Good food, good company: The six best spots in London for a business lunch

Whether meeting with established colleagues or looking to cement new partnerships, the work lunch can be a boon to any business relationship. The format can be a great way to discuss the details of a project or explore the possibilities of a new venture. That is, if you follow a few basic rules: always show up on time, leave your laptop on your desk and keep an interesting conversation going. And, of course, choose a suitable restaurant that’s easy to find. 

Not sure where to start? Here are six spots in the UK capital that reward those who work up an appetite. 

1.
Poon’s
Somerset House

Amy Poon first learned the restaurant trade while working in her parents’ establishments, the first of which opened in London in 1973. Despite the family’s success – including earning a Michelin star – Poon initially decided never to open a place of her own. “I knew how hard it would be – the effect on your family life, the hours, the commitment,” she tells Monocle. So what changed her mind? “It must be in my blood. I love feeding people.”

After several successful pop-ups, including a year-long residency at Carousel in London, Poon’s has now found a permanent home in the new wing at Somerset House. The beautiful, high-ceilinged space is kitted out with murals, while the charmingly illustrated menu includes the restaurateur’s celebrated wontons and classics from her parents’ eateries. 

What to order: The wind-dried meats on claypot rice, Covent Garden duck salad, Lisle Street zha jiang noodles and The Hill That Amy Didn’t Die On – a labour-intensive prawn toast that her mother urged her to include on the menu.

2.
Simpson’s in the Strand
Covent Garden

Jeremy King and Shayne Brady have launched some of London’s most enduring dining spots over the past 15 years but the duo’s latest project, Simpson’s in the Strand, carries a legacy stretching back nearly two centuries. The chess-club-turned-restaurant first opened in 1828 and, since 1904, has been known for dishing out roast meats and Yorkshire puddings on silver trolleys. The Edwardian venue closed in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and has been undergoing extensive renovations since King purchased it in 2022. 

Simpson’s has now opened its doors once again. There are several distinct venues under one roof: the traditional Grand Divan, theatrical Romano’s, the classic Simpson’s Bar, the seductive Nellie’s bar and a small ballroom. 

In 1862, Simpson’s former owner Edward William Cathie insisted that the restaurant serve only British food, christening its menu the “Bill of Fare”. More than a century on, King upholds the tradition with dishes that remain “English to the core”. This includes carvers wheeling silvery trolleys of Devonshire beef between tables in the Grand Divan; Romano’s, which is more intimate and convivial, offers lighter plates beneath portraits of 20th-century playwrights who once dined here. 

What to order: The food at Simpson’s is traditional British, with hearty roasts in the Grand Divan and lighter contemporary meals in the smaller Romano’s. At Nellie’s Tavern, cocktails are served until 03.00. Try the signature peach melba sling.

3.
Mountain
Soho

On a Beak Street corner in Soho you’ll find the redbrick building – formerly a Byron burger joint – that houses Mountain. The appeal of the Spanish restaurant is instant: a heavy wooden door, good soundproofing and a bar hewn from English elm in a room surrounded by just-so joinery by designer Dan Preston. Light fills both floors of the 100-cover space too: whether it’s from the vast windows or the low-hung, dimly lit pendants presiding over the patchwork of busy tables. 

The food is a paean to Welsh chef Tomos Parry’s love of freshly netted seafood and great produce. The final ingredient and reason for the restaurant’s name is Spain’s mar y montaña cookery, but this magnificent menu is more than just immaculately delivered Iberian surf and turf. There are lots of rich little sharey bits: tangy sobrassada, shatterings of rosco onion, sprouting broccoli and wild garlic fritto, and a spider crab omelette that achieves a perfect wobble with Japanese precision. 

What to order: The whole-lobster caldereta and its fish-based entrées – Dover sole, John Dory or sea bass when Monocle visits – can’t be faulted, nor can a selection of sirloins. There are also beef sweetbreads or tripe, which all help adventurous orderers find less likely delights (and give the rest of us reasons to revisit). 

4.
Sune
London Fields

Located at the foot of bustling Broadway Market, Sune fits perfectly with its east London neighbourhood. Launched by Honey Spencer and Charlie Sims, the restaurant is a welcoming, unfussy space without a hint of haughtiness, despite Sims’s background of working front of house at Noma. Its comely interiors are all timber floors and tabletops, with high stools beside the floor-to-ceiling window and a zinc-topped terracotta-brick bar.

Chef Michael Robins’s inventive snacks include a confit egg on a thick, Jenga-block-shaped wodge of potato and strozzapreti (a pasta whose name literally translates as “priest stranglers”), which comes freckled with pickled mushrooms and an egg yolk. For dessert we ordered poached pear on a creamy white-chocolate crème anglaise that refuses to be left unfinished. A menu this pleasing demands a second visit.

What to order: The red mullet is seasoned with salty sea herbs and is served swimming in a smoky broth. We particularly enjoyed the side of grilled potatoes in a silky brown-butter sauce.

5.
Camille
Borough Market

Launched by Clare Lattin and Tom Hill, the restaurateurs behind Soho’s Ducksoup and Dalston’s Little Duck, Camille recreates a Provençal cave à manger in a neighbourhood that prides itself on British produce. Pig’s trotter terrine is served with Dijon mustard and crunchy cornichons. Diners are encouraged to share seasonal (not-so) small plates bearing such treats as crab toast along with nutty pied de mouton mushrooms, crispy purple sprouting broccoli or a polished potato pavé. The generosity of portions extends to the sweets, which are well worth saving space for. The brown-butter tart encased in pâte sucrée and flambéed with a gentle lick of the blowtorch is an offer that few will be able to refuse. 

What to order: A seasonal menu means that diners can expect a roster of new dishes as the weather turns.

6.
Sweetings
City of London

The City of London is a strange, old place where Roman temples sit beneath gleaming skyscrapers. Half a million people descend on the Square Mile every weekday but fewer than 10,000 call it home. As property prices soar across the capital and samey sandwich shops proliferate, it might be hard to fathom how Sweetings, an unassuming 65-cover seafood restaurant founded in 1889, has endured for so long while steadfastly resisting change. You can’t book a table in advance and it doesn’t serve tea or coffee. It’s only open on weekdays and only for lunch (11.30 to 15.00) – the same hours that it kept in the 19th century.

Nevertheless, regulars can’t get enough of this long-unrenovated restaurant, with its wooden wainscotting and nicotine-cream walls offset by linen place settings. Waistcoat-and-tie-clad staff members clip across the terrazzo floor between tables, serving specialities such as the house-cured gravadlax, oysters and Dover sole. When Monocle visits we hear champagne corks popping and the clinking of pewter tankards carrying black velvets (champagne and Guinness) bound for a table of punters in pinstripes. There are private tables for intimate conversations, communal ones for larger gatherings and barstools from which to see and be seen by colleagues or, perhaps, adversaries.

What to order: Skate wing with a caper-and-black-butter sauce, native oysters, the Dover sole and black velvet cocktails.

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