Covent Garden feeds more people than any other part of London and is the easiest place in the city to eat badly. The Piazza is ringed by Covent Garden restaurants that exist because forty million people walk past them, and the good ones are mostly on the streets nobody walks down.
The rule is simple: turn a corner. Maiden Lane, Henrietta Street, Langley Street and Drury Lane all sit within four minutes of the market and none of them carries the footfall. That is the whole difference between a Covent Garden dinner and a Covent Garden queue.
The other thing to know is that this is a theatre district, so the whole neighbourhood eats at the same two hours. Before 6pm and after 8.15pm are different restaurants at the same addresses.
Where the recommendation engines are wrong
Search for Covent Garden restaurants today and Google’s own panel puts Flat Iron in its top three, alongside Brother Marcus and Ave Mario.
Flat Iron Covent Garden is closed. Its own site says so: it shut on Friday 25 September 2026 for a refurbishment and reopens on Friday 9 October. It points people to the Piccadilly and Tottenham Court Road branches in the meantime, and those are the useful part of this entry until the 9th: Piccadilly at 21 Denman Street runs midday to 10pm Sunday to Tuesday, midday to 11pm Wednesday and Thursday and midday to 11.30pm on Friday and Saturday, and Tottenham Court Road at 9 Denmark Street runs midday to 10pm Sunday to Tuesday, midday to 10.30pm Wednesday and Thursday and midday to 11.30pm on Friday and Saturday. Both are eight minutes from the Piazza on foot.
Checked on 26 and 28 September 2026 and again on 2 October, when its own page still gave Friday 9 October. It is a fortnight, not a closure, and the room is worth the wait. But it is a clean demonstration of the problem with this district: the recommendation engines are slower than the restaurants, and the busiest dining quarter in London is the one where that costs you most.
What is not there any more
Frenchie closed in January 2024 after eight years on Henrietta Street. Greg Marchand shut the London site to concentrate on his restaurants in France, saying that operating in London had become increasingly challenging. It held three AA Rosettes until March 2024 and still appears on plenty of lists.
Its old web address now serves an unrelated foreign gambling site. That is worth knowing as a general test: when a restaurant’s own domain has been sold on and the only pages still selling it are listing sites, the restaurant has gone.
The rule that governs Covent Garden restaurants
Book around the curtain, not around your appetite. Shows go up at 7.30pm, so the crush is 5.45pm to 7.15pm and again from 10.15pm. A table at 8.30pm is the easiest booking in the district and the calmest room you will sit in.
The set menus here are unusually good value and quietly advertised. Hawksmoor does three courses for £30 at lunch and early evening. Balthazar runs a prix fixe all day Monday to Thursday and until six on Friday. Spring’s Scratch menu is 40 pounds for a bite and three courses, in a forty five minute window from Tuesday to Saturday. None of the three is the first thing you are shown.
The old rooms
Rules, Maiden Lane
London’s oldest restaurant, opened in 1798, and it has the sense not to pretend otherwise. Game, pies and a dining room that has been photographed more than most.
Rules
- Address
- 35 Maiden Lane, WC2E 7LB
- Nearest
- Covent Garden or Charing Cross
- Price
- Smart dress, and they state plainly no shorts and no sportswear
- Standing
- Established by Thomas Rule in 1798. London's oldest restaurant
How to get in
No jacket and tie requirement, which surprises people, but smart dress is asked for and shorts and sportswear are refused by name. There is a cocktail bar upstairs called The Winter Gardens that most people eating downstairs never find, and it is the better room for one drink.
Clos Maggiore, King Street
The conservatory here is the most photographed dining room in London and the reason the restaurant is famous. It is also not where most people get seated.
Clos Maggiore
- Address
- 33 King Street, WC2E 8JD
- Nearest
- Covent Garden or Leicester Square
- Hours
- Monday to Saturday, lunch 12pm to 2.15pm and dinner 5pm to 10.30pm. Sunday lunch 12pm to 2.15pm and dinner 5pm to 10pm
- Booking
- 020 4580 1174
- Standing
- Three AA Rosettes for 2026, and a Wine Spectator Grand Award
How to get in
Ask for the conservatory when you book or you will not get it. That is the single most useful sentence on this page. The blossom filled room is the entire reason to come and the other tables are an ordinary Covent Garden restaurant at a not ordinary price.
Balthazar, Russell Street
The big Parisian brasserie facing the market, and the one room here that works at any hour because it never closes in the afternoon.
Balthazar
- Address
- 4 to 6 Russell Street, WC2B 5HZ
- Nearest
- Covent Garden
- Hours
- Monday to Friday 11.30am to 10.45pm, Saturday from 10am, Sunday 10am to 9.45pm
- Standing
- A Parisian brasserie facing the Piazza
How to get in
Open straight through, which in this postcode matters more than it sounds: almost everything around it shuts between lunch and dinner. The Prix Fixe is £25.50 for two courses and runs all day Monday to Thursday, until six on Friday and from 5pm on Sunday, and it is the value here. It is not advertised loudly.
