The heat has come down, the humidity has rolled in: London is in the midst of a . are heaving; are beginning to feel crowded. And let’s not get into the beach situation outside of town.
Happily, London has the Thames to break up the city heat, and from canalside cult favourites to seafood with a view, the capital isn’t short of lining its waterways ( ). The list below — our favourites, but there are others out there — offers a chance to soak up the sun with a cooling river breeze, with a seat that gets you as close to the as possible. For more For our guide to the best beer gardens, A legend among restaurants, ’ influential Italian dining room is still an enviable spot to spend a warm day in west London, even after more than 30 years.
The main dining room is set back from the Thames, but distanced only by a leafy garden that in summer time is filled with tables of deep-pocketed diners, including a good showing of celebrities, feasting on nettle pasta with butter and chargrilled Cornish monkfish with anchovy and rosemary sauce. For a similar albeit somewhat more limited — and certainly cheaper — experience, try the new Brothers Fin and Lorcan Spiteri have hospitality in their blood — both mum (Melanie Arnold) and Dad (Jon Spiteri) are industry titans. But by now they have made a name for themselves in their own right, having taken over a barge on the Regent’s Canal and converted it into a 10-seat restaurant with space for 40 diners, at least half of whom are probably on dates and ready to be seduced by the eternal charms of sparkling napery and good-quality glassware.
Fin looks after the cocktails while Lorcan is in charge of cooking: expect a simple supper but with expert cooking: duck parpadelle with peas and gremolata, perhaps, or mackerel with borlotti beans and beef heart tomatoes. The cocktail list is to the point — the rum and cola Old Fashioned is particularly good — and there’s a nice selection of no-and-low drinks offered too. Ever so slightly upstream from Ruth Rogers, restaurateur Sam Harrison has set up his own retreat.
With a cracking view of the green-and-gold towers of Hammersmith Bridge, serves a seafood-leaning menu: dressed crab and roast brill, but also pork shoulder and a venison chop. Large windows give most tables a view of the water whatever the time of year, with the best seats in the house on a summertime terrace. A little further west, and where the River Brent approaches the Thames, Harrison now has , offering a similar thing.
Who needs waterside dinners when you can have one actually on the water? That’s the premise of , the restaurant group that boasts two restaurants aboard two barges — the Prince Regent and the Grand Duchess. The former takes diners on a bucolic cruise of the Regent’s Canal — from Paddington to Camden and back — with a five-course set menu of British seafood (£75), with dishes including a beautiful cuttlefish Bolognese, and pollock with smoked haddock cream. If you haven’t quite got the sea legs, the Grand Duchess remains moored throughout the evening, but serves similarly excellent food.
At both are top-tier martinis. For strict landlubbers only after the pure food experience, there is also the London Shell Co. , which is perhaps the perfect neighbourhood restaurant.
Towpath — sometimes called the Towpath Cafe — has long been an east London attraction, with all the hallmarks of a modern cult favourite: seasonal opening (from spring till autumn), limited hours (Wednesday and Sunday 9am-5pm, with supper on Thursday, Friday and Saturday), celebrity endorsement (Keira Knightley, Fergus and Margot Henderson, Jeremy Lee), and, of course, its own podcast. Can you book? Absolutely not. Lori De Mori and Laura Jackson opened the place in 2010, and have kept it today much as it was then: a chalked blackboard suggests confit garlic with goats’ curd on toast, or a grilled cheese sandwich with quince jam.
A joy to be at and worth the inevitable wait. The Fallow boys — Will Murray, Jack Croft and James Robson — seem to have absolutely done it again with , their new restaurant on Wood Wharf (Canary Wharf to you and me). Inside it is spectacular in its own way, but its enormous terrace is surely the draw, looking out as it does over the calm water and mostly being slightly, blessedly shaded.
