London is not a late city and pretending otherwise wastes evenings. Most central kitchens stop at ten. A good number stop taking orders well before the room closes, which is how people end up standing in a bar that is still serving drinks, being told there is no food.
So this is not a list of places that are open. It is a list of kitchens that are still cooking, with the exact cut-off each one publishes, because the two numbers are rarely the same.
The rule that decides every late meal in London
Last orders are not closing time, and the gap runs from fifteen minutes to two hours.
Eat Tokyo stops taking food orders a full hour before the door shuts. Hawksmoor at Borough closes its kitchen up to two hours before the room. Orient London in Chinatown publishes fifteen minutes. Fonda’s bar in Mayfair runs to midnight while its kitchen stops at ten.
Read the kitchen time. Everything below is a kitchen time.
Late night food in London after midnight
Speedboat Bar, Rupert Street
The latest proper kitchen in central London, and the only one on this page still taking food orders after twelve.
Speedboat Bar
- Address
- 30 Rupert Street, Soho, W1D 6DL
- Nearest
- Piccadilly Circus
- Hours
- Soho: Friday and Saturday midday to 1am, last food orders 12.15am. Monday to Thursday to midnight, last food 10.45pm. Sunday to 11pm, last food 9.45pm. The Notting Hill branch runs Sunday to Thursday only to 11pm
- Booking
- Online only, through SevenRooms in Soho and OpenTable in Notting Hill. They publish no telephone number
- Standing
- Thai Chinese cooking from Luke Farrell, modelled on a Bangkok snooker club
How to get in
Quarter past midnight on a Friday and Saturday is the latest published food order in this guide. Three things to know before you rely on it. There is no telephone number at all, so it is online or the walk in queue, and that queue runs to three hours at peak. Children cannot be seated after seven in the evening. And the Soho site has no step free access, though the Notting Hill one does.
Restaurants open late in London, to midnight
Plum Valley, Gerrard Street
Plum Valley
- Address
- 20 Gerrard Street, Chinatown, W1D 6JQ
- Nearest
- Leicester Square or Piccadilly Circus
- Hours
- Friday and Saturday midday to midnight. Sunday to Thursday midday to 11pm
- Booking
- Online or by telephone. Karaoke rooms are booked separately and carry a room charge and a minimum spend
- Standing
- A black fronted room on Gerrard Street with karaoke rooms upstairs
How to get in
Midnight on a Friday and Saturday in the middle of the West End, which is the entire point of Chinatown. The karaoke rooms upstairs are a separate booking with their own room charge and minimum spend, so a group turning up expecting to add one after dinner will be quoted a number they were not expecting.
To eleven and half past
Eat Tokyo, Old Compton Street
Eat Tokyo Soho
- Address
- 16 Old Compton Street, Soho, W1D 4TL
- Nearest
- Leicester Square
- Hours
- Friday and Saturday midday to 11.30pm straight through. Monday to Thursday midday to 4pm and 6pm to 11.30pm. Sunday to 10.30pm. Last orders one hour before closing
- Booking
- 020 7439 9887
- Standing
- Japanese owned, forty years old, eight London branches
How to get in
The door says half eleven and the kitchen means half ten, because last orders are a full hour before closing and they publish that rather than hide it. The other trap is the afternoon: Monday to Thursday they shut entirely between four and six. Friday and Saturday run straight through. Closed on the last Monday in May, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
Orient London, Wardour Street
Orient London
- Address
- Wardour Street, beside the Chinese Gate
- Nearest
- Piccadilly Circus
- Hours
- Friday and Saturday 11.30am to 11.30pm. Monday to Thursday midday to 11pm. Sunday 11.30am to 10.30pm. Last orders fifteen minutes before closing
- Booking
- No bookings at all on Saturday, Sunday or bank holidays before 5.30pm
- Standing
- Beside the Chinese Gate on Wardour Street
How to get in
Fifteen minutes is the shortest published gap between last orders and closing on this page, which makes the door time close to honest. The dim sum menu is the opposite problem: it stops at a quarter to five, so this is a late dinner room rather than a late dim sum one.
Kanada-Ya, St Giles High Street
Kanada-Ya
- Address
- 64 St Giles High Street, WC2H 8DA
- Nearest
- Tottenham Court Road
- Hours
- Thursday to Saturday 11.30am to 10.30pm. Sunday to Wednesday to 10pm
- Booking
- 020 7240 0232. They publish no booking policy, so this is a turn up restaurant
- Standing
- Tonkotsu ramen in the Fukuoka style, six London sites
How to get in
Half past ten Thursday to Saturday, and the extra half hour at the end of the week is the difference between catching it after a film and not. It is a minute from Tottenham Court Road but on a street people walk straight past. Five other branches at Angel, Carnaby, Ealing, Piccadilly and Westfield spread the load when this one has a queue.
Kiln, Brewer Street
Kiln
- Address
- 58 Brewer Street, Soho, W1F 9TL
- Nearest
- Piccadilly Circus
- Hours
- Kitchen Monday to Saturday midday to 11pm. Sunday midday to 9pm
- Booking
- No online system. The only route they publish is a booking enquiry by email to bookings@kilnsoho.com, and they have historically kept counter space for walk ins
- Standing
- A wood fired Thai counter on Brewer Street
How to get in
Eleven is late for cooking of this standard, and the walk in habit works in your favour at that hour because the queue has gone. The part nobody repeats: they will take your number and message you when a table frees, so a wait at half ten does not mean standing outside. Sunday is the early night, stopping at nine. They publish Christmas hours too: shut on the 25th and 26th, split service from the 27th to the 30th, and closed on New Year's Day.
