Hungry? We’ve got you, here are all the best Soho breakfast and brunch options in one good guide.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But what about brunch?
What happens when you wake up too late for breakfast but too early for lunch, and you couldn’t possibly power through the hangover without drinking at least your own body weight in bottomless prosecco?
Whatever your reasons for needing early feed in Soho, you’ve got heaps of choice. From grab-and-go bagel options to swanky bottomless brunches at wild fusion restaurants, we’ve compiled a guide to our favourites right here.
Best breakfasts and brunches in Soho
Bocconcino
New Sunday bottomless brunch
Sunday brunch the Italian way has landed at Bocconcino Soho, running every week from 1pm to 3.30pm and built around genuinely generous sharing plates rather than a token brunch menu.
It starts with antipasti, mozzarella, golden arancini, tomato and stracciatella bruschetta, pickled vegetables, mixed olives, Italian salumi and crisp carasau bread, before moving into a proper pasta course. Take your pick from silky Roman-style carbonara, the signature black truffle tagliatelle, or pappardelle with wild mushrooms and stracciatella. Then come unlimited Roman-style pizzas straight from the wood-fired oven, the signature Bocconcino topped with stracchino, Parma ham and tomatoes, a fiery Diavola, or the ever-popular Bufalina.
Bottomless prosecco is included in the £49 per person package, with Aperol or Luxardo Limoncello Spritz available instead for £56. Resident DJs and live musicians keep things moving through the afternoon, the kind of brunch built to roll straight into the rest of your Sunday.
Not ready for the afternoon to end? Bocconcino’s Aperitivo Hour follows straight on, available all day Sunday and 4-7pm Monday to Friday, with £7 cocktails, Italian spritzes and cicchetti including truffle mushroom arancini and fried calamari.
Nessa
If you’re after breakfast in Soho, one very solid option to consider is Nessa. They serve up a range of dishes that include some of the world’s top breakfasts, yes, they offer a full English, king of them all.
The chef behind it all is Tom Cenci, who’s got a strong reputation for top-quality cooking, you’ll see what we mean when you try his breakfast.
The setting is slick too. Furniture all designer, presentation particular, it’s the kind of place that begs a bottle of champagne at your table.
Dishoom
Yep, you read that correctly. Dishoom, London’s favourite curry house, makes it into our Soho breakfast guide, and they do possibly the best breakfast Soho has to offer.
That comes in the form of Indian twists on classic British breakfast dishes. Think bacon-naan wraps, sides of masala-spiked baked beans and a lassi to wash it all down with.
Curry for breakfast though? Trust us, this is genuinely worth trying. They have some lighter options available too if you want to ease yourself in.
Koya
What if we told you the best breakfast Soho can offer is a bowl of ramen? We aren’t lying. It’s a matter of opinion of course, but ours is pretty firmly with Koya on this one.
They do a great little menu of breakfast bowls, mostly noodles, Japanese style. You can pick from tasty sides like pickled plums or poached eggs in chillies. But whatever you do, make sure you try the full English ramen, a bowl of noodles with shiitake mushrooms, bacon and eggs floating in the broth.
We know that might sound strange at first, but give it a go. Koya serves excellent food, this is just one case in point.
Café Boheme
We couldn’t really write a guide of the best brunch places in Soho and not include Café Boheme.
The place is a cornerstone of the Soho dining scene and has been for decades. It was also, would you believe it, the original location of now-global members club Soho House.
The breakfast and brunch menu is extensive and features some big hitters you’d pretty much demand in a place with a reputation like this: eggs florentine and benedict, English breakfasts by full or by half, croissants, salmon and scrambled eggs.
The list goes on, all served in the setting of an elegant Parisian cafe, perched on the corner of a street with some genuinely prime people-watching real estate.
The Breakfast Club
Maybe this is an easy shout, but there’s a reason all of The Breakfast Club’s venues are jam-packed at brunch time.
The menu runs wild with all kinds of things you could happily scoff down for breakfast, and has a drinks list of things you could happily quaff down for brunch.
Soho actually has two locations, one on D’Arblay Street and the other on Berwick Street, so if you encounter the queues you will inevitably find outside this place, you can always head round the corner and try the other spot.
Scarlett Green
One of the most popular places for brunch Soho has to offer is Scarlett Green. It’s part of the Daisy Green group, which runs a number of popular venues throughout London, some indication that they know what they’re doing.
The food they serve up at Scarlett Green is broadly Australian, so expect classics like smashed avocado on the menu, when they’re not swerving towards other brunch classics like shakshuka or smoked salmon royale.
Wanna make a day of it? For £49.99 you can drink as much as you want for 90 minutes and work through two brunch dishes.
Chotto Matte
People used to scoff at the notion of Peruvian-Japanese fusion, but places like Chotto Matte have proved them very wrong. The restaurant regularly fills up, especially so when the brunch service is on.
Chotto Matte is a hugely popular spot for brunch in Soho, famed for dishes like smoked lamb chops with chilli miso, wildly exciting ceviche fusions and a bottomless offer which will have you working through Asahi at a fair clip.
There’s an option for sparkling wine if that’s more your speed. One thing’s for sure, you do need to go bottomless at the best brunch Soho has to offer.
Balans
At Balans, brunch doesn’t have to be a pre-midday thing. They love the day’s first meal so much they serve it all day. The menu includes pretty much every brunch dish you can think of, from classics like eggs benny to newer additions like the breakfast burrito.
Worth knowing before you go: Balans has been through a genuinely rocky patch this year, the group’s smaller Old Compton Street site, “the little one,” has closed for good, and the main Soho restaurant briefly appeared as temporarily closed online before reopening and taking bookings again. It’s currently trading, but given the uncertainty, it’s worth checking their site or calling ahead before making a special trip.
B Bagel Soho
Breakfast places in Soho aren’t all about the sit-down or the get-sloshed. One of Soho’s top brunch spots is a humble bagel joint.
B Bagels do a selection of New York-style bagels neatly wrapped so they don’t spill on your way to work, and can be enjoyed on the limited seating outside if you’re not in a rush.
Our favourite? A toss-up between the salt beef, a clear classic, and the smoked salmon and cream cheese, also a classic.
If you fancy leaning into breakfast, get stuck into one of their sausage and hashbrown varieties. It ticks every breakfast box you would possibly want ticked.
The London x London Take: Bocconcino’s new Sunday brunch is the one worth booking around right now, few brunches in Soho give you pasta, pizza and antipasti in one sitting. For something more classic, Café Boheme and Dishoom are the two we’d send first-timers to, one for a proper sit-down breakfast, one for something you won’t get anywhere else in Soho.
Practical tips for exploring the best breakfasts and brunches in Soho
- Soho is a popular spot for dining, especially for brunch. If you’re planning one of those big-occasion brunches where you and all your friends swim in an ocean of bottomless prosecco, book it in advance.
- If you didn’t have the foresight to book ahead, or you just happened to turn up in Soho hungry at breakfast time, many of these places are within a short walk of each other, so you can easily nip around a few and see if there are any free tables.
- Soho is a great spot for a big bottomless brunch, but if you can’t find the right one for you in this guide, check out our bumper guide to London’s best bottomless brunches.