The serious cooking
Spring, Somerset House
In the New Wing of Somerset House, which means a high, pale, colonnaded room that looks like nowhere else in London.
Spring
- Address
- Somerset House, New Wing, Lancaster Place, WC2R 1LA
- Nearest
- Temple or Charing Cross
- Booking
- 020 3011 0115
- Standing
- In the New Wing of Somerset House
How to get in
Three ways in: a la carte, a set lunch, and the Scratch menu, a bite and three courses for 40 pounds built around what would otherwise be thrown away. It runs Tuesday to Saturday between 5.30pm and 6.15pm only, for thirty guests a night, so ask for it by name and book it early. Temple is the closer station and almost nobody uses it.
Cora Pearl, Henrietta Street
Small, dark and named after a Victorian courtesan, which tells you the register. The kitchen closes considerably earlier than the room does, and that catches people out.
Cora Pearl
- Address
- 30 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 8NA
- Nearest
- Covent Garden or Charing Cross
- Hours
- Monday to Saturday, lunch midday to 4pm with the kitchen closing at 2.30pm, dinner 5pm to 11pm with the kitchen closing at 9pm. Sunday lunch only, midday to 6pm, kitchen closing at 3.30pm
- Booking
- Reservations through their booking system
- Standing
- Named for a Victorian courtesan
How to get in
The kitchen shuts at nine while the room stays open until eleven, so a late booking gets you a drink and not a dinner. On Sunday there is no dinner service at all. Both facts are published and neither is obvious from a listing site.
Hawksmoor Seven Dials, Langley Street
In a former brewery cellar off Seven Dials, and the set menus are the best value steak in central London.
Hawksmoor Seven Dials
- Address
- 11 Langley Street, WC2H 9JG
- Nearest
- Covent Garden or Tottenham Court Road
- Hours
- Monday to Thursday 11.45am to 11pm, Friday and Saturday to 11.30pm, Sunday to 10.30pm. The kitchen closes earlier: 9pm early in the week, 9.30pm Friday and Saturday, 8.30pm Sunday
- Price
- Set lunch 21 pounds for one course, 26 for two, 30 for three, Monday to Saturday midday to 3pm. Early evening 26 for two courses and 30 for three, Monday to Friday 4.30pm to 5.45pm and Saturday 3.15pm to 5.45pm. Both for tables of up to seven
- Standing
- In a former brewery cellar off Seven Dials
How to get in
Thirty pounds for three courses at lunch or early evening is the cheapest serious steak in the West End and the reason to come before the theatre rather than after. Their own warning is that Sunday roast gets very busy. Note the kitchen closes up to two hours before the room does.
The ones where getting in is the question
Barrafina, Drury Lane
Counter dining, Spanish, and the branch that behaves differently from the famous one.
Barrafina Drury Lane
- Address
- 43 Drury Lane, Covent Garden, WC2B 5AJ
- Nearest
- Covent Garden, with Leicester Square also close
- Hours
- Sunday to Wednesday midday to 3pm and 5pm to 10pm, Thursday to Saturday midday to 3pm and 5pm to 11pm
- Booking
- Takes reservations and walk ins. Main room tables for up to seven open 14 days ahead
- Standing
- Counter dining, Spanish
How to get in
This is the correction worth carrying: Drury Lane takes reservations, and the Soho branch on Dean Street famously does not. Guides routinely apply the no bookings rule to the whole group. Tables for up to seven release fourteen days ahead, and the counter is the seat to want anyway.
Dishoom, Upper St Martin’s Lane
The original London Dishoom and still the one with the longest queue. The queue is avoidable and almost nobody avoids it.
Dishoom Covent Garden
- Address
- 12 Upper St Martin’s Lane, WC2H 9FB
- Nearest
- Covent Garden or Leicester Square
- Hours
- Monday to Thursday 8am to 11pm, Friday 8am to midnight, Saturday 9am to midnight, Sunday 9am to 11pm
- Booking
- Bookings any size before 6pm. After 6pm they take bookings only for six or more
- Standing
- Open from 8am, and breakfast is the unqueued meal
How to get in
Before six they will book you a table whatever the size of your party. After six the tables are walk in only unless there are six of you, and their own estimate of the wait is thirty minutes to an hour. Breakfast and lunch have little or no queue, which is the answer nobody uses.
Blacklock, Bedford Street
Blacklock Covent Garden
- Address
- 16a Bedford Street, WC2E 9HE
- Nearest
- Covent Garden or Charing Cross
- Standing
- Chophouse. Not the same branch as the Canary Wharf one
How to get in
Chops and steaks Monday to Saturday, with big chops at butcher prices every Monday, and the roast on Sundays only. The two are different propositions and the Sunday one books out first. There are several Blacklocks in London and the branches take bookings separately, so check which one you have reserved.
