The best things we ate and drank in January 2026

Three Sheets (Soho) - Panisse with black garlic aioli, Doddington cheese

Technically, this was our last meal out in 2025. On New Year's Eve, we popped into town for some cocktails and bites at Three Sheets' Soho bar before hightailing it home before things got too rowdy. These panisse bites in a cloud of cheese were just the ticket, and we can heartily recommend their White Russians and Irish coffees too.

Henwen's (Forest Hill) - Pork Pie

We would happily cross town to try a good pork pie, but the one at South London butchers Henwen's would be reason enough to fly to London, let alone take the train to Forest Hill. In our opinion, what elevates a pie into god-tier status is the jelly, and this one delivered in spades. 

2210 by NattyCanCook (Herne Hill) - Ackee & saltfish spring roll

We could hardly start this year without checking out the restaurant that won the Hot Dinners readers' vote last year. 2210 by NattyCanCook has deservedly already had a slew of critics making the journey to Herne Hill and we can see why. An incredibly enjoyable lunch was kicked off with an array of good starters, including this fantastic seafood spring roll. 

Bistro Sablé (Islington) - Beef bourgignon

Once Smokehouse, this former Islington pub has been reinvented as a classic French bistro. It's proved to be a very good shift with some truly excellent dishes on offer, particularly this huge, rich beef bourguignon. The mash here is also exceptional with an unseemly amount of butter added, just as it should be. 

Stable Wines (Islington) - Cheese toastie

Taking inspiration from the cheese toastie at its sibling restaurant, Goodbye Horses, this molten delight features a layer of onion chutney that provides the perfect amount of acidity to cut through all that cheese. So good that you honestly won't want to share it.

Passione Vino (Clerkenwell) - Sicilian red prawn tartare with orange dressing and capers

We love a crudo dish as much as the next person, but they are on almost every London menu at the moment, and it's easy for them to feel a bit samey. Not so with this amazing tartare dish at the new Exmouth Market wine bar by Luca Dusi. This was memorable not least for the generosity of the serving, but also the quality of the prawns and the dressing. 

Aces Foodcraft (Fitzrovia) - The Temaco

It's been a decade since we last tried chef Alex Craciun's signature dish at Sosharu. Now he's brought it back at his new Fitzrovia restaurant. The fried seaweed shell is filled with bluefin tuna, sushi rice, avocado and wasabi and you're going to want to load it up with that homemade red fermented chilli sauce.

A Wong's Forbidden City bar (Belgravia) - Scalded oysters with "fish fragrant" aubergine sauce (£9)

Having opened slightly under the radar last year, Andrew Wong's underground bar blew us away with its parade of bar food and inventive cocktails. These scalded oysters were the highlight of a very strong list of dishes, with that spicy and fragrant sauce being a perfect foil to the Carlingford oysters. 

Beef & Bass (Chelsea) - Carpaccio with girolles and mustard dressing

Carpaccios are everywhere at the moment on London menus, but this iteration at new Chelsea spot Beef & Bass was a standout. The paper-thin, dry-aged beef, along with plenty of EVOO and fresh girolles, was the perfect light starter to have when a massive ribeye was coming our way.

Tempo (Bethnal Green) - Silken egg

Trying to pick just one dish out from the stellar line-up we had at Eric Wan's new place in East London was a hard task, but eventually we had to agree that this bowl of silken egg was the one. Diving underneath that topping of trout we found eggs in a shiitake xo sauce with brown crab. So freaking delicious. 

Shannon Airport's Sheridan Bar (Limerick) - Spice Bag

Travelling back from the west of Ireland, we made the somewhat lethal discovery that the main restaurant at Shannon Airport serves up spice bags. This was way better than it needed to be for airport food and went very well with what's always a great pint of Guinness.