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Dining late in London


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Hi all,

I'm looking for information on dining late in London.. and I mean really late.. is it possible to get a real dinner (not snacks / fingerfood) after midnight? Are places like that easy to find or are there just a few?

thanks for the help.

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there are quite a few places in Soho where you can grab food to eat - mainly snacks, but a few places still serve a proper meal. Otherwise there is Vingt-Quatre in Chelsea whose kitchen is open 24 hours a day and serving decent enough food

Hi all,

I'm looking for information on dining late in London.. and I mean really late.. is it possible to get a real dinner (not snacks / fingerfood) after midnight? Are places like that easy to find or are there just a few?

thanks for the help.

If a man makes a statement and a woman is not around to witness it, is he still wrong?

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I'm never up that late, but the New Mayflower on Shaftsbury Avenue is, I am told, where the staff of all the other Chinese restaurants go for a meal after they've closed. It's open until 4 a.m.

Chefs generally used to go to the New Diamond on Lisle Street, which was open to 3am.

Anyone been there recently?

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There's an exhaustive list of options here. Some of the lesser-known possibilities include Denise's (1970's retro-French next door to the British Museum that serves until 2am), Costa Dorada (a hen-night-honed tapas place near Oxford Street that ticks until 3am), Yas (an Iranian stuck out in the western Zone 2 badlands that shuts at about 4am) and Isis (a hedge-fund-manager-filled Lebanese in Green Park that claims to serve until 6am).

The default choices are Cafe Boheme and Balans, both in Soho, which will do you unthreatening bistro food until 3am and 6am respectively on weekends. Of the 24-hour places, Vingt Quartre in Chelsea (eggs benedict) is probably better than Tinseltown in Farringdon (burgers), although both are inferior to a visit to the Brick Lane Beigel Bake to pick up a hot salt-beef for the taxi home.

If you can make it somewhere before 12:30-1am the options widen significantly, eg: Gilgamesh (pleasantly benign pan-Asian in absurd Camden surroundings) Sketch Gallery (a misfiring kitchen lost inside Mayfair's flagship folly), Noura Central (glossy Lebanese just off Piccadilly Circus that's not nearly as much of a rip-off as you'd expect) and Joe Allen (luvvie-friendly American comfort food in Covent Garden). Oh, and some of the top-brass boutique hotels such as The Gore will be happy to feed you if you ask nicely at the bar.

Edited by naebody (log)
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