Some of the city’s finest restaurants are found inside museums. Country Life writers round up the very best

One thing London does better than any other city is the museum restaurant: something to round off an exhibition or awaken the palate before one. Since 1856, when the world’s first museum eatery opened here at the V&A Museum, other cultural institutions have followed suit. Post-pandemic, these have come thick and fast — and 2025 has been a bumper year.

Following the success of Alex Piludu’s Ochre, which was launched on the ground floor of the National Gallery, in 2022, chef Giorgio Locatelli opened up the mezzanine of the museum with his equally smashing namesake restaurant in May. Over at Somerset House, a new restaurant from renowned Syrian chef Imad Alarnab, Aram, is opening this autumn.

Theatres and, more recently, opera houses have joined the fray, opening their doors to fine dining at a time when London’s food scene is arguably the richest in the world. The National Theatre is currently celebrating two years of Lasdun, Tom Harris and Jon Rotheram’s outstanding restaurant on the first floor (order the pie to share). At the Royal Opera House, Angela Hartnett is about to take over the restaurant and terrace bar over the piazza.

An anthropologist might suggest three reasons why London’s cultural institutions enjoy such culinary appendages — and why these might outflank those in rival cities, even Paris. The first is borne out of necessity: there are no good restaurants in the vicinity of our museums, only dispiriting chains and fast-food joints. The one exception is Tate Modern which benefits from close proximity to Borough Market, and, although you’d be right to point out that Soho is geographically near the majority of our galleries (and boasts great food), the journey there from Holborn or Trafalgar Square is a perilous matter at the weekend. Such a walk is best avoided, especially if you can dine well on the spot.

The second reason is historical. London is the birthplace of the museum restaurant, starting with the original Refreshment Room at the V&A or, as it was then known, the South Kensington Museum. Described as ‘hideously ugly’ by one of the era’s leading publications, it was demolished 11 years later to make way for three new spaces: the Gamble Room, Poynter Room and Morris Room, so named because it was designed by William Morris, then only 31. In an early display of his singular style, the room drew on the Gothic Revival and used Elizabethan-style panelling.

Why is this important? London has a rich history of repurposing grand architecture into dining spaces: think of The Clove Club, located inside Shoreditch Town Hall, or The Cinnamon Club which opened at the turn of the millennium in the building that once housed Westminster Library (the bookshelves are still intact). ‘Restaurateurs are supremely good at placemaking,’ notes John Goodall, Country Life's architectural editor. ‘This allows them to convert characterful buildings into atmospheric places in which to eat.’

This leads us to the third and final reason, which concerns the sheer majesty of our museums. Not only are they a sanctuary for some of the world’s finest art; many are works of art themselves, from the British Museum and its 44 Ionic columns to the soaring towers and Romanesque grandeur of the Natural History Museum. These are vast, powerful edifices housing the very things that make a civilisation: knowledge, history, money, restoration, memory and the pursuit of truth. It only makes sense for them to dish up that other great cultural offering: food.

Portrait, National Portrait Gallery

How can a restaurant hope to measure up to the palace of art it sits within? A view will help. Four floors up, that from Portrait is a masterpiece: a ribbon of glass panels reveals Big Ben, Nelson’s Column and the London Eye. The sense is of an occasion; having a glass of something cool and crisp here as the sun sets is one of the brightest uses of a half hour in London.

Richard Corrigan, best known for Bentley’s Oyster Bar, is in charge, having returned to the gallery 20 years after he first consulted on its food. His menu is straightforward and easily navigated, with produce from across Britain and Ireland. Diners are left to decide how adventurously they might eat: will it be duck hearts and onion jam, rabbit tagliatelle or a simple roast-beef salad? Prices are mostly Corrigan-esque, but a pre-theatre menu — two courses for £35 or three for £39 — is a smart way to keep costs slight. However, I could sit here with a bowl of olive-oil mash (£6) and a martini (£14) and be happy. David Ellis

Locatelli, National Gallery

The launch of a new London restaurant, however patrician, rarely makes headlines abroad. Yet when Giorgio Locatelli (above), fresh from closing his celebrated Locanda in Marylebone, set up shop at the National Gallery earlier this year, the story ran on the front page of several Italian newspapers. Within a month, Il Gambero Rosso, the country’s most exacting gastronomical guide, had awarded the restaurant two of its sought-after ‘forks’ (the most it ever awards is three).

Locatelli lives up to expectations with a flourish. A table by the balcony offers a glimpse of Trafalgar Square and the crowds ascending towards Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks. Service is attentive without being overbearing. It’s the excellent food that steals the show, however. The whipped goat’s cheese is a punchy opening gambit; a young, peppery olive oil dances a daring pas-de-deux with a warm chunk of potato and rosemary sourdough; plump veal tortelloni glide gracefully in parsley butter sauce.

