Best Italian Restaurants in London 2026

Ruth Rogers and the late Rose Gray opened The River Cafe in a converted Hammersmith warehouse in 1987 with the radical premise that regional Italian cooking, sourced honestly and cooked with restraint, was the most sophisticated thing London could put on a plate. The kitchen has been trained by, and has trained, a generation: Jamie Oliver, Theo Randall, Sam and Sam Clark, April Bloomfield, all came through this line. The Michelin star has been held continuously since 1998. The summer Thames-side patio is the room to book — wood-fire grilled langoustines, hand-rolled tagliatelle with white truffle (October-December), and the chocolate nemesis cake closing every meal. Wine list is one of the deepest all-Italian programmes in Europe.

Giorgio Locatelli opened Locanda Locatelli inside the Hyatt Regency Churchill on Seymour Street in 2002 and earned the Michelin star in the 2003 guide; the kitchen has held that star for twenty-three consecutive years — the longest run of any London Italian. The vincisgrassi (Marche-style baked lasagna with porcini and chicken livers) has been on the menu since opening night and is the test dish. The pappardelle with rabbit ragù and the ossobuco alla Milanese are the alternative orders. The wine list is one of the most thoughtfully assembled Italian programmes in central London, with serious by-the-glass depth in Barolo, Brunello, and Friuli white. The room is candle-low, banquette-comfortable, and built for an anniversary that cannot fail.

Angela Hartnett opened Murano as a Gordon Ramsay Holdings project in 2008, bought the restaurant outright in 2010, and has held its Michelin star every year since 2009. The format is a £125 four-course menu with a longer chef's-table tasting at £165. The signature is the orecchiette with rabbit ragù — Hartnett spent formative years in her Italian grandmother's kitchen and the orecchiette is from that lineage — and the agnolotti with chicken consommé is the test pasta. The dining room is small (forty seats), the lighting is candle-low, and the service is the most graceful in the Italian category, run by long-tenured floor staff who have worked the room for years.

Luca opened on St John Street in late 2016 — JKS Restaurants' first Italian project, conceived as Italian-British rather than diaspora-Italian — and earned its Michelin star in the 2018 guide. The kitchen runs Italian technique against British produce: native lobster ravioli with bisque, Suffolk pork with mostarda, hand-rolled tortelloni with girolles in season. The signature is the Parmesan fries — fries fried in beef dripping and rolled in two-year-aged Parmesan — that arrive on every table within four minutes of sitting down. The room is two floors and a glass-walled courtyard; the courtyard is the best summer-lunch Italian setting in central London. Wine list leans Italian but the by-the-glass programme includes serious Burgundy and Champagne depth.

Padella opened in Borough Market in 2016 as Tim Siadatan and Jordan Frieda's casual sibling to Trullo, and within twelve months the queue along Southwark Street had become a London landmark. The pici cacio e pepe — hand-rolled pici, cracked black pepper, and Pecorino Romano emulsion, £10.50 — is the menu fixture and the dish that put the room on the world pasta map. The pappardelle with eight-hour beef-shin ragù and the burrata with grilled bread are the alternative orders. The room is forty seats around an open kitchen with a counter view of the pasta-rolling station; the eight-seat chef's counter is the only reservation-able section, bookable through Tock four weeks out.

Trullo opened on St Paul's Road in Highbury in 2010 — Tim Siadatan and Jordan Frieda's first restaurant, named for the trulli of Puglia, and the kitchen that produced the eight-hour beef-shin pappardelle later spun off into Padella. The format is a small daily-changing menu, charcoal-grilled secondi (the rib-eye for two, the whole sea bream), and a pasta course that is the headline. The beef-shin pappardelle has been on the menu since opening; the cacio e pepe is the test pasta; the rib-eye for two with salsa verde is the menu fixture for groups. The room is intimate, hard-floored, conversation-easy. Sunday lunch (£32 three courses) is the best-value tasting in north London.

Jacob Kenedy opened Bocca di Lupo on Archer Street in 2008 with a thesis that no other London Italian has matched: every dish on the menu is labelled by its region of origin (Lazio, Sicily, Piedmont, Friuli, Marche) and prepared to that region's recipe. The format is small plates and pastas, with the marble counter facing the open kitchen as the best seat for solo diners. The radish, celeriac and Parmesan salad (Piedmont) is the signature opener; the cotechino with lentils (Emilia-Romagna) is the test winter dish; the orecchiette with fennel sausage (Puglia) is the menu fixture. Gelupo (the gelato shop across the street, also Kenedy's) is the obligatory dessert stop.

Theo Randall ran the River Cafe kitchen as head chef from 1989 to 2006 — seventeen formative years on the most influential Italian line in Britain — before opening the room at the InterContinental on Park Lane in late 2006. The cooking is unapologetically River Cafe: wood-fire grilling, hand-rolled pasta, seasonal produce flown weekly from Italian markets, a Tuscan emphasis on olive oil and white beans. The agnolotti with veal-ragù filling is the signature pasta; the wood-roasted Cornish brill with salsa verde is the secondo to order. The room is the best of the Park Lane hotel-dining rooms — quieter than the lobby Italian options, with a refurbishment in 2019 that brought the dining room up to the cooking.

Cafe Murano opened on St James's Street in 2013 as Angela Hartnett's casual answer to the question that the Mayfair Murano did not — where can I eat Hartnett's Italian cooking on a Tuesday for £40. The format is Italian small plates, eight or nine to a table, with a strong pasta and risotto section. The cuttlefish with chickpeas and chilli is the signature opener; the spaghetti vongole and the slow-cooked lamb shoulder ragù pappardelle are the menu fixtures. The St James's branch is the best for pre-theatre; the Covent Garden branch is the busier room; the Bermondsey branch (Tavistock Place) is the quietest.

Ave Mario opened on Henrietta Street in 2022 as the Big Mamma group's London flagship — a 300-seat Covent Garden room with pink marble, a thousand-bottle cocktail list, DJ sets on weekends, and the most photographed pasta presentation in Europe (the truffle tagliatelle finished tableside in a wheel of Parmesan). The cooking is competent rather than serious: the carbonara is fine, the gnocchi are above average, the pizza is the weakest section. Booking is on Big Mamma's app (the SevenRooms backend) and the prime-time tables go ninety days out. The room is the most extravagantly designed Italian in London and is correct for a hen night, a birthday, or any meal where the photographs are part of the brief.