When you've got the whole of London to explore, rarely do you consider limiting yourself to the confines of your hotel when it comes to dining.
This may be true if you're staying at the Holiday Inn...
But if you're staying a The Berkeley Hotel, you get to eat at Marcus Wareing's 2-Michelin starred eatery. If you're booked into the Mandarin Oriental then pop downstairs to dine at Dinner Heston Blumenthal...
However, with these big names come big price-tags for accommodation, so instead: stay elsewhere, peruse our list and just drop in for a bite...
Our pick of London's best hotel restaurants
Theo Randall spent 17 years at the River Café before going it alone at the InterContinental on Park Lane. In a similar vein to the riverside eatery’s menu, he favours rustic Italian dishes, all perfectly executed.
Housed within the spectacular St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, this Marcus Wareing restaurant takes its name from the British architect responsible for its breath taking gothic design. The menu fittingly pays homage to Victorian-era cookery, with dishes like mulligatawny and rabbit pie.
Bruno Loubet’s busy bistro is located within the trendy Zetter Hotel, and benefits from the chef’s flair for turning French classics on their head, like serving snails and meatballs together, and pairing grilled mackerel with smoky cod roe and apple purée.
The Mandarin Oriental launched Dinner to tremendous hype; here the science-loving chef delves into the history of British food as far back as the 14th century. Ahuge success, the meat fruit – a “mandarin” stuffed with foiegras and chicken liver – has become one of London’s most talked about dishes.
The swanky Berkeley hotel in Knightsbridge has a suitably impressive restaurant, with the talented Wareing at the helm. The double Michelin-starred eatery serves modern European cuisine with a nod to French influences.
NYC’s Daniel Boulud is partly to blame for the elevation of the burger to gourmet food, and his London site at the Mandarin Oriental - with Dean Yasharian in charge - has their famous beef, foiegras and braised short ribs burger. Not that you should overlook the rest of the menu, which has traditional French dishes like coq au vin and rosemary lamb rump.
During his tenure at La Tante Claire at the Berkeley, Pierre Koffmann trained some of the best chefs in the business, including Gordon Ramsay, MarcusWareing and Marco Pierre White. He is now back at the hotel with a more casual restaurant, which serves food from south western France.
The Hilton on Park Lane boasts this restaurant by the Galvins, who now have a portfolio of seven eateries and can seemingly do no wrong. Their set lunch and prestige menus are great value.
Mayfair’s luxurious Westbury unveiled this restaurant in 2011, Alyn Williams’ first solo venture after years working for Marcus Wareing. Within a year he was rewarded with a Michelin star, and prices are surprisingly affordable for an eatery of such calibre.
The more casual of the two restaurants at the InterContinental Park Lane (the other being Theo Randall’s eponymous restaurant), Cookbook Café prides itself on using seasonal produce sourced as locally as possible. The weekend brunch is evidence of this, when a large “market table” is filled with appetising fruit, veg, cheeses, cold meats and seafood, but Paul Bates’ delectable à la carte is a prime example of British food at its best.