Two the lists keep missing
Brother Marcus Covent Garden
- Address
- 23 Slingsby Place, WC2E 9AB
- Nearest
- Covent Garden
- Hours
- Monday to Saturday 08.00 to 23.00. Sunday 08.30 to 21.00
- Booking
- Online for up to 22 guests. Groups of 23 or more need a £20 per person deposit, refundable up to 72 hours before
How to get in
The longest day in the district by a distance, and the pre theatre menu runs 12pm to 6pm rather than the usual two hour slot. If the curtain is the fixed point, this is the easiest room in Covent Garden to build an evening around.
Modern East Med, open from eight in the morning to eleven at night Monday to Saturday, which in a neighbourhood where most kitchens keep theatre hours is unusual enough to be the reason to book it.
The pre theatre menu is the part worth knowing: 12pm to 6pm. Most pre theatre offers in this district run for about ninety minutes and require you to be finished by seven. A six hour window means you can eat at half past three and still be using it. What the West End shows actually cost covers the other half of that evening.
Two smaller rules. The terrace here is walk in only, because Brother Marcus only takes terrace bookings at Spitalfields and Canary Wharf. And dogs are welcome, provided you put a note on the booking.
Flat Iron Covent Garden Closed until 9 Oct
- Address
- 17 to 18 Henrietta Street, WC2E 8QH
- Nearest
- Covent Garden
- Hours
- Closed for refurbishment from 25 September 2026, reopening 9 October 2026
How to get in
The largest Flat Iron, a few steps off the Piazza on Henrietta Street. Closed for a fortnight at the time of checking, which has not stopped it appearing in Google's top three for the district.
The building was home to Pearson’s Weekly, the periodical that published the first crossword ever printed in the UK, and the 1892 tiled frontage survives. An original mosaic floor was uncovered during the fit out, and the tables were made by a single sculptor from the timber of one English oak.
There is an in house butchery, which is the thing that separates this branch from the others. A different carcass of rare, native or uncommon British beef arrives each week and is prepared on site, and what is on it goes up on the Specials blackboard. Read that before you order the house steak.
Practical notes
Book at 8.30pm, not 6.30pm. The theatre crush is 5.45 to 7.15 and again after 10.15. The hour in between is the quietest the district gets all evening.
Covent Garden station runs exit only at busy times. On a Saturday afternoon you may be walking from Leicester Square whether you planned to or not. Charing Cross and Temple are both quieter arrivals and both are four or five minutes away.
Check when the kitchen closes, not when the restaurant does. Cora Pearl shuts its kitchen two hours before its room. Hawksmoor’s closes up to two hours before last orders at the bar. This is the most common way to lose a dinner here.
The Piazza itself is roofed. The Apple Market and Jubilee Market sit under the old market roof, which makes this one of the better neighbourhoods in London for a wet afternoon. The rainy day guide has the rest of the dry options.
Everything here was taken from each venue’s own published information, and rechecked in full on 28 September 2026. Prices, hours and booking policies change. Confirm before you travel.
Everything this guide has in Covent Garden
48 places, gathered from every page on this site rather than just this one. Each was checked against the venue's own published information, and the link goes to wherever it is written up in full.
