2026 has been a grim year for London restaurants, with one strange exception: the loud ones keep opening.
Look at what’s gone in the last eighteen months. Cargo’s arches are now a hire-only events space. Corsica Studios closed in March because a housing development moved in next door. Bounce shut both Old Street and Farringdon. Hakkasan’s Hanway Place original closed after 24 years. Maroush, in business since 1981, went into administration in June.
And yet: Big Mamma opened Barbarella in Canary Wharf and opens a 200-cover osteria in the City in November. Incipio opens Juno at Olympia next month – 265 covers, 500 capacity, a DJ booth and five-metre ceilings. The enormous, deafening, communal-table restaurant is the one format expanding through the downturn, because it sells an evening rather than a meal.
So here are 24 of them: the rooms where the noise is the point. All checked in September 2026, with the ones that have quietly changed name flagged, because several guides haven’t noticed yet.
The big-room Italians
Big Mamma Group has built an empire on one idea: enormous rooms, theatrical food, no reservations for most of the tables and a queue out the door that functions as advertising. The cooking is better than the format suggests.
Gloria
54–56 Great Eastern Street, Shoreditch EC2A 3QR
Seventies Capri by way of Shoreditch: floral wallpaper, dim gold light, a room that hums from about seven. Order the Mafaldine al Tartufo, finished at the table inside a wheel of pecorino, and the absurd six-inch lemon pie.
The original and still the best-looking of the group.
Ave Mario
15 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden WC2E 8QG
Six-metre ceilings, a bar lined with 3,500 bottles and a carousel of a dining room that gets genuinely loud by eight. The Gran Carbonara comes out of a 4kg pecorino wheel.
It’s the most theatrical room in Covent Garden and the one to bring people to on their first night in London.
Circolo Popolare
40–41 Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia W1T 1HX
Big communal tables and Neapolitan pizza just off Oxford Street, which makes it the most useful of the group for a group. Expect to queue; expect it to be worth it.
Jacuzzi
94 Kensington High Street, W8 4SH
Four floors of mock palazzo with Roman statuary and Murano glass, which is a lot for Kensington High Street. Another 5kg pecorino wheel, another Mafaldine al Tartufo.
Carlotta
77–78 Marylebone High Street, W1U 5JX
Italian-American rather than Italian: you come in through a velvet curtain to a Rosso Levanto marble bar and a room doing red sauce with a straight face. The whole tiramisù is £44 and feeds a table.
Barbarella
YY Building, 30 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf E14 5HX
Big Mamma’s Canary Wharf outpost, and the reason the Wharf is suddenly a plausible night out rather than a lunch destination. Same formula, glass towers outside instead of Victorian brick.
Mayfair spectacle
Sketch
9 Conduit Street, W1S 2XG
The pink Gallery is the most photographed dining room in Britain and the egg-pod toilets are the most photographed lavatories. There’s a new entrance by the French artist Camille Walala as of this year.
Also, quietly, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant upstairs in the Lecture Room. It contains several venues and moods – pick the right one.
Amazónico
10 Berkeley Square, W1J 6BR
Rainforest-themed, Latin American, open until 1am Monday to Saturday, with resident DJs and a proper music programme downstairs in the Jungle Bar. Smart-elegant dress code; no under-tens after 7pm, which tells you what sort of evening it becomes.
The best argument in Mayfair for a dinner that turns into a night.
Park Chinois
17 Berkeley Street, W1J 8EA
Club Chinois downstairs is a genuine supper club – Tuesday to Saturday, 6pm to 2am, resident DJs, cabaret, the lot. Check before you book the upstairs Salon de Chine, which has been temporarily closed and is due back.
Sexy Fish
Berkeley Square House, W1J 6BR
A Martin Brudnizki room with work by Damien Hirst and Frank Gehry, two of the largest live coral reef tanks in the world, and the biggest Japanese whisky collection anywhere. Open until 1am.
Preposterous, expensive and very good at what it does.
Ambassadors Clubhouse
25 Heddon Street, W1B 4BH
From the Sethi family behind Gymkhana and Brigadiers, in the space that was Momo for 25 years. Punjabi and North Indian food in a room modelled on a grand party mansion, with a heated Verandah outside.
One of the best big nights out in central London right now. More in our guide to Indian restaurants in London.
Loud rooms with genuinely good food
Brasserie Zédel
20 Sherwood Street, W1F 7ED
An enormous Art Deco basement under Soho, with live piano from 5.30pm and house bands from eight, every single day. The prix fixe is £16.95 for two courses, which in 2026 is barely believable.
Crazy Coqs cabaret is through the door at the back. There is no better-value loud dinner in the West End.
Bocca di Lupo
12 Archer Street, W1D 7BB
Sit at the marble counter facing the open kitchen rather than in the back room – it’s noisier, faster and much more fun, and you watch the whole thing happen. Regional Italian covering all twenty regions, small plates, bar open to midnight.
See also our guide to the best restaurants in Soho.
Barrafina
Dean Street, Adelaide Street, Drury Lane, Coal Drops Yard and Borough Yards
Counter-only Spanish across five London sites, no bookings, and a queue system that everyone complains about and everyone joins. The noise is the clatter of a working kitchen a foot from your face.
Go alone or in twos. Fours wait a long time.
Kricket
Brixton, Soho, Shoreditch and Canary Wharf
Modern Indian small plates that started in a Brixton shipping container and now runs four sites. Counter seats at Soho are the loud ones. The Covent Garden site that was announced has been scrapped, so don’t go looking for it.
Casa do Frango
London Bridge, Victoria and Mayfair
Piri-piri chicken in a two-floor Victorian warehouse under a greenery-draped skylight at London Bridge, and it gets properly raucous on a Friday. The Victoria site has a mezzanine and its own bar.
