The Best Brunch in London: Where to Actually Go

Brunch in London is the meal most likely to be ruined by arriving at the wrong time. Half the famous places stop serving far earlier than the word suggests, several of the ones guides still recommend have closed, and the best of them do not take bookings at all.

Here is where to go, what it costs, and the timing that catches people out.

Rechecked on 28 September 2026

Dishoom’s times were confirmed to the minute against its own breakfast menu, and the 11.45am finish holds seven days a week. That is the single most useful line on this page and it is the one most often got wrong elsewhere.

Bistrotheque’s brunch prices, its Sunday cut-offs and its 15 per cent service charge were rechecked against its own brunch menu on 28 September. The no-show fee, the table time and the no-cash rule are not printed on the menu, so confirm those when you book.

When brunch actually stops

This is the part worth reading before the list. “Brunch” implies a leisurely late morning. In practice the window varies enormously.

Where	Service	Note
Dishoom	Breakfast ends 11.45am	8am to 11.45am weekdays, 9am to 11.45am weekends. The earliest finish here
Pavilion, Victoria Park	Kitchen 8am to 3pm	Daily
Bistrotheque	11am to 4pm	Saturday and Sunday only
Riding House	Brunch 9am to 4pm, Saturday and Sunday	Saturday runs to 11pm, Sunday to 5pm
The Wolseley	Breakfast from 8am at weekends	7am on a weekday
The Delaunay	Saturday from 8am, Sunday from 11am
Duck & Waffle	24 hours	Genuinely always open
Berners Tavern	Breakfast ends 10.30am weekdays, 11am weekends	No brunch service at all, and lunch does not begin until noon
Millie’s Lounge, The Ned	Opens 6am Monday to Friday	Publishes a Saturday brunch menu and no Sunday one
Ozone, Shoreditch	Room to 4pm, kitchen to 3pm	Opens 7.30am weekdays, 8.30am weekends
The Dusty Knuckle, Dalston	8am to 3.30pm daily	Weekend bread and pastry pre-orders close at midnight on the Friday

Dishoom is the one that catches everybody. Their breakfast runs 8am to 11.45am on weekdays and 9am to 11.45am at weekends. If your plan is a leisurely Sunday bacon naan at half past twelve, there is no such thing.

The other half of the problem is that a room being open does not mean the kitchen is serving. Ozone in Shoreditch is the clearest example: the room runs to 4pm and the kitchen stops at 3pm. That hour is real in a lot of places and it is almost never the number on the door. If you are arriving late, the question to ask is when food stops, not when the place closes.

The grand rooms

The Wolseley, Piccadilly

The closest thing London has to a Viennese grand café, in a former car showroom on Piccadilly. Breakfast from 7am on a weekday and 8am at the weekend, which is civilised rather than rushed.

Worth knowing that The Wolseley is now two restaurants, Piccadilly and a newer City site, with separate websites and separate bookings. Guides that treat it as one address will send you to the wrong one. Book through their reservations system rather than turning up.

The Delaunay, Aldwych

The Wolseley’s sister and, for breakfast, arguably the better room: quieter, less photographed, and easier to get into. Central European by inclination, so Birchermüesli and viennoiserie rather than avocado.

Saturday opens at 8am, Sunday not until 11am, which is the detail to plan around.

Duck & Waffle, Bishopsgate

Fortieth floor of 110 Bishopsgate, and open 24 hours a day, which no other restaurant on this list can say.

That makes it the answer to two specific problems: brunch at 4am, and brunch with a view when everywhere else is full. The view is genuinely the best of any dining room in the City. Book a window table or do not bother.

Berners Tavern, Fitzrovia

One of the most photographed dining rooms in London, in the London EDITION, and it does not serve brunch.

Its published hours are breakfast 7am to 10.30am Monday to Friday and 7am to 11am on Saturday and Sunday, then lunch from noon. There is an hour of nothing in between at the weekend, and the thing most people picture when they picture this room, a long late breakfast under the pictures, is not on the menu. On a Sunday it is a roast from noon to 3.30pm instead.

Go for breakfast and go early, or go for the roast. Do not turn up at half eleven.

Millie’s Lounge at The Ned, City

It opens at 6am Monday to Friday, which is the earliest start on this page by two hours and a reminder of who the City built it for. Saturday and Sunday it opens at 7am.

The detail worth knowing before you book: it publishes a Saturday brunch menu and no Sunday equivalent. Sunday gets breakfast and the all day menu. If the plan is specifically a Sunday brunch in the grand banking hall, that is not the menu you will be given. Afternoon tea runs 2pm to 5pm on weekdays and from noon on Saturday.

The all-day rooms

Riding House, Fitzrovia

43 to 51 Great Titchfield Street, with sister sites in Bloomsbury and Victoria. Saturday runs from 9am to 11pm and Sunday from 9am to 5pm, with the brunch menu served from 9am to 4pm on both, so it absorbs a whole day comfortably.

