Best restaurants in Dalston

Merging Japanese and Italian cuisine, this intriguing restaurant serves food in a small minimal space in busy Dalston. Expect dishes like unagi risotto and black sesame pannacotta. Worth a visit if you’re in the area.

One of the longest running restaurants on Kingsland Road, the Dirik family have overseen this exceptional restaurant for two generations and counting. Under their watchful eye, Mangal II has rightly become one of London's most exciting restaurants, blending straight-up delicious Turkish cooking with British ingredients and some more far-sighting international influences.

Famous for 22 inch pizzas, only a slice or two is needed to fill you up. The ever-changing menu means when it comes to these New York-style pizzas there is always something new to try.

Referring to itself as a ‘fermenting kitchen and eatery’, kimchi, kombucha and drinking vinegars are heavily featured throughout and available to buy. Seasonal plates include crispy lamb with labneh and braised duck with saffron butterbeans.  

A legendary London cheap eat, Andu's prices have gone up a little in recent years but it's still ludicrously cheap at around a tenner per person. For that you get some lovely comforting Ethiopian cooking - creamy shiro, chopped collard greens and more, all spread over injera bread. 

Vegetables lie at the heart of this unique BBQ spot in east London, while all its meat and fish are sourced from regenerative farms and sustainable suppliers. It brews its beer on site too, and the by-products are used to make ferments and hot sauces – pretty neat, right? 

This family run, no fuss or frills Turkish restaurant specialises in hot and cold mezze including halloumi, hummus and charcoal grilled kebabs all meant for sharing. The ideal spot for a cheap and casual meal.

Angus Kitchin was once rattling pans over at FKA BAM, but these days he's set up shop cooking indulgent French food at The Haggerston. If confit duck, smoked sausage and lentils sounds like your speed, get yourself over to Chap.

Headed up by Israeli chef Oded Oren, this Mediterranean inspired restaurant joins many others in the city serving up this increasingly popular cuisine. On the menu you’ll find lamb sweetbreads and ox cheek with hummus.

Bringing together North African and Middle Eastern cuisine, ex-Ottolenghi chef Josh Katz’s brings flavourful small plates and grilled dishes to the arches of Acton Mews. Expect aubergine sabich with sour cream and wood-roasted prawns pil-pil.

Once just a bakery in a shipping container, The Dusty Knuckle is bakery royalty now, with queues snaking way up to the main road if you arrive too late at the weekend. The focaccia sandwiches are genuinely delicious, as are the pastries and excellent potato sourdough loaf. There's a big outside area to sit in as well as some inside tables.

Once confined to a buzzy underground cantina, Corrochio's now has a proper ground floor restaurant too, and the quality Mexican cooking (founder Daniel is from Guadalajara) is as good as ever. This is one of Dalston's elite taco stops, but the brunch and cocktails are both excellent too.

Another of Dalston's beloved Turkish spots, this family-run ocakbasi if notable for the smell of chargrilled smoked meats as you approach. There's no messing around with elaborate design at Umut 2000 - grab a table and feast on smokey meats, whole-cooked fish and some of the most delicious lamb chops we've ever eaten. 

A drop-dead gorgeous jazz bar and Japanese restaurant, mu is worth the price of entry alone to sit at the bar with a cocktail and listing to someone tinkling the ivories. The food is excellent too, including a cracking black cod and miso dish with red cabbage, and a smoked eel donburi that we'd eat every week if we could.