The Devonshire will not take a booking for its pub under any circumstances. Milk Beach, eight minutes away on Greek Street, will charge you £25 a head if you cancel inside twenty four hours.
Both are full most nights. Both are in Soho. And the gap between those two policies is wider than the gap between their cooking, which is the thing nobody tells you about eating here.
Soho is the London neighbourhood where the booking rule decides the evening more than the menu does. So this guide to Soho restaurants is organised by that rather than by a ranking, and every hour and price on it was taken from the restaurant’s own published information on 26 and 28 September 2026, and rechecked on 2 October 2026 for Barrafina, Bocca di Lupo, Andrew Edmunds, Kiln, Quo Vadis, temper and Brasserie Zédel.
The booking spectrum, which is the whole problem
| Where | Booking | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| The Devonshire | Pub takes none at all | Restaurant upstairs books. No waiting list is run |
| Kiln | No booking facility published | Its own site offers menu, careers, vouchers and contact, and nothing else |
| Barrafina Dean Street | Walk in only, no reservations | Every other Barrafina in London takes bookings |
| Bocca di Lupo | Books, and keeps seats free for walk ins | Last reservation 10.45pm, and 9.15pm on a Sunday |
| Quo Vadis | Books, a week out for a weekend | Closed Sunday, and the set menu is named without a price |
| Andrew Edmunds | Books, online or by telephone | Ask for downstairs, or you will not get it |
| Milk Beach Soho | Books breakfast, lunch and dinner | £25 per person if you cancel inside 24 hours |
| temper Soho | Books, and you must | Their own site says Sundays sell out by Friday |
| Brasserie Zédel | Books easily | Large enough that it usually has something |
Read that top row again. The most talked about room in Soho takes reservations for its restaurant and none whatsoever for the pub downstairs, which is the part people are queueing for. There is no list to join. You turn up or you do not go.
The ones that take nothing
The Devonshire
- Address
- Denman Street, Soho
- Nearest
- Piccadilly Circus
- Hours
- 11.00 to 23.00, and 11.00 to 22.00 on a Sunday. Restaurant sittings from 12.00, last sitting 22.00 and 21.00 on Sunday
- Booking
- The downstairs pub is walk in only and takes no drinks or bar snacks reservations. Bookings are for the restaurant
How to get in
Ask anybody in London where to eat in Soho and this is the answer. Ask how to book the pub and there is no answer, because there is not one.
The rule that catches families: children are welcome in the restaurant at any hour and not welcome in the pub after 5pm on a weekday or at any time at the weekend. Prams need a note on the booking so the host team can seat you.
Its Sunday roast is covered in our roast guide, where the same timing problem governs the whole city.
Kiln
- Address
- 58 Brewer Street, W1F 9TL
- Nearest
- Piccadilly Circus
- Hours
- Kitchen Monday to Saturday 12.00 to 23.00. Sunday 12.00 to 21.00
How to get in
Thai grill, seafood and claypots along a counter, and an eleven hour kitchen six days a week. In a district that eats around the theatres, a room that serves straight through from noon to eleven is worth more than a ranking.
The kitchen is the point. Monday to Saturday it runs from noon to eleven without a break, which in Soho is rare. Most of the good rooms here keep theatre hours and stop dead between services.
Our Thai guide covers the rest of the city, where the standard is unusually high.
Barrafina Dean Street
- Address
- 26 to 27 Dean Street, W1D 3LL
- Nearest
- Tottenham Court Road
- Hours
- Sunday and Monday 12pm to 3pm and 5pm to 10pm. Tuesday to Saturday 12pm to 3pm and 5pm to 11pm
- Booking
- Walk in only, no reservations. Their own site adds that every other Barrafina location is bookable
How to get in
Arrive early or late and expect to queue in between. One warning for anyone searching: listings for Barrafina at 54 Frith Street are marked closed. That is the old address. The restaurant moved; it did not shut.
Counter-only Spanish cooking, and the original of what is now a five site group. Check which Barrafina you are walking to. Guides routinely apply the no bookings rule to the whole group, and it belongs to this branch alone: Drury Lane, a few minutes east, releases its tables fourteen days ahead, which the Covent Garden restaurants guide covers.
The two most different booking rules in Soho share a building. Barrafina gives its address as 26 to 27 Dean Street, and Quo Vadis, below, gives 26 to 29 Dean Street. One wants a week’s notice for a weekend table and the other will not take your name at all.
The ones that book, and what it costs to change your mind
Milk Beach Soho
- Address
- 13 to 14 Greek Street, W1D 4DP
- Nearest
- Tottenham Court Road or Leicester Square
- Hours
- Saturday breakfast 9am to 11.30am, lunch from 12pm. Sunday breakfast 9am to 12pm, lunch from 12.30pm
- Booking
- Reservations for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Groups of 10 to 30 need no pre order and no deposit. A 24 hour cancellation policy applies at £25 per person
How to get in
Australian, all day, and the most straightforward booking in this postcode until you try to cancel one.
