Anthony Bourdain's London — 8 spots the legendary chef rated highly in the capital
From £2 espresso to Michelin starred spots
The movie Tony arrives in cinemas on 14th August, recounting a formative period in the life and career of chef and writer Anthony Bourdain.
Dominic Sessa of The Holdovers seems perfectly cast as a 19-year-old Bourdain, an arrogant and entitled aspiring writer who washes up in a seaside town due to a crush. There he falls into the cheffing world after he takes a summer job at a seafood restaurant.
The late great food and travel presenter was a frequent visitor to London, visiting the UK capital four times throughout his televisual career – and evidently many more times in between shoots.
He took time during each visit to speak of his abiding love for the city and its distinctive old world energy, not to mention its uniquely rambunctious pub culture and underrated (back in the noughties at least) cuisine.
Bourdain visited a varied selection of the capital’s eateries and bars between 2002 and 2016, and a number of of them continue to operate today – a miracle in itself, given the parlous state of the hospitality industry in 2026.
Here, then, are seven spots Anthony Bourdain rated in London that can still be visited today. Bon appetit – or rather, tuck in.
1. F. Cooke Pie & Mash
Bourdain was well known for seeking out the most authentic, locally significant joints in any city that he visited. For London, there was nowhere more authentic or locally significant than F. Cooke – a proper East End pie and mash shop that had been run by the same family since the mid-1800s. Sadly, the original Broadway Market site that the presenter visited in a 2002 episode of A Cook’s Tour closed in 2020, but you can still visit the Hoxton site, which remains true to the spirit of the first venue and under the guidance of the Cooke family.
2. Sweetings
Anthony’s 2012 London visit for The Layover didn’t yield too many practical recommendations – the star seemed a little frazzled for this one following a bad flight – but Sweetings was a standout. This 130-year-old London institution was introduced to Bourdain by Fergus Henderson himself, and you can detect more than a hint of the St. John chef’s old fashioned English eccentricity in its approach. That includes opening only during weekday lunch times, making it a sort of high-grade canteen for city boys and print journalists. Come here for the British classics, as they’ve been served for centuries, washed down by tankards of black velvet (Guinness and champagne).
3. Pepper & Spice
The presenter’s last televised visit to London in 2016 proved to be a fruitful one, despite the downcast post-Brexit vote tone that pervades the Parts Unknown episode. It supplied several spots that Bourdain evidently enjoyed, including Pepper & Spice – a Caribbean restaurant in North London that was recommended to him by The Kills guitarist Jamie Hince. The two chowed down on curry mutton and saltfish callaloo, which supplied the necessary ballast for a boozy night out that visibly broke our hero. Thank goodness for Nigella Lawson and her restorative fried bread.
4. Rochelle Canteen
Rochelle Canteen is a beautiful East London restaurant owned by Margot Henderson, one half of the London food scene power couple that also includes her husband Fergus, of St. John fame (see elsewhere on this list). Margot takes a similarly stripped back, but rather softer and more European-inflected approach to cooking. During Tony’s 2016 Parts Unknown visit, he sat down with Henderson to feast on vitello tonnato and lamb chops with lentils and green sauce. The combination of hearty food, warm company and good white wine visibly lifted Bourdain’s spirits, and the restaurant is still around to perform the same task for you.
5. Restaurant Gordon Ramsay
Back in 2002, when Gordon Ramsay was an actual working chef rather than a self-promoting meme, Bourdain visited his three Michelin star flagship restaurant in West London. According to the late presenter, it supplied “one of the best things I’ve eaten – ever” in the form of a shin of beef with sautéed foie gras. Ramsay’s eponymous restaurant continues to operate to this day, and has even managed to retain its prestigious three-star status – though it’s now under the command of Chef de Cuisine Kim Ratcharoen, leaving Ramsay free to mug for the camera and advertise food delivery services.
6. Princess Victoria
During his last visit to the UK capital, Bourdain joined his erstwhile The Taste colleague and British national treasure Nigella Lawson at the bar of this posh West London pub for an afternoon pint of Guinness. While there, he was deeply impressed by the accompanying selection of elevated bar snacks, expertly ordered by his classy companion. These included super-crunchy pork scratchings, freshly fried whitebait, and the kind of scotch egg you don’t tend to find at service stations up and down the country.
7. St John
It would be impossible to construct a list of Bourdain’s favourite places to eat in London without mentioning St. John – which is probably why we’ve already done so twice. Fergus Henderson’s legendary Smithfield restaurant made as big an impact on the New Yorker as it did on the UK (and indeed international) dining scene, putting the concept of nose to tail eating firmly on the culinary map. Bourdain called St. John “just about my favourite restaurant in the universe” during his first ever on-camera visit, and the fact that he returned on every subsequent London trip suggests that his opinion barely wavered.
8. Bar Italia
The legendary, family-run Italian espresso bar Bar Italia is a London institution in its own right and hardly needs the seal of approval from anyone, let alone a starry chef. However, great places attract great taste, which is exactly why it made the list with Bourdain being a fan of the Soho spot, calling it "the best cup of coffee, or damn close to it". Bourdain sat down for a round of macchiatos and shots of Fernet Branca (a traditional herbaceous Italian liqueur) with friend and fellow chef Fergus Henderson for a quick refuel during the London episode of The Layover.
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