We don’t need to wax lyrical about London’s food scene – we know it’s the best restaurant city on the planet and it was just named the world’s best food destination in the 2026 TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice Awards. The diversity of food on offer is its biggest strength; it’s cliche to say but you really can eat your way around the globe in London. However, while we have the four corners of the world on our doorstep, it’s a little harder to find the four corners of the UK.
It’s not like you can’t get traditional British food. There are plenty of chippies, curry houses, pie & mash shops, pubs doing Sunday roasts and caffs doing fry-ups. Old-school restaurants like Rules, Wiltons and Sweetings are doing dishes like steak & kidney pudding, fish pie and spotted dick. There are modern classics, like roast bone marrow and parsley salad, alongside Eccles cakes and jam roly poly, at St JOHN. Sally Abé is opening her own British bistro Teal in Hackney this spring, serving Cornish mussels with Jersey Royals, Dorset crab royale with English peas and lovage, marmalade ice cream sandwiches and penny lick ice creams.
What we’re starting to see now though is more regional specificity and more Celtic representation, not just in the produce but in the dishes. Deeney’s and Auld Hag are flying the flag for Scotland with haggis toasties, square sausage morning rolls and macaroni pies. Detroit-style pizza may be the headline act at Ria’s but owner Ria Morgan-Ratcliffe has added a little nod to Scottish roots with a battered deep fried Mars Bar on her dessert menu.
Tomos Parry has featured Welsh produce on both his Brat and Mountain menus since they opened but it’s new Peckham cafe Bara that’s shining a spotlight on Welsh food. Run by Cecily Dalladay (a MasterChef: The Professionals quarter-finalist) and former head chef Zoë Heimann, Bara was inspired by Cecily’s Welsh background and her Grandma’s 1950s Welsh Gas Board cookbook. As well as bakes like bara brith, Bara is doing Welsh sandwiches made with fillings like laverbread, Welsh lamb, Caerphilly cheese, Blas Y Tir leeks, and Câr-y-Môr shellfish, and even their take on a Swansea breakfast. Londoners are lapping it up, with the goods regularly selling out. And there’ll be more Welsh goodies to go around across St David’s Day weekend as a bunch of Welsh food and drink producers, including Gower Gin, Cwm Farm Charcuterie, Rogue Welsh Cakes, and Atlantic Edge Oysters, will be taking over Old Spitalfields Market.
Just as London went barmy for the black stuff, it’s Irish food that’s had the biggest burst in popularity, with a new wave of more casual concepts joining restaurants like Corrigan’s, Daffodil Mulligan, Myrtle and Darby’s. Spice bags, perhaps the quintessential Irish takeaway dish consisting of chips, crispy chicken, peppers and onions in a salt, pepper and chilli spice mix served with curry sauce, have been leading this new charge.
Singing pub Molly Mcs has them on the menu (you can even get a 2kg sharing spice sack); spice bag specialist Scaldy is in residence at the Red Bull in Peckham; Irish Shpice, a new pop-up from ex-Kiln chefs Garreth Chambers and Hartley Connell, is bringing them to recently opened Clapton pub Moylett’s; and Irish-Chinese takeaway Paddy Wok is doing them in Deptford. Even Mexican kitchen Thrift Taco, currently operating out of Howl at the Moon in Hoxton, is getting in on the action with its Sex Mex Spice Bag, complete with pumpkin seed salsa macha, crispy tortillas and tricolour salsa. Indian-Irish fusion spot Shankey’s in Hackney (which has also had Kerrygold washed poitin cocktails on the menu) does its own line in spiced spud dishes.
Mobile Irish deli Emerald Eats, run by Emma Moran, offers spice boxes from its food truck but it’s another Irish classic, the chicken fillet roll, that made its name. After living in London for over ten years and regularly talking “about how all we wanted was a chicken fillet roll”, Emma decided to do it herself. “I don’t think that it’s hard to find Irish dishes in London, there are so many amazing Irish chefs and Irish-owned restaurants here but I just don’t think the Irish deli culture was known outside Ireland, which we were all shocked about,” she explains.
That certainly seems to be changing. McCarthy’s Irish Bar in Tooting’s Broadway Market also does chicken fillet rolls, along with breakfast rolls and taco chips. It even gets regular deliveries of Barry’s Tea, sausages, black and white pudding, cakes, soda bread and more to bring a real taste of Ireland to South London. “There seems to be a keen interest when you live abroad in Irish music, sports, culture and drinks, and it’s great to see that the interest is there for Irish food as well,” says Emma. “So fingers crossed, sky’s the limit.”