Two policies worth knowing before you book. The good one: groups of ten to thirty need no pre order and no deposit, which almost no London restaurant of this size will say. The expensive one: cancel inside twenty four hours and it is £25 a head, which on a table of six is £150 for changing your mind on the day.
No prams inside at any time, and no children under 13 after 5pm. That is stricter than most and it is published plainly.
temper Soho
- Address
- Soho
- Nearest
- Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus
- Hours
- Sunday roast 12pm to 6pm, Sundays only
- Booking
- Book midweek. Their own site states that Sundays sell out by Friday
- Price
- Sunday roast £29.90, £38.50 or £55 per person depending on the meat
How to get in
Fire cooking in a room built around the grill. The Sunday roast is the thing it is known for and the thing most likely to be gone before you look.
Quo Vadis
- Address
- 26 to 29 Dean Street, W1D 3LL
- Nearest
- Tottenham Court Road or Leicester Square
- Hours
- Lunch Monday to Saturday 12pm to 2.30pm. Dinner Monday to Saturday 5pm to 10pm. Closed Sunday
- Booking
- 020 7437 9585, or online
- Price
- The Soho Set Menu is named on its own site without a price, so ask for the figure when you book
How to get in
Book the set menu, a week out for a weekend table. The members' club upstairs keeps much longer hours and is a separate proposition entirely.
Jeremy Lee’s restaurant, and the one to pick if you want Soho at its most assured. Its three private rooms are open to non members, which our private dining guide covers with the real capacities.
Bocca di Lupo
- Address
- 12 Archer Street, W1D 7BB
- Nearest
- Piccadilly Circus
- Hours
- Monday to Saturday, lunch 12pm to 3pm and dinner 5pm to 11pm, last reservation 10.45pm. Sunday lunch 12pm to 3.30pm and dinner 5pm to 9.30pm. The bar runs to midnight, and to 11.30pm on Sunday
- Booking
- Online or by telephone. A number of seats are kept free for walk ins
How to get in
Sit at the counter facing the open kitchen rather than in the back room. It is the rare Soho room that solves both halves of the booking problem at once: it takes reservations and keeps seats back for whoever turns up, and it serves until eleven.
Regional Italian cooking, and unusually honest about which region each plate is from.
Andrew Edmunds
- Address
- 46 Lexington Street, W1F 0LP
- Nearest
- Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus
- Hours
- Lunch Monday to Friday 12pm to 3.30pm, Saturday 12.30pm to 3.30pm, Sunday 1pm to 4pm. Dinner Monday to Saturday 5.30pm to 10.30pm, Sunday 6pm to 10.30pm
- Booking
- 020 7437 5708, or online
How to get in
Book, and ask for downstairs. There is a pre theatre menu. The wine list is the real draw: long, serious, and marked up with a restraint that is close to extinct in central London.
A cramped, candlelit eighteenth century house doing Franco-Mediterranean bistro cooking, and the most reliably romantic table in Soho. It is also one of the few rooms here that serves a proper Sunday, lunch and dinner both.
What Soho restaurants actually cost
The spread inside a few hundred metres is the widest of any London neighbourhood, and the cheap end is not the worse end.
Brasserie Zédel serves two courses for £16.95. It is an enormous Art Deco room below Piccadilly, a pianist plays from 5.30pm and house bands from 8pm, and the prix fixe is among the cheapest proper restaurant meals in central London. At the other end of the same postcode, temper’s top Sunday roast is £55 a head.
Brasserie Zédel
- Address
- 20 Sherwood Street, W1F 7ED
- Nearest
- Piccadilly Circus
- Hours
- To 11pm Monday to Saturday, and only to 4pm on Sunday. Pianist from 5.30pm, house bands from 8pm
- Price
- Prix fixe, two courses £16.95
How to get in
The best value grand room in London, and the answer whenever somebody says there is nowhere decent to eat near Piccadilly. The cabaret room, Crazy Coqs, is through the same doors.
That is a three times spread for dinner in one neighbourhood, and the £16.95 room is the handsomer of the two. Soho rewards knowing where to look more than it rewards spending.
Eating around the theatres
Soho sits inside Theatreland, so the whole district eats at the same two hours and everywhere is calmer outside them.
The crush is 5.45pm to 7.15pm, and again from about 10.15pm. A table at half past eight is the easiest booking in Soho and the quietest room you will sit in. Pre theatre dinner in London covers the kitchens that can genuinely turn a table in ninety minutes, and what the West End shows cost covers the other half of the evening, where plays start at £13.
Practical notes
Decide the hour before the restaurant. In Soho that is the right order. Before 7.30pm the whole district is open to you. At ten at night the list shortens to a handful: Kiln, Bocca di Lupo, which takes its last reservation at 10.45pm, and Barrafina on Dean Street, which serves until eleven from Tuesday to Saturday.
Check whether the thing you want is the bookable part. The Devonshire is the clearest case, where the restaurant books and the pub never does, but it is not the only room in Soho split that way.
Read the cancellation line, not just the booking button. £25 a head is normal at the top end now and it is rarely mentioned until you are confirming.
