The cheap London buffet is disappearing, and the ones that survived are considerably better than the ones that didn’t. Here’s where to actually eat.
Something has happened to the London buffet in the last two years, and almost nobody has written it down. Cosmo – the chain that was the British mall buffet – now has exactly one branch left in Greater London, in Romford, out of 22 sites nationally. Rodizio Rico has gone from three London restaurants to one. Preto has lost Putney. Fazenda, the British rodízio group, was absorbed into the American chain Fogo de Chão in 2024.
Meanwhile the price floor has risen hard. Sushi Cafe in Battersea used to do all-you-can-eat for about £16; it’s £25.80 now. A full rodízio dinner runs to £40-plus once service is on. The genuinely cheap buffet is close to extinct in zone 1.
What’s left, though, is good – and in several cases it’s the best-value eating in the city. A 120-dish Pakistani feast in a Grade II* Art Deco landmark for £29.99 is not a compromise. Nor is unlimited Korean barbecue with a karaoke room downstairs. Below: 14 London buffets that are worth the trip, what each one actually costs in September 2026, and the small print that catches people out.
Indian and Pakistani buffets
Royal Nawaab, Perivale
7 Hoover Building, Western Avenue, UB6 8DB · £29.99 adult, £13.99 child (4–10) · royalnawaab.com
If you only do one buffet in London, do this one. Royal Nawaab occupies part of the Hoover Building on the A40 – the Grade II* Art Deco factory in jade and scarlet that is one of the most extraordinary buildings in west London, and which almost nobody goes inside.
The food more than holds up the setting: over 120 dishes across live stations, 100% halal, with handi, tava fish, lamb chapli kebab and a pani puri counter among them. £29.99 for that is, frankly, silly.
Two things to know. There is no lunch service Monday to Friday – doors open at 5pm, and 1pm at weekends. And at busy times there’s a 90-minute table limit, so book early rather than turning up at eight on a Saturday. There’s a second branch at Cineworld Ilford.
More of the city’s best in our guide to Indian restaurants in London.
Indian Veg Bhelpoori House, Islington
92–93 Chapel Market, N1 9EX · around £13 · daily noon–11.30pm
A London institution that has been quietly feeding Islington all-you-can-eat vegetarian curry for decades, from a room wallpapered floor to ceiling in pro-vegetarian posters, statistics and quotations – Plato and Paul McCartney share wall space with pie charts about protein.
The food is mild, generous and entirely beside the point of the experience. There’s a hot counter of curries and biryani plus a salad bar, and the kitchen buys from the market stalls directly outside the door.
Fair warning on price: this is the one venue here where we couldn’t stand up a current figure. It was £12.95 when last reliably reported and the restaurant’s own website hasn’t been touched in years. Take cash and don’t be surprised either way.
Brazilian rodízio
Rodízio isn’t a buffet in the trays-and-tongs sense – the salad bar is self-service, but the meat comes to you, carved off skewers at the table by passadores until you tell them to stop. Every one of these places uses the same mechanic: a card on the table, green side up for more, red side up for mercy.
Preto
Angel, Victoria, Queensway and Shaftesbury Avenue · weekday lunch £18.95, dinner £35.95, vegetarian £27.95, kids £9.95 · 12.5% service added · preto.co.uk
The best-value rodízio in London by a distance, as long as you go at lunch on a weekday: £18.95 for unlimited picanha, alcatra, maminha, cupim and garlic picanha, plus a salad bar that is really a Brazilian buffet in its own right – feijoada, feijão tropeiro, pão de queijo, fried banana, coxinha.
Dinner nearly doubles to £35.95, and with 12.5% service you’re at roughly £40 a head before drinks, which is a different conversation. The house dessert trolley at the end is worth leaving room for.
Four London branches now: Victoria, Angel, Queensway and the West End. Putney has closed, whatever the booking widget on their homepage still says.
Rodizio Rico, The O2
Unit 15, Peninsula Square, SE10 0DX · weekday lunch £31.20, Saturday lunch £33.90, Sunday £39.10, dinner £42.30 · rodiziorico.com
The original London rodízio, now down to a single site at The O2 after both Westbourne Grove and Upper Street closed. The service is more ceremonial than Preto’s – a caipirinha, an explanation of how it works, then the parade – and it finishes with Brazilian desserts and a liqueur.
It’s the obvious pre-gig dinner if you’re at the arena, and children five to twelve eat for £19.10 with under-fives free.
