High style, low spend: London’s best chic but cheap restaurants

Whenever he opens a new place, the restaurateur Jeremy King reminds his staff that no restaurant worth its salt leaves its customers feeling swindled. The choice to spend a lot or a little, he said, was theirs; bills can be £40 or £400, depending on the mood and the pocket.

There are others operators who do a similar thing. At the Ivy chain (various locations, the-ivy.co.uk), it’s easy to rack up an enormous tab, but likewise a Sunday lunch might be spent sat at the bar, with a £16 shepherd’s pie — incidentally their most famous and perhaps best dish — and a glass of £8 wine. The surroundings make it feel an occasion; there is a sense of grandeur to them all. With places like these, it’s all in the ordering: cannily navigating a menu means some of the capital’s best restaurants can be enjoyed without a sense of dread arriving at the same time the little leather book does. With this method in mind, try, for starters, the likes of Hoppers (various locations, hopperslondon.com), Brigadiers (1-5 Bloomberg Arcade, EC4, brigadierslondon.com), Brutto (35-37 Greenhill Rents, EC1, @bru.tto), the Tamil Prince (115 Hemingford Road, N1, thetamilprince.com), Manteca (49-51 Curtain Road, EC2, mantecarestaurant.co.uk) or Flour & Grape (214 Bermondsey Street, SE1, flourandgrape.com).

You might think this approach would work everywhere but more and more, it simply doesn’t — at the top end of the market, price-wise, it is becoming increasing common to see drinks lists kicking off in the low teens for the tiddliest glass of wine, starters getting going at about £18, and the very cheapest main still troubling