Walk one street off the main run. Brewer Street, Greek Street, Denman Street and Sherwood Street all hold better rooms than the stretch of Old Compton Street the crowds default to.
Everything here was taken from each restaurant’s own published information on 26 and 28 September 2026 and rechecked on 2 October 2026. Soho turns over faster than any other part of London. Confirm before you travel.
Where to go next
The booking rule decides more London evenings than the menu does. Our index of who takes walk ins sets out what 154 venues actually publish about getting in, and the thirteen that hold tables back for walk ins on purpose.
The best bars and pubs in Soho is the same neighbourhood organised the same way, by how you get in, and covers the rooms that take no bookings at all.
Our Soho guide covers the pubs that refuse bookings, the late rooms and what else there is to do, and Covent Garden is the next district east with the same theatre timing problem.
Soho holds more of this site’s cuisine guides than any other district. Thai for Kiln on Brewer Street, which has no online booking system but takes enquiries by email and will text you when a table frees, and Speedboat at 30 Rupert Street, which takes last food orders at 00:15 on Friday and Saturday but only until 22:45 from Monday to Thursday, so the late kitchen is a weekend thing rather than a nightly one. It has no telephone number at all, and there is now a second Speedboat at the Electric in Notting Hill keeping the same weekend hours. Japanese for Koya on Frith Street, walk ins only with a Japanese breakfast from ten. Vegan for Gauthier on Romilly Street and Mildreds on Lexington Street, vegan since 1988. Seafood for Randall and Aubin on Brewer Street, thirty years old and holding tables back for walk ins every single day, which in this district is worth more than a ranking.
Plum Valley in Chinatown, on the edge of the same district, closes at midnight on Friday and Saturday and 11pm the rest of the week, which the Chinatown guide covers alongside its neighbours.
The best restaurants in London is the hub for the rest of the city, and the set menus cover where else a good kitchen costs less than it should.
Questions we get asked
What are the best restaurants in Soho?
It depends what you can get into, which in Soho is the real question. The Devonshire on Denman Street is the most talked about, though its downstairs pub takes no bookings at all. Kiln at 58 Brewer Street runs an eleven hour kitchen Monday to Saturday. Quo Vadis and Bocca di Lupo are the two to book a week ahead, and Barrafina on Dean Street is the one you cannot book at all. temper does a Sunday roast from 29.90 pounds that sells out by the Friday. And Brasserie Zédel on Sherwood Street does two courses for 16.95, which is the best value grand room in London.
Can you book Barrafina in Soho?
No. Their own site states that Barrafina Dean Street is walk in only with no reservations, and that every other Barrafina location is bookable. So the rule people repeat about the group belongs to this one branch. Arrive early or late and expect to queue in between. Drury Lane, a few minutes east in Covent Garden, is the nearest Barrafina you can reserve.
Can you book The Devonshire in Soho?
The restaurant yes, the pub no. Their own site states that the downstairs pub is walk in only and that they take no drinks or bar snacks reservations of any kind. They are not running a waiting list either. Walk ins are accepted inside and on the roof terrace subject to availability. Children are welcome in the restaurant at any time but not in the pub after 5pm on a weekday or at any time over the weekend.
What is the cheapest good restaurant in Soho?
Brasserie Zédel on Sherwood Street, where the prix fixe is two courses for 16.95 pounds. It is a very large Art Deco room below Piccadilly with a pianist from 5.30pm and house bands from 8pm, and it is considerably handsomer than most places charging three times as much a few streets away. The cabaret room, Crazy Coqs, is through the same entrance.
Do Soho restaurants charge for cancelling?
Increasingly yes, and it is rarely flagged until you confirm. Milk Beach Soho operates a 24 hour cancellation policy at 25 pounds per person, which on a table of six is 150 pounds for changing your mind on the day. The same restaurant is unusually generous in the other direction: groups of 10 to 30 need no pre order and no deposit at all. Read the cancellation line rather than the booking button.
Where can you eat late in Soho?
Kiln at 58 Brewer Street is the reliable answer, with the kitchen running Monday to Saturday from noon to 11pm without a break and to 9pm on Sunday. Bocca di Lupo on Archer Street serves dinner to 11pm Monday to Saturday with a last reservation at 10.45pm, and Barrafina on Dean Street runs to 11pm from Tuesday to Saturday. The Devonshire runs to 11pm, and to 10pm on Sunday. Most of the good rooms in Soho keep theatre hours and stop between services, so a late table needs choosing rather than hoping.
What time should you book dinner in Soho?
Half past eight. Soho is inside Theatreland so the whole district eats at the same two hours: the crush runs 5.45pm to 7.15pm before the curtain and again from about 10.15pm after it. A table at 8.30pm is the easiest booking in the neighbourhood and the calmest room you will sit in, because everybody else is in a theatre.
Written by Robert J Wills, no. 161 in the guide.
Last checked 2 October 2026 against the venues' own published information. Nobody pays to appear here and we take no bookings.
