Plate in the Sun: London’s best restaurants for alfresco dining
Is there a greater pleasure than a long lunch on a beautiful terrace, with blue skies overhead and a plate of something to share on your table? We think not. As soon as the sun comes out, restaurants with outdoor space really come into their own – and London has its fair share, from a neighbourhood deli serving some of the best sandwiches in the city to a long-standing establishment with old-school charm. Some of the spots we’ve selected are suntraps with little defence against drizzle – and all the more fun for it. Others are armed with umbrellas, heaters and even retractable roofs. Either way, we’re with Elsie de Wolfe, actress and original tastemaker, who said: “Eating outdoors makes for good health and long life and good temper, everyone knows that.” We’ll raise a tipple to that.
NORTH
1. Western’s Laundry
At the first sight of sun, the doors will be flung wide at this in-the-know seafood restaurant in Drayton Park. The former launderette, now a faintly industrial dining room, opens on to a cobbled forecourt, with Himalayan birch trees for shade when diners inevitably spill out in summer. Western’s Laundry is from the same restaurateur-chef duo behind Primeur and Jolene, David Gingell and Jeremie Cometto-Lingenheim, so smart Continental cooking comes with the territory – this time it’s Spanish-tinged helpings of cod with spinach and pine nuts, baked cuttlefish, and ricotta gnocchi with asparagus and wild garlic, best enjoyed with natural wines.
2. Towpath
‘Just turn up’ is the mantra of this canal-side cafe in De Beauvoir, which has no booking system or phone number but instead pulls in a loyal crowd happy to try their luck. The menu remains a mystery until you’ve had a squint at the blackboard, but we’ve recently spotted a beef ragù with polenta, and a plate of braised lentils with beetroot, caramelised shallots and carrot-top pesto. “This is a place I want people to come back to time and time again, for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” co-owner Laura Jackson told us (the chef runs Towpath with front of house Lori de Mori). “I just want to cook homely, nourishing, natural food.” It’s open from March to November, during which time there are few better spots for people-watching on a sunny weekend.
SOUTH
3. Italo Delicatessen
This much-loved neighbourhood deli on Bonnington Square, co-founded by Charlie Boxer (father to chef and restauranteur Jackson), does a roaring trade in doorstopper focaccia sandwiches, which run the gamut from asparagus and ricotta to a fancy fish-finger butty with dill and caper aioli. There’s also a succinct daily menu of breakfast and lunch dishes, as well as a good selection of unusual bits and bobs for the pantry. Like all the best delis, there’s a cluster of tables dotted about the pavement outside, as well as a thoughtful edit of magazines – from Luncheon to The Gourmand – on offer to flick through while you dine. Semi-regular supper clubs are announced on Instagram.
4. The Garden Cafe
The restaurants of London’s big-hitter museums are a diverse bunch, but few manage to evade that whiff of exclusivity. Lambeth’s Garden Museum, however, offers something more in keeping with its own quiet charm – a hyper-seasonal, modern European cafe that draws in the locals as well as the day trippers. Most importantly, it makes excellent use of the lush courtyard, seating diners en plein air or inside the glass garden atrium. The menu is limited, but recent delights have included Norfolk asparagus with vinaigrette and a deep-fried crispy egg, grilled Cornish octopus with Kalamata olive tapenade, and a beautifully plated roast chicken with mash and morels.
EAST
5. Rochelle Canteen
It’s been almost two decades since Margot Henderson and Melanie Arnold opened one of London’s most-loved restaurants in the old bike shed of a Victorian school in Shoreditch. Half the fun is finding it, but there is a gloriously secluded walled garden waiting beyond the hard-to-spot doorbell. The menu offers British minimalism at its best – think poached chicken with spring vegetables or a sturdy lamb and laverbread pie, followed by a scoop of Neapolitan ice cream – and there are wines by the carafe. After a languid supper in the sun, you might need a moment to ease back into the real world.
6. Campania & Jones
No, we’re not on a Naples backstreet, though this restaurant – named for the wider south Italian region – does a pretty convincing act. Housed in a 19th-century dairy just around the corner from Columbia Road (of flower market fame) Campania & Jones is far more than a paean to pasta (handmade daily, of course). The carbonara crowd might need to get a little more creative here, perhaps with a bowl of pescatrice in casseruola, a traditional monkfish casserole, or gnudi, which are fluffy, gnocchi-adjacent ricotta dumplings. The handful of outdoor tables are seriously covetable, so book ahead or time your pounce to perfection.