One thing to check at the table: reviewers through 2026 have repeatedly flagged a 10% charge added on top of the menu price. Ask before you order rather than after.
More in our guide to Brazilian restaurants in London.
Fogo de Chão, Bishopsgate
100 Bishopsgate, EC2M 1GT · lunch £54, dinner £66 · fogodechao.uk
This was Fazenda until 2024, when the whole British group was rebranded under the American chain Fogo de Chão – so if you booked it under the old name, you’re in the right place.
It’s the corporate end of the format: two floors near Liverpool Street, three private dining rooms, a ground-floor bar and the Market Table of hot sides and salads that Fazenda regulars will recognise. At £66 for dinner it’s expensive for unlimited meat, but the cuts and the carving are a clear step up.
Lunch at £54 is the sensible order, and happy hour runs 3–7pm.
Asian buffets and unlimited dim sum
FeiEr Cottage, Westminster
37 Strutton Ground, SW1P 2HY · unlimited dim sum £38 adult, £20 child under 9 · feier-restaurant.co.uk
Unlimited dim sum, made to order rather than wheeled round on a trolley, on a weekday market street tucked behind Victoria Street that most of Westminster walks past. £38 sounds steep until you work out how many £7 baskets that is.
The kitchen also does Chinese barbecue and hotpot, and the room is a good deal more comfortable than Chinatown at the same price point. There’s a 120-minute limit – confirm it applies to your table when you book.
Open 11am–4pm and 5–10pm weekdays, straight through noon–10pm at weekends.
Ping Pong – Lazy Sumday
Sundays and bank holidays, all day · £29.95 adult, £12.95 child under 12 · pingpongdimsum.com
Ping Pong’s Sunday offer is genuinely unlimited dim sum, and it’s the easiest entry point on this list – central, reliable and about as un-intimidating as an all-you-can-eat gets.
The rules are firm: everyone on the table has to take the menu, there are no substitutions, and a two-hour limit may be applied. It runs at four of the London restaurants rather than all of them, so check the branch before you book.
Order the prawn and chive dumplings and the char siu buns first, then work outwards.
Sushi Cafe, Battersea
555 Battersea Park Road, SW11 · £25.80 Sun–Thu, £27.80 Fri–Sat · 90-minute limit · booking required
Over 100 dishes of all-you-can-eat Japanese in a neighbourhood room on Battersea Park Road, and one of the few places in London where the unlimited sushi is actually made properly rather than sat under a light.
This used to be the great London bargain at around £16. It isn’t any more – £25.80 midweek is the current rate – but it’s still well under what you’d pay à la carte for the same volume. Note their own menus page still shows an old price; the homepage figure is the right one.
Ninety minutes, booking essential, and go hungry.
Aroma Buffet, Shepherd’s Bush
First Floor, West 12 Shopping Centre, W12 8PP · weekday lunch £18, dinner and weekends £28 · aromabuffet.co.uk
Over 100 dishes spanning Chinese, Malaysian, Thai and Indian, plus sushi and a teppanyaki counter, on the first floor of a Shepherd’s Bush shopping centre. No service charge, VAT included.
The £18 lunch is the value play and the trap in equal measure, because lunch is only served Monday and Friday. Tuesday to Thursday it’s evenings only from 5pm.
Go early in a session rather than late – the recurring complaint is stations not being topped up in the last hour.
JRC Global Buffet, Wembley
London Designer Outlet, Wembley Park Boulevard, HA9 0FD · £26.99 weekday, £29.99 weekend · jrc-globalbuffet.com
The big one – twelve cuisines including a teppanyaki counter, right by the stadium, and the obvious answer if you’re feeding a large group before a match or a gig.
We’ll be straight with you: it’s the most uneven entry here, and recent reviews are not kind about temperature and top-ups. Go for the scale and the convenience rather than the cooking.
Child pricing requires both under 13 and under 150cm, measured at reception, which catches out plenty of families with tall twelve-year-olds. Reservations get 1hr 45min, walk-ins 90 minutes, and 5% service is discretionary. Doors open at 1pm, so there’s no true lunch sitting. Other Greater London branches at Croydon, Ilford and Wood Green, where it’s a pound or two cheaper.
Inamo, Soho and Covent Garden
Unlimited Asian tapas and sushi · 90 minutes · pre-booked voucher only · inamo-restaurant.com
The gimmick is the table: you order by touching a menu projected onto the surface in front of you, and you can change the “tablecloth” while you wait. Underneath it is a real unlimited deal – around 30 dishes of Asian tapas and sushi across 90 minutes.
