The 18 Best Restaurants In Kensington

This High Street Kensington spot has been around since the ‘60s, and it continues to serve top-notch Italian food. But what makes it so great? Is it the calamari? The heavy curtain at the entrance that keeps the cold air out? The intimate booths at the back? It’s all of the above, plus the friendly staff and the menu filled with comforting plates of food like nutmeg and walnut gnocchi, veal milanese, and wild mushroom risotto. You could easily spend a lot of time in this old-school restaurant, and you absolutely should.

Da Mario is a proper old-school Italian joint in a Venetian-Gothic building that fans of interesting old buildings would love. The first thing you notice is that Da Mario’s interior is charmingly a bit rubbish. There are pictures of the late, great Princess Diana on the wall, and the food is home-style Italian, with big portions of pasta and great pizzas at semi-reasonable prices. This is a place for everybody and worth the short walk to avoid the chain-bait restaurants around Gloucester Road station.

Happily, there’s no need for a reservation at this airy Persian spot off Kensington High Street, which is ideal for impromptu group catch-ups. Start by getting some freshly baked naan—that you’ll smell as soon as you walk in—and a mixed mezze starter. The chicken biryani at Sadaf is also really great, as are the charred lamb chops, but the koobideh is some of the juiciest around. The hefty portions mean you’ll often end up getting some to take away, which you’ll appreciate later.

When it’s dark outside and you want somewhere to hole up for a couple of hours, interrupted only by a waiter relighting your candle, The Abingdon is the place to be. The menu is straight-up comfort food: deeply satisfying artichoke soup with a slice of fluffy focaccia for dipping, and tender and lip-puckeringly tangy buffalo fried chicken thighs. The British restaurant and pub feels like the perfect mix between your friend's living room and your local, and after sharing a hearty, creamy fish pie and the must-order sticky toffee pudding in their deep red booths, the pillow-laden sofas are very tempting.

Jacuzzi—a Big Mamma restaurant—is a stunner. The interiors, with enough chandeliers to cover the whole of Kensington in case of a power outage, and such a large selection of indoor plants that we fear for local garden centres, make us wish we grew up on an Italian vineyard in Tuscany. The upstairs mezzanine, which looks like a very quaint courtyard garden, is the stuff of summer Pinterest dreams. The pizzas are pretty good, and while some of the Italian dishes like the lamb ragu are underwhelming, this is still our favourite Big Mamma spot for a date. 

Yashin Ocean House is the sister sushi restaurant of nearby Yashin Sushi. But here, expect your meal to come with a lot more theatre. Like the original Yashin, sushi comes with truffle or caviar on top, but you’ll find some new things too—like lobster sitting over dry ice, or candy floss over wagyu beef. This is a great spot for a group meal or a fun date.

Pappa Roma is the place you guide friends to after parting all the tourists like the Red Sea. A five-minute walk from South Ken station, it serves solid Italian food. If you get the pizza, you’ll wish you got the pasta. If you get the pasta, you’ll wish you got the pizza. It all just smells so damn good. You can share one of the giant wood-fired prosciutto pizzas and a bottle of red and leave £35 lighter. In Kensington. Madness. And should you decide to make it £40 by getting the pistachio-topped cannoli for dessert, we really wouldn’t judge you.

With fresh pasta for under £15 and moody interiors that make an equally perfect backdrop for a casual first date as it would a last-minute catch-up with your favourite people, Al Dente in South Kensington is a great all-rounder. The servers are friendly, the Italian menu is filled with classics like cacio e pepe made to an excellent standard, and the prices mean you could pop in for a bowl of gnocchi for a speedy, good-value lunch if you’re in the area.  

A flute of champagne and a plate of pierogi is a shamelessly decadent way to start a meal, but it feels just right for South Ken. Ognisko is an old-school Polish restaurant—the kind that’s full of white tablecloths, people wearing Chelsea boots, blinis and caviar all over the shop. It’s a classic affair that sings when you play the hits: pork schnitzel, steak tartare, pierogi crisped to a perfect level of brownness and the pastry lovingly crimped. There’s a sense of old-fashioned opulence about the whole thing, perfect for dates young and old.