7. The Marksman
Pairing punchy British fare with the reassuring surrounds of a Victorian boozer, this big-guns gastro joint opened in 2015 and was promptly named Michelin Pub of the Year two years later. The menu is finely tuned but not fiddly – the cut-above Sunday roast is generally considered the star of the show, but there’s plenty to please on any other day. “I love restaurants, but it’s very hard to recreate the immediate, natural ease and warmth of a pub,” co-founder Tom Harris told us when we visited. There’s little space for a beer garden on bustling Hackney Road, but the charming roof terrace is a total suntrap.
8. Brat at Climpson’s Arch
Setting up shop under this old railway arch marked something of a homecoming for Brat head chef Tomos Parry, who ran a pop-up here six years before opening his award-winning Shoreditch restaurant. The return was supposed to be temporary, but it turned out the large terrace was just the spot for sharing plates of whole turbot, smoked potatoes and seasonal vegetables, all cooked on the wood-fired grill. The risk-averse – or perhaps just realistic – will be happy to know the courtyard is covered, so a spot of summer drizzle won’t put a swift end to proceedings.
WEST
9. The River Cafe
The London restaurant scene is notoriously capricious, but Hammersmith’s The River Cafe has remained firmly in favour for more than 30 years. And where better to dine on plates of elevated Italian fare on a warm day than this leafy waterside garden, sandwiched between the river and the restaurant proper? Legendary chef-patron Ruth Rogers is hot on seasonality, so for summer there are chargrilled Scottish scallops with zucchini fritti, chilli and mint, and ravioli stuffed with buffalo ricotta, garden herbs and lemon zest. Sign off with a slice of almond tart or a scoop of hazelnut gelato.
10. Petersham Nurseries
This Richmond institution has surely cracked the alfresco formula – sell plants on the side, so that your terrace is always surrounded by greenery. Of course, Petersham is as much a nursery as it is a restaurant, and the Italian kitchen pulls in organic produce from a farm in Devon run by the same family. Once here, let the set menu do the thinking for you – anything will hit the mark under its canopy of wisteria and bougainvillea – and then walk off any indulgences in nearby Richmond Park. If you’re after somewhere more central, Covent Garden sister restaurant La Goccia has a secluded courtyard.
CENTRAL
11. Rita’s
That narrow strip of pavement outside any Soho restaurant is prime real estate, so to have a rear garden here is something special indeed. Diner Rita’s, the brainchild of restauranteur Missy Flynn and her work-and-life partner, chef Gabriel Pryce, has done away with the stuffy private dining room and instead offers its walled backyard to groups of seven to 14 in the summer months. They’ll also do the decision-making for you, with a pair of set menus that deftly showcase Rita’s witty brand of modern American cooking, from prime cuts cooked over to charcoal to signature hot bean devilled eggs.
12. Toklas
Frieze art fair founders Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover revealed themselves as unlikely restaurateurs with the opening of this Mediterranean dining room, bar and bakery on the Strand in 2021. In fact, they’d discussed the idea for decades. Inside it’s something like a mid-century canteen, with rows of Børge Mogensen chairs and reclaimed teak parquet underfoot, but the buzzy outdoor terrace – with its quintessentially London outlook – is the place to be on a sunny Saturday. Stop by for a mandarin negroni or a bowl of mussels with chickpeas, cime di rapa and ’nduja.
13. Luca
St John may have initiated Clerkenwell as a foodie Mecca, but restaurants like Luca seem set on carrying the mantle. This is Italian cooking through a more local lens, with little notice paid to rigid tradition – a focus on best-of-British ingredients means the scallops are from Orkney and the lamb Hebridean. The dining room has a louche, 1950s Milan feel, but the ace up Luca’s sleeve is the sensational rear conservatory, where vines climb exposed brick walls and a great stone fireplace warms the place on cooler evenings. It might just be the most transportive terrace in London.
14. Native
This eco-minded concept had several different iterations as a pop-up, including one on Osea Island in Essex, before a surprise resurfacing at Browns Fashion’s flagship on Brook Street. The slick landscaped courtyard certainly speaks to the clientele, but the green surroundings also chime with Native’s sustainable ethos. Chef Ivan Tisdall-Downes is a whizz with anything wild, so expect a menu dotted with foraged goodies, from sea purslane and three-cornered garlic to lesser-known hedgerow spice hogseed. It also does a seriously good cocktail, including the brilliantly named compostopolitan – a blend of limecello, discarded grape-skin vodka and apple.
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