Five Top Tables: Where to Eat in London This Month

Hot udon noodles with chicken at Koya City. Photographer: Kate Krader/Bloomberg Photo by Kate Krader/Bloomberg /Photographer: Kate Krader/Bloomb

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(Bloomberg) — Welcome to Five Top Tables, a new column from Bloomberg Pursuits to guide your dining decisions in London, New York, Paris and other finance capitals around the world.

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Finding a good place to eat in London isn’t easy. Popular restaurants are invariably packed, and tables at the nonjammed ones aren’t always worth it. Here then is our monthly guide offering five superb dining options that speak to the array of questions we get asked all the time: What’s a great new restaurant? Where should I go to celebrate a deal or an anniversary? Where can I get in tonight? And, especially, what restaurants are excellent and also a good value?

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New Opening: Lupa, Highbury

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Rarely are London restaurant openings as buzzy as Lupa’s. For one thing, there’s an attention-getting team behind the place: actor Theo James, who you’ve seen in The White Lotus; Ed Templeton, co-founder of the popular dining pop-up Carousel; and rising star chef Naz Hassan. And there’s also the compelling Roman dishes Hassan serves in the kind of intimate, high-ceilinged corner space you want to hang out in. His concise menu of familiar faces includes puffy fried courgette flowers stuffed with oozy burrata and anchovy (£10.50, or $14) and olive-oil-doused pizza bianca squares (£4.50). Every meat-eating table orders the porchetta (£19), a round of supremely crispy edged pork with little bites of apricot as a main. 

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But pay attention to the pasta section. Especially the cacio e pepe, made with pici (a kind of pudgy spaghetti) and replete with four cheeses and three peppercorns—it’s a bargain at £14.50. The bucatini all’amatriciana, stocked with chunks of guanciale (£15.50), should also be nonnegotiable. There’s an equally short Italian wine list and a few cocktails including, or course, a spritz and a Negroni. 73 Highbury Park; lupa.restaurant

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Business Meal: Ibai, the City

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From the outside, you might not recognize the dark-windowed spot as a restaurant until you spy the lineup of prestige wine bottles on a ledge. Inside, the space is also multiple times more spacious than most dining rooms, making Ibai a good place for business meals. Indeed, its City location means that it’s frequented by bankers, hedge funders and property managers who work nearby.

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But even if it weren’t convenient, they’d come for the premium Galician Blond beef sourced by owner Nemanja Borjanovic from northern Spain. Lots of diners will start with Ibai’s over-the-top take on grilled cheese, the croque Ibai, stuffed with blood sausage and shrimp. Steak service has the option of Galician Blond—the most popular order—as well as Black Angus (£130 and £115 per kilogram, respectively). At lunch the £35 sirloin steak frites is a relative bargain. The European wine list is long, particularly if you’re looking at the reds.  90 Bartholomew Close; ibai.london

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No Reservation Needed: Tatar Bunar, Shoreditch

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Whether or not you’re actively searching for Ukrainian food in London, the rustic-stylish Tatar Bunar should be on your list. For one thing, it’s convenient, just a few blocks from Old Street station. It’s also generally easy to get into: Whether you’re making a last-minute reservation or walking in, it’s a sprawling, multiroom space with a big communal table. But most of all, Alex Cooper and Anna Andriienko’s restaurant serves stellar Eastern European food.