Rooftop Restaurants in London: Where to Eat With a View

A rooftop bar wants you standing with a drink. A rooftop restaurant wants you sitting down for two hours, which is a much harder thing to get right eight floors above the ground — the kitchen is smaller, the logistics are worse, and the view has to carry a whole meal rather than one cocktail.

Some London rooftops manage it. Most are bars with a food menu attached. This is the list of the ones with an actual kitchen, sorted by where they are.

The highest: the City

Sushisamba on floors 38 and 39 of the Heron Tower has the highest outdoor dining terraces in Europe, and the food — a Japanese, Peruvian and Brazilian mash-up — is genuinely good rather than a supporting act. The 360-degree view is the most dramatic in London. So is the bill.

Wagtail sits on a 1920s building in the City with a ninth-floor fine-dining room, two private terraces and a tenth-floor rooftop terrace above it. Tower Bridge, St Paul's, the Shard, the Gherkin and the Walkie-Talkie are all in view at once, which almost nowhere else manages.

Darwin Brasserie is on level 36 of Sky Garden — London's highest brasserie, and the reliable way into the Walkie-Talkie when the free tickets have gone. Book a table and you skip the Monday-morning ticket scramble entirely.

Madison occupies the penthouse of One New Change, level with the dome of St Paul's and close enough that the cathedral is the whole view rather than a feature of it. Steakhouse-leaning menu.

West End and Oxford Street

Alto by San Carlo on the Selfridges roof is the best-designed of the lot — a fully retractable roof means it works in October as well as July, which quietly makes it the most bookable rooftop restaurant in central London. Italian menu, uninterrupted skyline.

1864 Rooftop on top of John Lewis at Oxford Circus is greener and more relaxed, a planted terrace six floors up with panoramic views across central London.

Radio Rooftop at ME London on the Strand has been a fixture for years — the view down the river from the Covent Garden side is better than the address suggests.

Aqua Kyoto and Aqua Nueva above Regent Street are two restaurants sharing one roof — Japanese and Spanish respectively — with the terraces of Aqua Spirit between them. Useful when your table wants different things.

South of the river

Seabird on the 14th floor of The Hoxton Southwark is the one we send people to most often. Iberian seafood, what it says is London's longest oyster list, and a view down over south London with the trains threading into Waterloo. Floor-to-ceiling glass means bad weather does not ruin the booking. Year-round.

Oblix on level 32 of the Shard is a bar and grill with a west-facing terrace that catches the sunset over the river. Aqua Shard on level 31 is the same building, different room, taller ceilings.

OXO Tower Restaurant at Oxo Tower Wharf has 200 feet of terrace and one of the oldest reliable views in London — straight across the Thames to the City.

Forza Wine on the fifth floor of Market Peckham does short, sharp plates and the best wine list on any London roof. It is a fraction of what the City rooftops charge.

Mezemiso at the Hyatt Regency in Vauxhall covers the south-west, and Joia at the Art'Otel in Battersea has a pool alongside the restaurant.

If you want the London Bridge end specifically, we've written a fuller guide to rooftop bars near London Bridge.

East and Canary Wharf

Bōkan occupies floors 37 to 39 of the Novotel in Canary Wharf — restaurant, bar and terrace stacked on top of each other, with a view back at the City that most central rooftops cannot give you.

Boundary Rooftop in Shoreditch is a long-running favourite with a proper grill, six floors up and looking back at the City.

KASO at One Hundred Shoreditch does the same job eight floors up with a panorama over East London.

CÉ LA VI at 1 Paddington Square is the newest of the big-format rooftops — 17th and 18th floors, west London's highest, and an Asian menu built for sharing.

The full list

How to book one and not regret it

Book earlier than you think. Rooftop restaurants have a fraction of the covers of a ground-floor room. Between May and September, Thursday to Saturday evenings go three to four weeks out. Sunday lunch is the easiest slot in London and nobody uses it.

Ask which table. "Rooftop restaurant" often means a dining room with a terrace attached, and the terrace tables are a small minority of the covers. If the view is the reason you're going, say so when you book — most will note it, and some charge a supplement.

Check the weather policy before you pay a deposit. Terrace tables get moved indoors when it rains. That is not a problem at Seabird or Alto by San Carlo, where the indoor view is the same view. It is a problem at venues where the inside room has no windows worth the name.

Sunset is the booking to want. In London that ranges from around 3.55pm in December to 9.20pm in June, so the desirable slot moves by five and a half hours across the year. Book against the sunset time, not against a fixed hour.

Expect £60–£120 a head with drinks at the City and Shard venues, £35–£55 south of the river and in Peckham. The gap buys you altitude, not cooking.

If the food matters more than the height

The honest position, from people who run beer tours for a living: the best eating in London is not on a roof. It is in Borough Market, in the Bermondsey arches, and in the pubs that have quietly become restaurants.

If you're in SE1 anyway, the Bermondsey Cheese, Meat and Beer Tour covers the eating side of the same postcode as most of these rooftops, at ground level and about a third of the price. And for a summer afternoon, the best beer gardens in London will beat a terrace queue every time.

Related guides

• Best rooftop bars in London — drinks rather than dinner
• London Bridge rooftop bars — the Shard-view cluster
• Gift vouchers — for the person who has been to all of these