The three course bottomless brunch is £45 with ninety minutes of free-flowing prosecco, or £55 with cocktails, rosé and mimosas, every Saturday, Sunday and bank holiday. The brunch menu is also priced dish by dish, from £9 for a small plate to £18 for the full breakfast. That £45 is the most defensible bottomless deal in central London, because the food is a proper three courses rather than an afterthought attached to a jug.

Granger & Co

Four London sites: Chelsea, King’s Cross, Marylebone and Notting Hill. Bill Granger’s Australian breakfast cooking is what most of London’s brunch menus are imitating, and the originals are still better than the copies.

They take no bookings at all. Their own words are to just turn up and they will find you a table. On a Notting Hill Saturday that means a queue, and it is worth knowing before you promise anyone a civilised morning. Go early or go on a weekday.

Caravan

Seven London sites now: King’s Cross, Bankside, City, Canary Wharf, Covent Garden, Exmouth Market and Fitzrovia. They roast their own coffee, which is the point, and the King’s Cross room in the old Granary Building is the one to pick.

Note the rebrand: the company now trades as Caravan and Co, and the old web address redirects. Reliable rather than thrilling, and hard to get badly wrong.

Dishoom

The bacon naan roll deserves its reputation: fresh naan straight from the tandoor with cream cheese, tomato chilli jam and coriander, wrapped around smoked streaky bacon.

But read the timing above. Dishoom publishes it plainly: breakfast is served 8am to 11.45am on weekdays and 9am to 11.45am at weekends. The finish is the same every day of the week, the start is an hour later at the weekend, and the queues are long. This is an early start, not a lie-in.

Ozone, Shoreditch

A coffee roastery that takes the food as seriously as the coffee, and the one on this page whose published hours are the most honest about the gap.

Weekdays 7.30am to 4pm, weekends 8.30am to 4pm, with the kitchen closing at 3pm on both. The late weekend start is deliberate and the early kitchen finish is the thing to plan around.

Worth crossing London for

Bistrotheque, Bethnal Green

23 to 27 Wadeson Street, up an unpromising side street, and the best brunch room in east London for twenty years. Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 4pm.

The Bistrotheque Breakfast is £25 and does the full job: two St Ewe eggs, Tamworth sausage, smoked bacon, potato rosti, Boston beans and sourdough. Eggs Benedict is £21, pancakes or French toast £15, and the Sunday roast is £39.

The detail nobody tells you: on Sundays the breakfast is served only until 1pm and the roast only from 1.30pm. Book between those and you can order neither. Service is 15 per cent, they hold a card against a £15 per person no-show fee, tables run 90 minutes, and they do not take cash.

Pavilion, Victoria Park

By the boating lake, with the kitchen running 8am to 3pm daily. Counter service rather than table service, which keeps it unpretentious.

The cooking has a Sri Lankan thread that is real rather than decorative: a Sri Lankan Breakfast of dhal, egg curry, string hoppers and sambol is £12.50, the same price as the smoked salmon brunch plate. Avocado and poached eggs £10.50. No bookings.

Their hours move with the park, shorter in winter, so treat the kitchen window rather than the closing time as the fact.

The Dusty Knuckle, Dalston

A bakery in a car park on Abbot Street, E8 3DP, which is a better sentence than it sounds and produces some of the best bread in London. There are two other sites, at 429 Green Lanes in Harringay and a van on Highbury Place.

Dalston runs 8am to 3.30pm, seven days a week. The rule that catches people: weekend pre-orders close at midnight on the preceding Friday, with collection between 8.30am and 3pm. That covers the bread and pastries only, not the café menu, so decide on Friday night or take your chances in the queue on Saturday.

Four that guides still recommend, and what has changed

Lyle’s closed in May 2025, after eleven years. Its old web address now redirects to its parent group. Review sites still carry live-looking pages.

Morito on Hackney Road closed in June 2026. That was the branch that did weekend breakfast, and the offer no longer exists anywhere in the group. The Exmouth Market original is very much open and very good, but it opens at noon and has never served brunch. Its own website now lists Exmouth Market alone.

St John Bread and Wine serves nothing before noon. It is trading and it is excellent, but the famous weekend breakfast is not on their current menus or bookable through their own system. Aggregator sites still advertise a 9am slot. Go for lunch instead.

Norman’s Cafe in Tufnell Park cannot currently be checked. It appears on most current London brunch lists, and its own website has returned a Squarespace expiry notice rather than a page on every check since 28 September 2026, including 2 October. That is not the same as being closed and we are not saying it is. It does mean there are no published hours to rely on, so telephone before travelling rather than trusting a listing.

Bottomless brunch, and the arithmetic

A separate format that borrowed the word. Bottomless brunch is a drinking arrangement with food attached: a fixed price per head buys a dish and unlimited drinks within a set window, almost always 90 minutes, and the clock starts when you sit down rather than when the first drink arrives.

London has a great deal of it and the quality runs from genuinely good rooms to places where the food exists to satisfy the licensing requirement.