The system releases your next order once you’ve eaten 75% of the last one, three dishes per person at a time, which stops the usual buffet waste.
It has to be pre-booked and pre-paid as a voucher, and the price isn’t published on the restaurant page – check the current rate on their site before you commit. Branches in Soho and Covent Garden, not Camden.
Unlimited Korean barbecue
113 KTV, Euston
111–113 Hampstead Road, NW1 3EE · £33 unlimited KBBQ · £38 weekday / £40 weekend with an hour of karaoke
The best new addition to London’s all-you-can-eat scene since 2024, and the most fun. £33 gets you unlimited Korean barbecue cooked on grills set into your own table – marinated meats, banchan, soups and stews, a noodle dish, fruit and ice cream – with refillable soft drinks included.
Then there are the KTV rooms downstairs. For £38 on a weekday or £40 at the weekend you get the buffet plus an hour of private karaoke, minimum party of five, and you have to book that combination by phone or email rather than online.
Expect a 90-minute cap on the grill. Five minutes from Warren Street, six from Euston. More in our guide to the best Korean restaurants in London.
The blowout
Ned’s Feast, The Ned
27 Poultry, EC2R 8AJ · Sundays 12–8pm · £120 per person, £190 with free-flowing Champagne · thened.com
At the far end of the category: a Sunday eat-as-much-as-you-like inside a Lutyens banking hall, with lobster and oysters, roasts with the full complement of trimmings, salads, and a cheese-and-dessert bar, all under live jazz. Two-hour sitting.
£120 is a lot for a buffet and not much for a Sunday lunch in that room – which is exactly the calculation The Ned wants you to make. Under-sixes eat free, six to twelves are half price, and non-members can book.
Worth a call before you go: the format and the room have shifted recently, so confirm what you’re booking.
Eastway Brasserie, Liverpool Street
40 Liverpool Street, EC2M 7QN · weekend breakfast buffet £28 · 7–11.30am
A proper hotel breakfast buffet rather than an all-you-can-eat – pastries, cereals, fruit, yoghurt and the full English in components – open to walk-ins at weekends, which most hotel breakfasts aren’t.
£28 is fair for the location and it solves the perennial City problem of where to eat before ten on a Sunday.
What isn’t actually a buffet
A lot of London buffet round-ups – including, until today, ours – quietly pad themselves out with restaurants that have never run a buffet in their lives. For the record:
- Dishoom – bottomless chai is one refillable drink, not an all-you-can-eat. No buffet at any branch.
- Bala Baya – weekend brunch is à la carte. The bottomless element is drinks.
- Gaucho – the unlimited Electro Brunch was a real thing, but every trace of it we can find dates to 2016–2018. Don’t turn up expecting one.
- Tiroler Hut – still very much alive on Westbourne Grove after a fire gutted it in 2019, and still doing the cowbells and the yodelling. It is not, and never was, a buffet.
- Cosmo – down to a single Greater London branch, at The Brewery in Romford.
How to do a London buffet properly
- Check the time limit when you book. Ninety minutes is now standard and two hours is generous. It is rarely mentioned until you arrive.
- Walk the whole room first. Every buffet in London puts the cheap carbohydrate at the front of the run for a reason.
- Work out whether lunch exists. Royal Nawaab doesn’t serve it on weekdays at all, JRC Wembley opens at 1pm, and Aroma only does lunch on Mondays and Fridays. This catches people out constantly.
- Read the child pricing. Several chains now use a height rule as well as an age rule and measure at the door.
- Add the service charge before you compare. Preto’s £35.95 dinner is £40.45 with 12.5% on top; a £28 buffet with no service charge can work out cheaper than a £25 one with it.
- Book weekdays. Almost every venue here charges £3–£17 more at the weekend for the same food.
All prices checked in September 2026. Buffet pricing moves quickly – confirm with the restaurant before you travel across London for one.
The London x London Take: Almost every buffet in this list runs a table time limit – usually 90 minutes, sometimes 120 – and most people don’t find out until they sit down. Ask when you book, arrive on time, and do a full circuit of the room before you put anything on a plate. The single biggest mistake at a London buffet is filling up on rice in the first ten minutes.
Read next
- Cheap eats in London: where to eat well for under £15
- The best Indian restaurants in London
- The best Korean restaurants in London
- The best Brazilian restaurants in London
- 26 late-night restaurants in London
- The best bottomless brunches in London
- The best new restaurants in London
- The best restaurants in London