Duck & Waffle
110 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AY
Fortieth floor of Heron Tower, open 24 hours a day, every day. The view does most of the work but the room is a genuine party after midnight – it’s in our guide to late-night restaurants in London for a reason.
Bob Bob Ricard
1–3 Upper James Street, Soho W1F 9DF
All booths, no tables, and a Press for Champagne button at every one. It is as silly and as enjoyable as it sounds – our full Bob Bob Ricard review has the detail.
Note the change: the Leadenhall sibling is now called Bob Bob Ricard City, not Bob Bob Cité.
Where the music is the point
Nightjar
129 City Road, Shoreditch EC1V 1JB
Live jazz, blues, swing and funk from 9pm every night, a cover charge that goes straight to the musicians, and cocktails that have been among the best in London for fifteen years. Book, or you won’t get in.
More like it in our guide to secret bars in London.
Ronnie Scott’s
47 Frith Street, W1D 4HT
Two shows a night, plus the Late Late Show and the weekly Jazz Jam, and you can eat through all of it. Sixty-odd years in and still the best room for music in London. See our jazz clubs guide.
The Blues Kitchen
Camden, Brixton and Shoreditch
Live blues, soul and funk every night, open to 2.30am on Fridays and 3am on Saturdays, and a kitchen doing ribs and bourbon until late. The Camden original on the High Street is the one.
Rae’s
6 O’Meara Street, SE1 1TE
This is Omeara, renamed. Same arches behind Borough, same programme of gigs and club nights, plus a bar, a mezzanine and a terrace. If you’ve been meaning to go back, it’s not called what you think it’s called.
Games, ball pits and karaoke
Bunga 90
167 Drury Lane, WC2B 5PG
Bunga Bunga is gone; this is its replacement, and it’s better. You come in through a fake 1990s video rental shop into karaoke rooms, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter cabinets, a Jurassic Park pinball table and a claw machine that dispenses cocktails. Club 90 runs to 3am on Saturdays.
Pizzas up to 18 inches. Bottomless brunch with a DJ and a karaoke host at weekends.
Ballie Ballerson
97–113 Curtain Road, EC2A 3BS
A hundred thousand clear balls lit by twenty thousand LEDs, flair bartenders, karaoke rooms and pizza. It is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds and completely unbeatable for a birthday.
Flight Club
Bloomsbury, Islington, Shoreditch and Victoria
Social darts, which turns out to be a genuinely good format. The Bloomsbury site at 55 New Oxford Street has stained glass, a fairground horse called Andrea and a carousel bar, and runs to 1am Thursday to Saturday.
More in our guide to activity bars in London.
Swingers West End
15 John Prince’s Street, W1G 0AB
Crazy golf built as a 1920s British seaside, with carnival games and street-food traders. £12 a head off-peak, £15 peak, food and drink packages from £31, open to 12.30am on Fridays and Saturdays.
Cahoots
Soho (two venues) and Borough Yards
The Underground site is a disused 1940s tube station with a life-size carriage and live swing bands; the Ticket Hall next door is a Forties pub with a terrace on Kingly Street. The newest, Cahoots Postal Office in Borough Yards, fires cocktails overhead through pneumatic tubes.
Deeply silly, extremely well executed.
Bounce Battersea
Turbine Hall B, 342 Circus Road South, SW11 8DD
Worth knowing before you plan a night: Bounce closed both Old Street and Farringdon, and Battersea Power Station is the last one standing. Ping pong, pizza and a loud room.
New, and worth watching
- Impala, 13–14 Dean Street, Soho – opened March 2026. North African charcoal grill from ex-Kiln chef Meedu Saad, and the Soho opening everyone has been shouting about this year.
- KID, 53–55 Frith Street, Soho – opened 1 September 2026. Turkish over charcoal from David Carter of Smokestak and Sertac Dirik of Mangal II. Two of London’s best fire cooks in one Soho room.
- Fenix, 80 Piccadilly – opened March 2026. Aegean Greek, Mayfair money, and a sound system specified like a nightclub’s.
- Juno, Olympia – opens 16 October 2026. Incipio’s 265-cover, 500-capacity Italian in the Grade II-listed National Hall, with a DJ booth and live music at weekends.
- Edmondo, 6 Lombard Street, EC3 – opens November 2026. Big Mamma’s first City site and its first with private dining rooms, in a Grade II-listed building done up as 1930s Milan.
- AJ Records, 8 Hanway Place – spring 2027. The old Hakkasan space becomes a southern French restaurant, cocktail bar, live music venue and recording studio on a 3am licence, with the rapper Dinos as music director. A neat ending for the room that started London’s loud-luxury dining in 2001.
How to actually get a table
- Go early or go late. 5.30pm and after 9.30pm are the two windows where walk-ins get seated at the no-reservation places.
- Book six weeks out for the Mayfair rooms and set a calendar reminder – Amazónico and Sexy Fish release in blocks.
- Two is the magic number. Counter restaurants seat pairs in a fraction of the time they seat fours.
- Check the name before you search. Omeara is Rae’s, Bob Bob Cité is Bob Bob Ricard City, Bunga Bunga is Bunga 90, and Cargo is an events space.
- Ask where the loud part of the room is when you book – most of these places have a quiet corner, and if you’ve come for the atmosphere you don’t want it.
The London x London Take: The loudest rooms take the fewest bookings. Big Mamma holds back a large share of tables for walk-ins, which means the trick isn’t getting online at midnight – it’s turning up at 5.30pm or after 9.30pm and putting your name down. Two people will always get in faster than four, and four faster than six.
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