Drinking rather than eating
Sager and Wilde on Hackney Road runs to one in the morning on Friday and Saturday, which almost no wine bar in London does. The wine bars guide has the rest.
Sky Garden’s bars run to midnight, and one in the morning on Friday and Saturday, which makes it the latest viewing platform in London, though the free tickets stop at 6pm on weekdays and 9pm at weekends, so late at night you are going up for the bars. The views guide compares it with Horizon 22, which shuts at six on weekdays and earlier at weekends.
Mestizo Downstairs, between Camden and Euston, opens at eight and runs late, free before eight and ten pounds after.
Practical notes
Aim for a kitchen that closes an hour after you want to eat. If you want food at half ten, a kitchen closing at half ten is not it. Speedboat, Plum Valley and Kiln are the three that survive that test on a Friday.
Soho is the answer more often than not. Four of the six kitchens above are within a ten minute walk of each other, which means a failed first choice is not a failed evening.
Sunday is not a late night anywhere. Every single venue on this page closes earlier on Sunday, most by an hour or more, and Kiln drops from eleven to nine.
Getting home is the other half of the problem. The Night Tube runs on Friday and Saturday only, on six lines. On any other night your options are a bus, which runs all night for 1.75 flat, or a booked car. The Night Tube guide covers the lines that do not actually run.
Everything here was taken from each venue’s own published information and rechecked on 28 September 2026. Kitchen hours change more often than any other detail a restaurant publishes. Confirm before you travel.
Where to go next
London is not the late city it thinks it is. Our closing time index puts 96 venues in order of when they actually stop, and only five are still serving after one in the morning. Where a venue publishes both, the kitchen shuts up to two hours before the room does.
Still serving is one question and will seat you is another. The walk in index covers the second, with what 154 London venues publish about turning up without a booking.
South of the river the problem inverts and becomes a closing time problem. Peckham reads as a late neighbourhood and is not one: its latest kitchen stops at half past ten, two of its best known rooms shut on Mondays, and none of the six checked will cook on a Sunday evening.
London after dark covers the wider evening, and the bars cover where to go once the kitchens have finally stopped.
By cuisine, since most of this page is Asian for a reason: Thai, Japanese and Chinatown, which is the district built around eating late.
Malaysian is the exception that proves the point: the cooking is uniformly good and almost none of it is still being served at ten.
After the kitchens stop entirely there is one address left: Beigel Bake on Brick Lane has been open 24 hours a day since 1979, which is covered in the sandwiches guide.
The ramen guide is the other late counter format, and it sorts the three groups that serve most of London by which of their branches will actually seat you.
The British exception is fish and chips, where one kitchen in Spitalfields fries until eleven from Thursday to Saturday and the rest have stopped by nine.
For the journey home, the Night Tube and what the tube costs.
Questions we get asked
What restaurants are open late in London?
Speedboat Bar on Rupert Street takes food orders until a quarter past midnight on Friday and Saturday, which is the latest published kitchen in central London. Plum Valley in Chinatown runs to midnight on the same nights. Eat Tokyo, Orient London, Kanada-Ya and Kiln all cook until eleven or half past, and all four are in or beside Soho.
How late do London kitchens serve food?
Most central kitchens stop at ten, which is earlier than visitors expect. The later ones run to eleven or half past, and only a handful go past midnight. The bigger trap is that last orders come before closing time, by anything from fifteen minutes at Orient London to a full hour at Eat Tokyo and up to two hours at Hawksmoor.
Where can you eat after midnight in London?
The list is very short. Speedboat Bar in Soho publishes last food orders at 12.15am on Friday and Saturday. Plum Valley in Chinatown serves to midnight on the same two nights. Outside those, most of central London has stopped cooking, and Chinatown is the district most likely to seat you at that hour.
Is Soho good for late night food?
It is the best area in London for it, and the reason is density rather than any one restaurant. Speedboat, Kiln, Eat Tokyo, Orient London and Plum Valley are all within about ten minutes of each other, so a queue or a closed kitchen at the first is a five minute walk from the second rather than a ruined evening.
Do London restaurants stop serving before they close?
Almost always, and the gap is rarely advertised. Orient London publishes fifteen minutes. Eat Tokyo publishes a full hour, so its 11.30pm closing is really a 10.30pm kitchen. Fonda in Mayfair keeps its bar open until midnight while the kitchen stops at ten. Always ask for the last food order, not the closing time.
What is open late in London on a Sunday?
Considerably less than on a Friday, and every venue in this guide closes earlier. Kiln drops from eleven to nine, Eat Tokyo from half eleven to half ten, Orient London to half ten and Speedboat to eleven with last food at a quarter to ten. If Sunday is your late night, aim to order by nine.
How do you get home late in London?
The Night Tube runs on Friday and Saturday nights only, and only on six lines: Central, Jubilee, Northern, Piccadilly, Victoria and Windrush. On any other night the answer is a night bus, which runs all night at a flat 1.75 with no zones, or a booked car. Several sections of those six lines do not run even on the nights they are listed.
Written by Robert J Wills, no. 108 in the guide.
Last checked 28 September 2026 against the venues' own published information. Nobody pays to appear here and we take no bookings.