Do the arithmetic before you book. Most sittings in London run between about £30 and £50 a head. At £35 for 90 minutes, you are ahead of a normal bill only if you drink four or more, and the service is built to make that difficult: one drink is brought at a time, and the pace is set by the floor rather than by you.

The 90 minutes is the thing to check. Some houses run two hours, a few run longer, and the difference matters far more than the price. A 90 minute sitting with a fifteen minute wait for the first round is a 75 minute sitting.

Where it is worth it is where the room and the food would be worth going to anyway, and the drinks are the extra rather than the point. Where it is not is where the deal is the only reason anyone is there, which is most of the ones advertised hardest.

This site earns nothing from any booking, which is worth saying on this subject specifically, because most of what is written about bottomless brunch in London is published by the people selling it.

Choosing

For the room: The Wolseley, or the Delaunay if you want to hear yourself think.

For the food: Bistrotheque, comfortably.

For value: Pavilion in Victoria Park, where the Sri Lankan breakfast is £12.50, or Riding House if the plan is bottomless, at £45 for three courses and ninety minutes of prosecco.

For a group that cannot agree: Riding House or Caravan, both of which have range and space.

If you did not book: Granger & Co, which takes no bookings before 5pm and always keeps room for walk ins, or Duck & Waffle at an odd hour.

If it is already afternoon: Bistrotheque until 4pm, or Riding House until 5pm on a Sunday. Everywhere else has stopped.

Practical notes

Check the finish time, not the opening time. The single most useful thing on this page.

Assume a queue where there are no bookings. Granger & Co is walk in until 5pm and Pavilion is walk-in, and both are busy.

Watch the cancellation terms. Bistrotheque holds a card and charges £15 a head for a no-show. That is increasingly normal and people still get caught.

Service is usually 12.5 per cent and sometimes 15. Bistrotheque is 15. It is discretionary either way.

Everything here was rechecked on 28 September 2026 against each venue’s own published information. Menus and hours move, so confirm before travelling.

Bottomless brunch is the version you cannot price compare, because the time limits and what is actually included differ from room to room.

Where to go next

If the brunch in question is a bottomless one, the prices are not comparable. Our bottomless brunch guide works through why: one venue charges 29 pounds for drinks only with food compulsory on top, another 35.50 including unlimited barbecue. It also covers the fifteen minute cutoff that shortens a two hour sitting.

If the meal matters more than the hour, the best restaurants in London covers dinner properly and the Michelin list covers the top end. For a Sunday specifically, the best Sunday roast in London is the better meal and has the same timing problem in sharper form.

Afternoon tea is the other way to spend a late morning, and the best coffee shops cover the roasters worth walking to, several of which close on a Sunday. Our main London guide covers what to do with the rest of the day.

Questions we get asked

What is a bottomless brunch?

A fixed price per head that buys one dish and unlimited drinks inside a set window, almost always 90 minutes. It is a drinking arrangement with food attached rather than a meal with drinks included, and the clock starts when you sit down rather than when the first drink arrives. Drinks are brought one at a time, which is how the house controls what unlimited actually means.

How much does bottomless brunch cost in London?

Most sittings run between about £30 and £50 a head, plus service. The useful way to read that is as a break even calculation: at £35 for 90 minutes you are only ahead of an ordinary bill if you drink four or more, and the format is designed to make that harder than it sounds. Check the window length before the price, because a house running two hours is a materially better deal than one running 90 minutes at the same cost.

Is bottomless brunch worth it?

It is where the room and the food would be worth visiting anyway and the drinks are a bonus. It is not where the deal is the only reason anybody is in the building, which describes most of the ones advertised hardest. Worth saying plainly: this site takes no bookings and earns no commission on any of it, which is not true of most of what is written on the subject.

How long is a bottomless brunch?

Ninety minutes at most London venues, with some running two hours and a few longer. The number that actually matters is not the headline time but when the clock starts: if it starts on arrival and the first round takes fifteen minutes, a 90 minute sitting is a 75 minute one. Ask when you book.

What time does brunch stop in London?

Much earlier than the word suggests, and it varies wildly from room to room. One of the best on our list finishes at 11.45am. Read the service times before you plan the morning around a booking, because brunch in London is frequently a ninety minute window rather than a late start.

Do you need to book brunch in London?

For the grand rooms, yes. Granger and Co books tables only from 5pm, so brunch works on turning up, which on a Saturday morning means a queue. Dishoom is the one that catches everybody out, so check its arrangements specifically rather than assuming.

Is Duck and Waffle really open 24 hours?

Yes, which makes it the answer to a question nobody else in London can answer: where to eat a proper breakfast at four in the morning, forty floors up, on a Tuesday.

Which famous London brunch spots have closed?

Lyle's closed in May 2025 and Morito on Hackney Road closed in June 2026, and both still appear on current brunch lists. A third trap is not a closure at all: St John Bread and Wine serves nothing before noon, so it cannot be a brunch recommendation however often it is made one.