Food is very much up to scratch — — and the wine list is excellent too. A place to settle in, nibble at everything, and stay for somewhat longer than first anticipated. Simple pleasures don’t get much better than beer and pizza — Crate Brewery does both very well, and throws in canalside dining to boot.
The independent Hackney Wick brewery produces its own beer on site, and its oven also turns out a good line in thin-and-crispy pizzas, topped with the likes of sage and truffle, or Middle Eastern lamb. Sit out on the benches right by the River Lee Navigation, and watch the barges go by. You must be standing on the opposite bank of the Grand Union Canal (or actually sitting at one of the waterside tables) to appreciate Maida Vale’s Summerhouse, which reveals nothing of its charms from its street frontage.
Effectively a floating terrace, the restaurant is open to the elements when the weather is good, with nothing between diners and the ducks bobbing along the canal except a neatly trimmed box hedge. The seafood, thankfully, isn’t fished from local waters — there’s Canadian lobster, Jersey oysters and Mediterranean king prawns — as well as sirloin streak, rump of lamb and Sunday roasts. Sat as it is beside the canal, this down-at-the-heel old shop — you do not need to be a detective to figure its former life — has seen its star rise since 2018, when Mitshel Ibrahim (ex-Clove Club) took over the kitchen.
Ibrahim looks over his dining room and its outside terrace, where people come for something like the experience that might be had at a bacaro in Venice. You come for whatever: a few small bites and a glass of wine, an à la carte meal proper, or even the £65 tasting menu experience. If they’re on, don’t skip the crostino topped home-cured pancetta.
Unsurprisingly, the wine prioritises Italy, including plenty of skin contact and orange offerings. Perhaps overlooked as it sits in St Katharine Docks, which always is, the Melusine is a very fine seafood restaurant. It changes its menu as capriciously as the weather does; that is to say, whatever is cycled to them that morning is what ends up in the kitchen, and then on the plate.
Reliably, there are excellent oysters, often terrific scallops, usually bream or plaice. Some seafood places trade on their simplicity; this one seems to value a sense of the complex. Prices are fair, and the setting, beside the yachts gently bobbing and pulling on their moorings, is a beauty.
Rick Stein may be best known for his Padstow empire of Cornish seafood restaurants — oh, and being on the telly — but after a rocky start in Barnes, his seafood-leaning restaurant seems of late to have found its feet. Sat between Barnes and Chiswick bridges, in a dining room that is raised above a curve of the Thames and provides some pretty impressive views both up an downstream. There’s a little meat on the menu, There’s a little meat on the menu, but dishes of whole Dover sole, butterflied sardines and tronçon of turbot with hollandaise sauce steal the show.
The Daisy Green group has already brought its Australian-style dining across several oceans to London, but one of its hotspots is still keen to be out on the water. Diners will find Darcie & May Green onboard a canal-moored barge in Paddington, its colourful facade designed by renowned British pop artist Sir Peter Blake. Inside, you’ll find Antipodean-style cafe fare in the mornings – think flat whites and sweetcorn fritters – followed by summer barbecue-inspired dishes and an all-week offering.
This Canary Wharf outpost of the upmarket British steak chain makes the most of its Docklands location with sun loungers on the terrace where, if the reflection from the water doesn’t give you a tan, the sunlight bouncing off the surrounding glass-walled skyscrapers will. The sundeck, in fact, is attached to the former bar-turned-downstairs dining space; the dining room proper at this floating restaurant is on the floor above, where side orders of beef-dripping fries, macaroni cheese and grilled bone marrow are almost as good as the grass-fed, dry-aged, ethically reared steaks. Good-fun Scottish spot with lots of live music.
Perhaps the most well-publised view in London, of Tower Bridge. Food is classic French. Leafy spot in Richmond for this famed Argentine steakhouse.
Modern Italian with views over Tower Bridge and what was City Hall. Perched right on the side of the Thames at the South Bank, expect easy-going food with a American-British bent. The name gives this one away.
Nice spot in St Katharine Docks..
