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

About Shoreditch

Shoreditch moves faster than anywhere else in London. What opened last year is already established; what opened last month is already being discussed. That velocity makes it genuinely exciting as a food and drink destination, but it also means the places worth knowing are the ones that have survived the churn — the restaurants that filled up before the hype arrived and kept filling up after it moved on.

The neighbourhood's food scene has more range than its reputation for creative-industry cool might suggest. Yes, there are natural wine bars and small-plates restaurants that could exist nowhere else in London. But there is also Brick Lane's curry mile, which has fed east London for decades, the Vietnamese restaurants on Kingsland Road that are some of the best-value eating in the city, the Spitalfields market traders whose quality has nothing to do with trends, and a breakfast and brunch culture built around a population that works late and eats late.

Lets Discover creators who cover Shoreditch know the area across all its registers. Their picks range from the restaurants worth booking weeks in advance to the places where you can walk in on a Tuesday evening and eat as well as anywhere in London.

Shoreditch High Street and the blocks immediately around the station form the neighbourhood's main dining corridor, with a high concentration of independent restaurants, cocktail bars and all-day cafes that serve both the local creative-industry population and visitors who make a specific trip from across London. Brick Lane runs south through the neighbourhood and has two distinct characters: the Bangladeshi curry houses that have anchored the street for decades in the south, and the independent cafes, bagel shops and vintage stores in the north that blend into the streets around Columbia Road. Kingsland Road, running north from Shoreditch High Street toward Dalston, is one of the best-value streets for eating in London, with a concentration of Vietnamese restaurants that have been there since the 1990s and continue to do exceptional pho and bun bo hue at prices that embarrass most of the neighbourhood. Spitalfields Market and the surrounding streets to the south provide a different kind of food destination, with permanent traders and temporary market stalls operating alongside the Victorian market hall's permanent restaurant and bar tenants.

History and culture in Shoreditch

Shoreditch's history as a centre of entertainment and creativity stretches back to the Elizabethan period, when the area sat just outside the City of London's jurisdiction and was therefore free from its regulations on theatres and public entertainment. The Theatre, built in Shoreditch in 1576, was England's first purpose-built playhouse, and the Curtain Theatre nearby followed shortly after. Shakespeare performed at both. The neighbourhood's position outside City control also made it a centre for industries too noisy or dangerous for the City itself, and the furniture and textile trades that developed there shaped the area's character through the Victorian era. The 20th century brought significant immigration, first from the Jewish community fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, who established the garment trade and the Brick Lane bagel shops that still operate today, and later from Bangladesh, which gave Brick Lane its curry-house identity. Shoreditch's transformation into a creative and technology hub began in the 1990s when cheap rents attracted artists, designers and start-ups, establishing the character that has defined the neighbourhood ever since.