Restaurants
-
Dishoom Covent Garden Walk in
Dishoom Covent Garden -
The Barbary Walk in
Neal’s Yard -
26 Grains Walk in
Neal’s Yard -
Barrafina Walk in
The Best Tapas in London, and Which Counter Takes Bookings -
Rock & Sole Plaice Book
The Best Fish and Chips in London, and the Rule Only One of Them Publishes -
The Black Penny
Bottomless Brunch in London -
Homeslice Walk in
The Best Pizza Restaurants in London, Sorted by Which of the Four Styles You Want -
Plaza Khao Gaeng
The Best Thai Restaurants in London, and the Booking Rules That Decide Them -
Rules
Written up above
-
Clos Maggiore Book
Written up above
-
Balthazar
Written up above
-
Spring Book
Written up above
-
Cora Pearl Book
Written up above
-
Hawksmoor Seven Dials
Written up above
-
Barrafina Drury Lane Walk in
Written up above
-
Blacklock Covent Garden Book
Written up above
-
Brother Marcus Covent Garden
Written up above
-
Flat Iron Covent Garden Closed until 9 Oct
Written up above
Pubs and bars
-
Oriole Book
London Speakeasies -
The Lamb and Flag
The Oldest Pubs in London -
The Harp Walk in
The Best Pubs in London -
American Bar at The Savoy Book
The Best Bars in London
See and do
-
The Traitors Live Experience Walk in
You Cannot Book The Traitors as a Group of Nine -
The Mousetrap Book
The Mousetrap -
Lyceum Theatre Book
Lyceum Theatre London -
Mrs Doubtfire the Musical Closed
Mrs Doubtfire Is Not in London Any More -
Stranger Things: The First Shadow Book
Stranger Things -
Jesus Christ Superstar Book
Jesus Christ Superstar London -
Avenue Q
Avenue Q London -
Operation Mincemeat
Operation Mincemeat London -
Disney’s Hercules Closed
Hercules the Musical -
London Coliseum Book
London Coliseum -
The Courtauld Gallery
The Courtauld -
London Transport Museum Book
London Transport Museum -
Seven Dials Market Walk in
Seven Dials Market -
Donmar Warehouse Book
Cheap Theatre Tickets in London -
Royal Opera House Book
Royal Opera House -
Matilda The Musical at the Cambridge Theatre Book
Matilda the Musical London -
The Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre
The Lion King London -
Mamma Mia at the Novello Theatre Book
Mamma Mia London -
Cecil Court
Cecil Court -
Watkins Books
Cecil Court -
Goldsboro Books Book
Cecil Court -
Marchpane
Cecil Court -
Skate at Somerset House Book
Ice Skating in London -
Monmouth Coffee Company Walk in
The Best Coffee Shops in London Shut Before You Finish Work -
St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden
Things to Do in Covent Garden
Hotels
-
The Savoy Walk in
The Savoy
Your position is read in this browser, matched to the nearest neighbourhood we have written up, and sent nowhere.
Where to go next
Neal’s Yard has The Barbary, which takes bookings for two to four only and tells solo diners to walk in.
The full Covent Garden guide covers what to do between meals: the Transport Museum, the Actors’ Church with the false front door, the opera house and the pubs down the alleys. Pre theatre dinner in London covers the timing problem across the whole West End.
For the city-wide lists, the best restaurants in London and the best steak restaurants. If you are comparing neighbourhoods, Canary Wharf and Shoreditch are the other two lists.
Questions we get asked
What are the best restaurants in Covent Garden?
Rules on Maiden Lane for the oldest dining room in London, Clos Maggiore on King Street for the conservatory, which you have to request by name when booking, and Hawksmoor Seven Dials for the best value serious steak in the West End at 30 pounds for three courses at lunch or early evening. Spring at Somerset House is the most interesting kitchen of the group.
What is the oldest restaurant in London?
Rules, at 35 Maiden Lane in Covent Garden. Established by Thomas Rule in 1798 and held by four families since, which makes the claim of London's oldest restaurant one that actually stands up. Game is what it does, and the season is the reason to come. There are two private rooms, the John Betjeman and the Graham Greene.
Is Frenchie in Covent Garden still open?
No. Frenchie closed in January 2024 after eight years on Henrietta Street, when Greg Marchand shut the London site to concentrate on his restaurants in France. Its old web address now serves an unrelated gambling site, which is a reliable sign on its own: when a restaurant's domain has been sold on and only listing sites still sell it, the restaurant has gone.
Where should you eat in Covent Garden before the theatre?
Hawksmoor Seven Dials, whose early evening menu is 26 pounds for two courses and 30 for three, or Balthazar, whose 25.50 pound prix fixe runs all day Monday to Thursday and until six on Friday, and which is the only room in the district that stays open straight through the afternoon. Book before 6pm or after 8.15pm: the crush is the ninety minutes before curtain.
Do you need to book restaurants in Covent Garden?
For the good ones yes, and for two of them the booking rules are unusual. Dishoom takes reservations of any size before 6pm and after that only for parties of six or more. Barrafina Drury Lane takes both reservations and walk ins, unlike the Soho branch, and releases tables for up to seven fourteen days ahead.
Is Covent Garden expensive for dinner?
It has the widest spread in London, because the same streets hold both tourist infrastructure and some of the better set menus in the West End. Three courses at Hawksmoor is 30 pounds at lunch or early evening. A mediocre meal on the Piazza will cost you more than that and you will have queued for it.
What is the most romantic restaurant in Covent Garden?
Clos Maggiore on King Street, and specifically its conservatory, which is a blossom filled room under a retractable roof. The thing nobody tells you is that you have to ask for it when you book. Reserve without specifying and you will be seated in the ordinary dining room, which is a perfectly good restaurant and not the reason anyone comes.
How do you get to Covent Garden?
Covent Garden station is the obvious answer and often the wrong one, because it runs exit only at busy times and the lifts queue. Leicester Square, Charing Cross and Temple are all four to six minutes on foot and none of them does this. Temple in particular is almost unused and is the closest station to Somerset House.
Written by Robert J Wills, no. 82 in the guide.
Last checked 28 September 2026 against the venues' own published information. Nobody pays to appear here and we take no bookings.