Kampai’s understated dining room is usually filled with locals who have popped in after leaving Holland Park, solo diners taking advantage of a free spot at the sushi bar, and groups that span Gen Z to those who still use a landline. It's compact but comfortable, with enough space between each table that you don’t have to worry about elbowing your neighbour’s rock shrimp and baby spinach salad. Load up on nigiri—the scallop is top-tier—and get some of the chef’s special rolls to share.

This high-end, yet gloriously laid-back, Korean spot near Gloucester Road is filled with people who probably own five of the same black turtleneck and stay in Park Lane when they visit London. So while you don’t have to dress up, at least put on your nice pair of jeans. Servers do all the hard work, flipping and cooking the meat on the tabletop grill, so all you have to do is eat it. The £150 meat board is filled with enough high-quality meat to feed three people—our favourite is the marinated king kalbi. It's a must-try along with the beef ramyun jeongol.

Kensington High Street is excellent for people-watching and a window seat at Samad Al Iraqi is the perfect place to take it all in. Complimentary lentil soup is placed in front of you as you sit down, setting the tone that this is somewhere for warm hospitality and great Iraqi food. It’s a popular place for those reasons—on weekdays you’ll find families having a masgouf lunch (traditional Iraqi grilled fish) in the sprawling wood-filled dining room. Lamb-topped hummus and minced meat-stuffed kubbah are highlights of the menu.

The only time we’re not craving dim sum is when we’re eating dim sum. That includes 8pm on a Tuesday when it’s kind of hard to find, and that’s when we like to come to Sichuan Popo. This sleek Chinese restaurant on Earls Court Road is a place where dim sum is served until closing, and pillowy prawn and scallop dumplings are inhaled as soon as the steamer hits the table. It’s a haven for in-and-out, last-minute group dinners that involve passing peanutty smacked cucumbers and swirling chewy biang biang noodles. 

This restaurant and ballroom inside Holland Park dates back to the 17th century, and is a gorgeous space that’s perfect for a special occasion. The room has a faded grandeur that reminds us of the dance hall from Beauty and the Beast, with an upstairs dining room that we’ve seen used for wedding receptions. There’s a grand fireplace, floor-to-ceiling windows where you can see children playing in the park, and the Italian menu is good, without being memorable. The portions are small, but overall it’s a nice meal in a gorgeous room perfect for a special date.

They don’t make them like they used to, and certainly not in the case of Daquise. This old-school Polish spot around the corner from South Ken station feels like it hasn’t changed in half a century or so—and that’s a good thing. Fading pictures hang on the wood-panelled walls and its homely tiled dining room is full of faces who hug the staff like old friends. The menu has everything you would expect: vibrant borscht expertly ladeled to the peril of every white tablecloth, piquant herring, and crispy schnitzel that you can’t go wrong with.

Dishoom is the kind of restaurant that works for a lot of occasions including group hangs, date nights, and yes, sorting out a serious lamb chop craving after a trip to the Design Museum. The huge all-day Indian spot looks a lot like a grand train station, with big red booths and old-school Bombay portraits on the walls. Expect dishes like prawn koliwada, paneer pineapple tikka, and slow-cooked biryanis. You can also expect a long wait time, but there is an art deco-style cocktail bar where you can wait with a martini.

Pitanga in West Kensington has character often missing in London. Like the menu, the restaurant is filled with nods to the restaurant's Nigerian and West African roots, with ornaments and artwork from local artists inspired by the African continent. The menu features brilliant Nigerian specialties such as abacha na ugba (also known as African salad), a sneakily spicy but still refreshing Igbo classic based on soft grated starchy yam, and fusion dishes like the The Full African, a play on a full English breakfast with sausages, beans, scrambled eggs, akara, and agege bread.

Most of the general public would argue that the Natural History Museum should take the top spot for South Kensington’s most iconic landmark. We’re going to go out on a limb and say that it’s actually Kova’s matcha whole mille crêpes. Both are stunning feats of architecture, but this Japanese cafe’s signature mille crêpe has layers the dinosaurs simply can’t compete with. If matcha isn’t your thing, rest assured that everything from the sea salt cheese lava cake to the soufflé cheesecake is also a winner.