From grand, chandelier-hung dining rooms to intimate, candlelit alcoves, and from the ideal tête-à-tête spot to the perfect place for a solo date night, London has romance of every flavour to offer. This is our pick of the restaurants we'd trust to romanticise any day of the year.
And if dinner just doesn't feel like long enough for the kind of romance you've got in mind, you could always keep the evening going with a room at one of London's most romantic hotels...
Uchi, Hackney
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Uchi's a beautiful surprise, sequestered on a quiet residential street in Clapton. Some combination of all that soft wood, and white curtains hanging between tables — along with the immaculate sashimi and delicate top-ups of sake flowing out to your table steadily — make everything about it feel ineffably calm, even though it's usually pretty busy. Swap your shoes for the slippers provided on arrival, and slide into a peaceful table for two.
Uchi, Hackney
Bébé Bob, Soho
You'll more often seen the older Bob sibling, Bob Bob Ricard, talked about as a high-romance option, thanks to their tête-à-tête booths complete with champagne-summoning buttons. But it's their younger brother, Bébé Bob, that we keep going back to: for a freezer-cold martini while you're brushing knees at the bar counter, and then transferring to a curved banquette to deal with the chicken schnitzel with big curls of garlic butter. We'd ignore their famous (and reliably good) roast chicken in favour of doing some serious damage to the starters and bar snacks menu between you — the crêpes with trout roe and sour cream, the rosti with caviar, and the chicken liver doughnut all high on the list. And, despite the lack of specific champagne-summoning tech, still pretty easy to summon a champagne, studies show.
Bébe Bob, Soho
Brat Climpson's Arch, London Fields
Every hour's golden hour at Climpson's Arch, under the bare-bulb-strung glow of their courtyard. Throw in the warmth and smell of the woodfired ovens and grills flaring, seaweed-infused martinis, and turbot, brill and beef ribs being carted around by the multiple kilo: Brat Climpson's Arch is the closest you can get to holding hands at a beach bonfire without leaving Zone 2.
Brat Climpson's Arch, London Fields
Aba-Ra!, Brick Lane
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Gorgeous Georgian family-run restaurant Aba-Ra! is good for pretty much every situation we've tested it with: it's toddler-friendly; it's dog-friendly; it's great for big family Sunday lunches, and sprawling group dinners. But most of all it deserves a spot on your date night list — for the menu, atmosphere and lovingly-chosen Georgian wine list that make it feel both deeply decadent and completely relaxed at the same time. Order all the food you can eat with your hands — thick, cheese-rich khachapuri, and chewy khinkali — and prepare to get it everywhere.
Aba-Ra!, Brick Lane
Rogues, Bethnal Green
We've found ourselves at Rogues on all kinds of missions — from late-night martinis and oysters at the bar counter to a jet-lagged, short notice birthday dinner — and every time it's risen to the occasion and then some. The size of the place (cosy), the set-up (mostly candlelit tables for two), and the allure of the counter seating (bar and window), all add up to a place that's better for date nights, one-on-ones or solo dining than it is for big groups.
Rogues, Bethnal Green
Brunswick House, Vauxhall
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You only need to glance at a photo of Brunswick House to understand the kind of romance on offer. Chandelier-laden, velvet-hung and candlelit, stepping into the dining room of the grade II-listed Georgian mansion — from a busy intersection in Vauxhall — is startling, the dining room adorned with overspill from Lassco, the antiques and architectural salvage shop in the same building. Feels like the kind of grandeur and opulence that'll come with a big price tag, but Brunswick House comes in at around the same as a lot of gastropubs. A lot of baroque pleasure per pound sterling.
Brunswick House, Vauxhall
Brasserie Zédel, Soho
A date-night restaurant delivering the hattrick — quality of food, loveliness of vibe, and the fact you don't need to financially cripple yourself to have a long, sprawling evening here. The huge dining room's a grande brasserie beauty — all high ceilings, gilded marble columns, and towering mirrors, with live (loud) jazz most evenings. Settle into the art deco interiors for three formidable courses of French classics for under £22, reliably good table wine by the carafe, and, if you want to extend the evening, head into their Bar Américain next door for a nightcap. Feels rowdy despite the grandeur, romantic despite the rowdiness — and utterly escapist despite being in the middle of zone 1.
Brasserie Zédel, Soho
Sessions Arts Club, Farringdon
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Grade II-listed, candlelit, and cavernous, Sessions Arts Club — in the 18th century Old Sessions House courthouse — comes with huge, art deco windows, flickering candlelight, trailing fronds and beaten-up pastel-coloured walls. Decadently clandestine rather than oppressively regal, the high design and delicately-plated seasonal menu comes at a pretty steep price — but if you're going to go all-out on a mood somewhere, this is an undeniably gorgeous place to do it.
Sessions Arts Club, Farringdon
Hanar, Peckham
Kurdish restaurant Hanar, down a Peckham alley, boasts one of our favourite indoor-outdoor terraces in this part of the city: sundappled in the early evening, graffiti outside bleeding in through the corrugated plastic windows in a dreamy, colourful haze. Always busy, and still BYO (although it's recently also gained a liquor licence), the best evenings there involve ordering less than you think you need (the portions are massive) of things you can scoop up with flatbread, sharing everything, and saving room for baklava.
Hanar, Peckham
Passione Vino, Shoreditch
This pocket-sized Shoreditch wine shop is seductive. You might think you're dropping in for one glass of wine, and find yourself hours later, still there, scraping up ragù from an empty plate and ordering another bottle of low intervention Italian wine from small, artisan producers — the passione is catching. The food menu's short, regularly changing, and reliably lovely.
Passione Vino, Shoreditch
Norma, Fitzrovia
A menu of southern Italian classics, in a very beautiful, Moorish-meets-Sicilian-meets-Orient-Express-carriage space, Ben Tish's restaurant's all curved archways and velvet booths, lamplight glancing off big mirrors, and warm aubergine-tomato-citrus-salted cheese smells hanging in the air. The escapism's powerful enough to deliver a Sicilian summer evening feeling, even in the middle of a London winter.
Norma, Fitzrovia
And if you're in the market for your own Lady and the Tramp moment, you can check out our round-up of London's best pasta restaurants.
