonder chef Jason Atherton can seemingly do no wrong. The man with the Midas touch has a golden restaurant in Berners Tavern, which boasts one of the most beautiful dining rooms in London.

Housed inside Ian Schrager’s über-swish London Edition hotel, it features Belle Epoque ceilings spewing with angels, bronze chandeliers and a collection of quirky artworks piled on top of each other in golden frames.

Head chef Phil Carmichael has kept the menu simple with brasserie staples that focus on the best of British seasonal ingredients, such as “Egg, Ham and Peas”, formed of a deep fried Clarence Court duck egg, mushy peas and crispy Cumbrian ham. Also on the menu is a BBQ pulled old spot pork sandwich with pickled cucumber, slaw and Atherton’s signature duck fat chips.

Signature dish: Orkney scallop ceviche with avocado, radish, baby gem, jalapeño and lime ice.

3: Chiltern Firehouse

The most talked about restaurant opening of 2014 was undoubtedly the Chiltern Firehouse in Marylebone, presided over by Portuguese-born chef Nuno Mendes. Becoming a magnet for megawatt stars within weeks of opening, an obscene number of A-listers have shimmied through its doors, from Bradley Cooper to David Beckham.

Owned by hip hotelier André Balazs, while much of the press coverage has focused on the restaurant’s celebrity clientele, for us the food is the real talking point.

With their American accent, dishes show off Mendes’ deep understanding of US cuisine, with many plates displaying the attention to detail that helped put his Michelin-starred venture Viajante on the map. Starting off with a vivifying Cheeky Matador cocktail at the bar, on our visit the DIY steak tartare and the chargrilled Ibérico pork with roasted garlic and collard greens both particularly impressed.

Signature dish: Monkfish cooked over pine with puffed barley and fennel.

2: The Palomar

The freshest and most exciting opening of 2014 was The Palomar on Rupert Street in Soho, which opened quietly in the summer and has fast become one of the hottest tickets in town. A noisy place, chefs have been known to break into impromptu percussion performances on the pots and pans in the restaurant’s open kitchen behind the 16-seater bar, which adds to the electric atmosphere.

Inspired by and opened in collaboration with the three chefs behind the free-spirited, much loved Machneyuda in Jerusalem, The Palomar specialises in small plates of Levantine cuisine, with dishes influenced by everywhere from Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Andalusia and Jerusalem.

Must try plates include Yemeni bread with tahini and tomatoes, Moroccan oysters with harissa; hand chopped beef fillet with bulgar, tahini, herbs and pine nuts; and pork belly tagine. Make sure you sit at the bar for a front row ticket to the culinary theatre.

Signature dish: Polenta “Jerusalem style” with mushroom ragout, truffle oil, asparagus and Parmesan.

1: Fera 

The hotly anticipated and now Michelin-starred Fera at Claridge’s tops our list for delivering a near-perfect lunch soon after it opened in May. At the helm is Simon Rogan, arguably the most exciting chef working in the UK today.

Meaning “wild” in Latin, Fera highlights the influence of the seasons on Rogan’s cuisine, with many ingredients sourced from his farm in Cumbria. Interiors are warm and welcoming, with pale olive banquettes and Art Deco touches offering a dash of splendour. The seasonal theme stretches to the cocktails, with everything from lovage, radish shoots and bee pollen making an appearance.

The amuse bouche offered some of the most pleasurable flavour combinations of not only the lunch, but the year. A pea shoot wafer with fennel and edible flowers delivered a taste of the Cumbrian countryside in spring, while cubes of saline, pearly pink mackerel with salty caviar and seawater cream evoked a bracing walk on a wind-whipped beach.

Rogan comes as close to expressing terroir in food as a chef has ever got. His dishes are a hymn to the countryside and a snapshot of how the land lived at a specific moment in time.

Signature dish: Stewed rabbit and lovage.