Marco Solo: 10 London restaurants to visit when dining alone

Solo dining is having a moment in London. It doesn’t need to be a stressful endeavour, says Josh Barrie
Soloist: Everybody deserves a little ‘me time’,
Pexels/Elin Sazonova

To dine solo is to be constitutional. Self care, all the rage, need not be only spas and face masks. Taking oneself out for alone time over noodles is a positive force.

Not all restaurants befit solo dining and from these one might refrain. It is a matter of environment and need: the romantic throes of Soho’s Andrew Edmunds is better set up for date night; the raucous nature of any Wetherspoon’s pub is probably best avoided when alone.

And so here are 10 of London’s best venues for eating out alone. Saddle up and tuck in, lonesome cowboy.

Sweetings

Sweetings website

City workers have frequented Sweetings on Queen Victoria Street since 1889. A resourceful, timeless institution of a seafood restaurant, any Monday to Friday lunch — visit early to avoid too long a queue; Sweetings doesn’t take reservations — is a convivial passage through history. And it’s all the better alone. Best placed would be a bar and stool combination facing the busy streets outside: observe the world while oysters and affordable (£16) fish pie are delivered.

39 Queen Victoria Street, EC4N 4SF, sweetingsrestaurant.com

Bar Bruno

Gareth Knight via Flickr

To describe Bar Bruno as “old school” would be a disservice because nothing quite so boring ought to be written about the Soho cafe. Here is another institution, a hallowed and generous enclave that bustles with big omelettes and excellent chips; with waitresses who call everyone “darling” and are immune to the effects of freneticism. A proper Anglo-Italian for anyone looking to alleviate the testing pitfalls of a hangover without having to speak much.

101 Wardour Street, W1F 0UG, instagram.com/barbruno101

Kiln

Benjamin McMahon

Pull up a stool at the counter at Kiln and find yourself on a noodly precipice. Kiln is arguably the best pick of the bunch when it comes to solo dining, not least because watching chefs at work, flames all around, is so transfixing. In Soho, it’s an accessible but fine Thai restaurant, somewhere to engulf the senses with a menu that meanders from hot sausage to sour curries bursting with grey mullet. Also, and words to live by here: please do not ignore the salads.

58 Brewer Street, W1F 9TL, kilnsoho.com/

Daffodil Mulligan

Matt Writtle

To Old Street, still unfinished after all these years, but also home to Daffodil Mulligan, Richard Corrigan’s relaxed bar and restaurant. Downstairs in Gibney’s are two Irish bartenders who’ll talk happily to any solitary customer intent on whiling away an afternoon. Upstairs in the restaurant proper and much the same might commence. A £19.50 lunch menu allowing guests a pick of two changing dishes — excellent salt chill fried chicken and fire roasted cod often among them — would never be a bad idea.

70-74 City Road, EC1Y 2BJ, daffodilmulligan.com

Chez Bruce

PA

Some might consider fine dining to be an experience better shared. This is the case for the most part, but Chez Bruce is a proposition beyond the realms of normality. On Wandsworth Common, staff are welcoming, the menu, from the esteemed Matt Christmas, ever-changing and always enrapturing, and then there is the cheese. Such an eclectic and luxurious board, wheeled out as an encore, is enough to prevent even the neediest of people from becoming bored.

2 Bellevue Road, SW17 7EG, chezbruce.co.uk

081

081 Pizzeria Peckham
Nic Crilly-Hargrave/London Food and Drink Photography

081 is on a growing list of excellent Neapolitan pizzerias in London. Andrea Ascuiti recently opened a permanent restaurant in Peckham, having spent time running his pop-up in the vicinity before it. Pizza is a food that lends itself to solo eating, an easy, comforting dish that warms the soul. At 081, pizza is considered “a serious thing.” And it is. Toppings are the finest Italian ingredients, the dough is made with the utmost skill, and the result is pleasure.

66 Peckham Rye, SE15 4JR, 081pizzeria.com/

Dim Sum Duck

@missjessicamw

First, get the prawn wontons. They are served with homemade salad cream — the combination is a Hong Kong import — and will be better than any you’ve had before. Then try the cheung fung, in which a paper-thin layer of tofu remains remarkably crisp, despite the seemingly endless moisture, before fitting in as many dumplings as you can endure without dying. Do all this with beer and chat to the manager, Alec, who could well be a little reserved at first but will pucker up. All of this performed alone would make for a brilliant lunchtime. Dim Sum Duck is a must for anyone looking to learn more about Cantonese eating.

124 King’s Cross Road, WC1X 9DS, dimsum-duck.business.site

Koya

Koya Facebook

Back to the countertop, to Koya, of whose any three sites would suit a solitary foray. It is difficult to pinpoint a better dish of a time spent dining as one. And there are countless other places for Japanese udon in London today but none surpass Koya. First, it would be wise to enjoy an egg, which will come swimming almost furtively in a chilled fish dashi. Second, the noodles — the star. One option is an English breakfast variety, where egg (lots of eggs are fine, especially when alone), bacon and shiitake mushrooms are present and pleasing.

50 Frith Street, W1D 4SQ, koya.co.uk

La Chingada

La Chingada Facebook

There is an abundance of excellent tacos in London but few are as enlivening as those at La Chingada. The venue is a diminutive but lively spot in Rotherhithe, and there really isn’t any need to dine there with anyone else. Visit and go wild — it’s highly affordable — indeed, why not make a day of it? After tacos filled with nopal with mushrooms and cheese, baja prawns with zesty pico de gallo, and confit beef under coriander and sliced radishes, you will only want to chug a mandarin Jarritos and lie down on the sofa at home anyway.

12 Rotherhithe New Road, SE16 2AA, lachingada.co.uk

Chutney Mary

Chutney Mary

Chutney Mary might be outside the culinary zeitgeist these days. Which is a little curious because it’s better than most high-end Indian restaurants. Residing in St James’s, Chutney Mary is as elegant as anywhere in London, with a pan-Indian menu spanning classics and modern iterations thereof. There is a minimum expected spend advertised on the website, but it is only £55, and so book the Pukka Bar for a breezy lunch or a quiet dinner and become charmed by inventiveness.

73 St James’s St, St. James’s, SW1A 1PH, chutneymary.com

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