The best cooking in Richmond is a mile from the station and it stops serving at teatime three days a week.
That one fact explains most of the disappointment people report about Richmond restaurants. They read a list, pick the place at the top of it, try to book dinner on a Wednesday and find it does not do dinner on a Wednesday. Then they eat on George Street instead and conclude Richmond is a chain town.
It is not. But it is three separate places wearing one name, and the question is which of them you meant.
Richmond restaurants are spread across three districts, not one
| Where | What it is | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| The town centre | George Street and the Quadrant, two minutes from the station. Brasseries and the better chains | A booking you need to make today, for tonight |
| The riverside | Richmond Riverside and the road toward Petersham. Terraces and the view | A warm afternoon, and nothing else |
| Petersham | A mile upriver along the towpath. The serious kitchens | A planned lunch, on the right day |
The walk between them is the part nobody mentions. Petersham is about twenty five minutes on foot from Richmond station along the river, and it is a genuinely lovely walk. It is also not a thing you want to discover after booking a table for eight o’clock in the dark.
The one to plan around
Petersham Nurseries Restaurant
- Address
- Church Lane, off Petersham Road, Richmond, TW10 7AB
- Nearest
- Richmond, then about twenty five minutes on foot along the river
- Hours
- Closed Monday except bank holidays. Tuesday and Wednesday 12pm to 5pm, last seating 3pm. Thursday and Friday lunch 12pm to 5pm and dinner 6pm to 11pm. Saturday 12pm to 11pm. Sunday and bank holidays 12pm to 5pm
- Standing
- A greenhouse restaurant in a working plant nursery. Michelin Green Star
How to get in
You eat in a glasshouse under bougainvillea, vines and jasmine, in a nursery that still sells plants, and the cooking is seasonal and led by the kitchen garden. It holds a Michelin Green Star for sustainability rather than a conventional star, which is the more interesting award and the one that describes what the place is. <strong>Read the hours before anything else: there is no dinner on Tuesday, Wednesday or Sunday</strong>, and the last lunch seating on those days is mid afternoon. Book ahead.
That is the restaurant people mean when they say Richmond is worth the trip, and the lunch only pattern on three days is the single most common reason a Richmond plan falls apart. Thursday, Friday and Saturday are the evenings. Everything else is a lunch.
Petersham Nurseries also runs a teahouse and a garden afternoon tea on the same site, and a separate cellar and Tuscan bar in Richmond town centre, so the name appears in more than one place on a map. The greenhouse is the one with the hours above.
The town centre, for a table tonight
George Street and the streets off it hold most of the names you will recognise. Gaucho has a Richmond branch doing Argentinian open fire cooking, and the town has branches of several London brasserie groups, a Cinnamon Bazaar and Megan’s at the Old Town Hall. These are the right answer for a booking made the same day, which is not a criticism: Richmond is a place people live rather than visit, and a neighbourhood needs restaurants that can seat you.
What the town centre is not is the reason to travel across London. If you have come from zone one specifically to eat, keep walking toward the river.
The riverside, and the thing to know about it
Richmond Riverside is the postcard: terraces stepping down to the Thames, and on the first warm Saturday of the year it is the busiest outdoor drinking in south west London. It is genuinely good and it is entirely weather dependent.
The view everyone actually comes for is not at the bottom of the hill, it is at the top of it. The view from Richmond Hill looks over the Thames and the meadows and is protected by its own act of parliament, which is why nothing has been allowed to grow or be built in front of it. Above that, inside the park, King Henry’s Mound holds a sightline to St Paul’s ten miles away through a gap deliberately kept clear in the trees.
Both are free, both are a walk, and both are better than anything you will pay for a table by the water.
Richmond Park, which is the other reason to come
The park is larger than most people expect, a former royal hunting ground with free roaming deer, and it is the reason a Richmond day works even when the restaurant plan does not.
Richmond Park covers the gates, the parking, the Isabella Plantation and the 50 metre rule that applies to the deer during the rut and the birthing season. If you are combining the two, the park and Petersham Nurseries are on the same side of the town and a sensible afternoon takes in both.
How to get a Richmond restaurants plan right
Pick the day before you pick the restaurant. Thursday, Friday and Saturday give you the full set. Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday are lunch days in Petersham, and Monday closes the best kitchen entirely except on bank holidays.
Allow the walk. Twenty five minutes each way to Petersham, and it is along a river with no shortcut. Either build it into the afternoon or take a bus along Petersham Road.
Do not judge Richmond by George Street. The two minutes nearest the station are the least interesting part of the town, and they are what most visitors see.
Everything here was taken from each venue’s own published information in September 2026 and rechecked on 2 October 2026. Opening hours in this part of London change with the season more than they do in the centre, so confirm before travelling, particularly the last seating times.
Where to go next
Christmas at Kew runs on selected evenings from 13 November, and its last entry is by gate.
Library Pot on Kew Road is the other reason to be in Richmond after dark: a board game cafe open Friday to Sunday only, at 6.50 a head with a 15 pound minimum spend.
Richmond Park is the full guide to the park itself, including which gate to use and where the deer are. The best views in London covers King Henry’s Mound and ranks the free ones against the ticketed ones.
For other districts that reward the journey out, Peckham and Brixton are the south London pair, and Notting Hill restaurants is the closest thing in west London to what Richmond is trying to be. If you want somewhere that will seat you without a booking, the walk in list covers which London restaurants take no reservations at all.
Written by Robert J Wills, no. 174 in the guide.
Last checked 2 October 2026 against the venues' own published information. Nobody pays to appear here and we take no bookings.