On my visit there, I bumped into a friend who told me he’d come back for the fourth time in only two months. His reason? The zesty cuttlefish salad and juicy beef tagliata reclining on a bed of creamy aubergines. The pièce de résistance, however, has to be the chocolate cake: velvety around a quivering ganache core, it is a work of art worthy of its setting. Carla Passino

Seventy Five, Liberty

Liberty, on Soho’s Great Marlborough Street, is its very own kind of museum, offering a glimpse into what London might have looked like during the fin de siècle. Newly emerging department stores put far-flung riches on display for an ever-growing number of citizens; Liberty, which specialised in ornaments, fabrics and objets d’art from the Far East, became what Oscar Wilde called ‘the chosen resort of the artistic shopper’ and, in the process, began to outline a style we’ve since termed ‘cosmopolitan’.

This April, Liberty unveiled Seventy Five, an equally worldly offering from head chef Joe Holness, previously of Bethnal Green’s Da Terra and the much-missed Fera at Claridge’s. Located on the second floor of the six-storey building, the restaurant is an ode to the store itself. The floral patterns on the wallpaper cleverly recall those of the William Morris fabrics sold on the floor above and drawings by Sir Quentin Blake hang in simple wooden frames, an evocation of childlike wonder, ease and simplicity. You’ll find much of the latter in the cooking here (a compliment): fresh and reliable ingredients to sate a shopper between helpings of crêpe de Chine and limited-edition Cire Trudon. Go for the crab salad served with a tarragon, fennel and apple salad. Afternoon tea is also available, from £50. Or £66 for the Bollinger pairing. A no brainer, really. Will Hosie

Garden Café, Garden Museum

Plenty of restaurants trumpet a local-and-seasonal ethos, but it’s no surprise that this one really does walk the walk. Once voted the world’s best museum restaurant, the Garden Café (don’t be fooled by the name — you won’t find a fridge full of pre-packed sarnies here) occupies a striking modern glasshouse at the heart of the Garden Museum, next to Lambeth Palace. After a morning browsing the exhibition ‘Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party’ (until September 21), sit down for three faultless courses cooked by Myles Donaldson (formerly of Noble Rot and St John Bread and Wine).

Greenery is the thing, from a surprisingly mellow garlic and parsley soup to the tarragon generously flecking a plate of fresh tagliatelle and girolles and the meadowsweet in a craquelin-topped choux dessert with roasted cherries. This is ambitious, delicious cooking, at prices you rarely see in London restaurants of this quality: some starters here are still in single digits. If you’re longing for a day out of town but can’t get away, a long lunch here is the next-best thing. Emma Hughes

José Pizarro at the RA

There aren’t many chefs who have been awarded a knighthood, or the equivalent thereof. José Pizarro has. The Spanish chef received the Order of Isabella the Catholic from the Spanish King last year. It came in recognition for his work in popularising his nation’s cuisine on British soil. It’s easy to forget the past: 30 years ago, you’d be hard-pressed to find croquetas in this country, nor fine jamón Ibérico and plump anchovies in olive oil. Today, these dishes are ubiquitous — and José has been a front-runner in their magnification. Where tapas was once a dream, an idea, in Britain, today it is ingrained into our culture. Few places do it better than there.

His first restaurant in Bermondsey remains a bastion of Spanish food in London, a place to find pan con tomate, bacalao and morcilla — black pudding — with cuttlefish. Since August 2021, José has also fed the culture vultures who roam the Royal Academy, opening an outlet of his restaurant in the building’s glorious Senate Room. Unas patatas bravas, por favor. Josh Barrie

Spring, Somerset House

Somerset House — the large, neo-Classical building sandwiched between the Strand and the River Thames — has a reputation for beautiful things. There’s Somerset House Studios, home at any one time to 70 artists across myriad disciplines; the Courtauld Gallery, a treasure trove of golden medieval works, together with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings; and Spring, the restaurant on the ground floor that opened more than a decade ago in a space that had previously been closed to the public for 150 years.

Its appeal shows no sign of waning. The food is as delicate and pretty as the interiors (lots of gauze and blushing pinks, including some ceramic floor tiles in the ladies’ loos that I’ve been coveting). Dishes are as sublime as they are simple and change so often that you’re forced to step out of your comfort zone and discover something new and delicious each time you visit. The Country Life team has celebrated two Christmases at Spring and both times — clustered together in the private room beneath a jaw-dropping, dried floral installation — have been magical. Rosie Paterson

Lasdun, National Theatre

As with Seventy Five at Liberty, an exception to the museum-only rule must be made for the restaurant at the National Theatre. Pre-theatre menus rarely gladden the heart: most have the will-this-do air of a party-shop hat donned on the way to a fancy-dress bash. Lasdun, however, is everything you’d expect from chefs who cut their teeth at east London gastronomic beacons The Marksman and Lyle’s: think cured Tamworth ham, green beans and lovage, a glorious (and vast) chicken and girolles pie for two and British territorial cheeses.

Dining here isn’t a pleasure limited to theatregoers, either: anyone can book and, if you’ve time to kill, there’s no excuse for not ordering one of the best-of-both-worlds martinis (which arrive bearing both an olive and a lemon twist) before settling in for a feast of Cornish hake, clams and cider-butter sauce or a majestic rib of beef with tomato and anchovy salad. As well as cooking to die for, Lasdun boasts striking, mid-century good looks — unsurprising, given it was named in honour of Sir Denys Lasdun, the architect behind the National itself. Standing ovations all round. Emma Hughes