A Small Guide to London

London · Visited and curated by André

Please find my list of recommendations for a beautiful time in London below.

Eat

St. JOHN Smithfield

GO ’26 ◎
Nose-to-tail British cooking in a bare white room, with a wine list to match; the restaurant others quietly copy.

Coffee

Hermanos Colombian Coffee Roasters Columbia Road

GO ’26
Colombian beans from a Colombian family; specialty coffee with a clear accent.

Snoozzze Coffee Farringdon

GO ’26
A small coffee bar that takes the cup seriously, steps from Smithfield market.

Drink

Noble Rot Lamb’s Conduit

GO ’26 ◎
The wine bar behind the wine magazine everyone in wine actually reads; the Lamb’s Conduit original, though the other Noble Rots are worth it too.

The 10 Cases Covent Garden

GO ’26
Ten cases of each wine, and when they run out the list changes; a proper little wine bistro.

Look

Whitechapel Gallery Whitechapel

GO ’26
Out east and worth the journey; a gallery with a long habit of showing what’s next.

Tate Britain Millbank

GO ’26
British art from Tudor to now, the Turners especially; calmer than its Bankside sibling.

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Kew

GO ’26 ◎
Three hundred acres of the world’s plants; glasshouses, a treetop walk, and a day that resets you.

Architecture

Barbican Centre Barbican

GO ’26 ◎
A brutalist city-within-a-city; raised walkways, a lake, an arts centre, and a conservatory hidden up top.

Shop

Columbia Road Flower Market Bethnal Green

GO ’26
A Sunday-only flower market on a Victorian East End street; barrows of blooms and plants, traders calling the prices, and independent shops and cafés behind them. It gets packed by mid-morning, so go early and let the street wake up around you.

Walk

Regent’s Canal Little Venice → the Thames

GO ’26 ◎
The city’s quiet backstairs; follow the towpath from Little Venice all the way down to the Thames, and London softens for a while.

Hampstead Heath Hampstead

GO ’26 ◎
Wild high ground over the city; swim the ponds, then take the view from Parliament Hill.