Best Restaurants, Bars and Things to Do in Hampstead, London

About Hampstead

Hampstead operates at a pace that is entirely its own within London. The village high street and its surrounding lanes have an independent retail and food culture that has resisted the homogenisation affecting most London high streets, partly because property prices are too high for chain operations to find the economics attractive and partly because the local population prefers it that way. The result is a neighbourhood where the cafes, restaurants and pubs have genuine character and have been serving the same community for years.

The Heath is central to how Hampstead's food scene works. The cafes and kiosks within the Heath's boundaries provide something that is rare in inner London — a place to eat or drink that is surrounded by open land rather than buildings. On a good Saturday morning, walking from Hampstead Village across the Heath to Kenwood House and back via Parliament Hill covers most of what makes the neighbourhood worth visiting, with eating and drinking opportunities at every stage.

Lets Discover creators who cover Hampstead know the village well and their picks reflect a neighbourhood where the best experiences are often the simplest: a good coffee before a Heath walk, a proper lunch at one of the village gastropubs, or a long dinner at one of the restaurants on Flask Walk or Heath Street.

Heath Street is the main artery of Hampstead Village's food scene, running from Hampstead tube station up through the village and containing a mix of independent cafes, wine bars and restaurants alongside some of London's better specialist food shops. Flask Walk, branching off from the main street, is one of the most pleasant pedestrian streets in north London and contains some of the neighbourhood's better cafe and restaurant options in a quieter setting. Hampstead High Street and the blocks around Rosslyn Hill have their own cluster of neighbourhood restaurants and cafes that serve the more residential southern end of the village. The pubs on the edges of the Heath — the Spaniards Inn and the Bull and Bush — are historic institutions that provide proper food alongside their primary function as destination pubs. Kenwood House café, within the Heath itself, is a legitimate food destination in its own right, particularly for Sunday brunch.

History and culture in Hampstead

Hampstead's character as London's most literary and intellectually distinguished village is rooted in centuries of use as a retreat from the city. The mineral waters discovered at the Wells in the early 18th century made Hampstead a fashionable spa destination, drawing wealthy Londoners and establishing the pattern of educated, prosperous settlement that has continued ever since. John Keats lived in Hampstead from 1818 to 1820 and wrote much of his most celebrated work in the house that is now a museum on Keats Grove. John Constable lived on Well Walk and made the Heath the subject of some of his most important paintings. Sigmund Freud spent the last year of his life at 20 Maresfield Gardens after fleeing Vienna in 1938. Hampstead Heath itself was saved from development by an Act of Parliament in 1871 following campaigning by the newly formed Commons Preservation Society — one of the earliest successful urban conservation campaigns in British history. Parliament Hill, the highest point of the Heath, has views across London that have been painted and photographed continuously since the 18th century.