Best restaurants in South West London

With its daily specials written on rolls of brown paper, a bar adorned with homemade preserves, and pegs on the walls for hanging your coat – Bistro Union evokes the make-do-and-mend Britain of yore. Much of the menu produced by Adam Byatt’s team harks back to a time when food was primarily for comfort, reassurance and high-calorie fuel: there’s a breakfast fry-up, fish pie and toad in the hole for lunch, and rhubarb fool for pudding. Nevertheless, you’ll also find more interesting dishes that have left the nursery (and school dinners) behind. Try the grilled squid with parsley salad, served with a punch-packing aïoli; and finish off with a blackcurrant and almond tart (in essence, a very fine version of a Bakewell). Drinks include a couple of British sparklers, craft beers and ciders, but fear not: the wine list makes it easy to escape Blighty should you wish.

The choice of well-heeled locals for suppers and minor celebrations, A Cena continues to please. It’s an attractive space: all polished wood and white tablecloths. If possible, sit where the room mushrooms out behind the bar, as here the atmosphere is generally buzzing and the draughts have nowhere to go. The kitchen is perfectly competent at cooking the modish range of Italian dishes on the menu – start with a deep, rich Chianti-braised beef bruschetta, or a simple Parma ham and mascarpone risotto; move on to grilled sea bream with capers and lemon, or Gloucester Old Spot cutlet with baked aubergine and oregano. The standard may not cut the mustard in Knightsbridge, but it’s better than you might expect in the ‘burbs, and prices are kind: especially for the express lunch and dinner menus. There’s an interesting Italian wine list to match, and a barman versed in grown-up cocktails to boot.

Serving up a little slice of stylish West End-dom, Tsunami brings pizzazz to this less-than-chic backwater off Clapham High Street. The bar is a cool hangout with great cocktails, while the restaurant’s Japanese-western hybrid cooking is good enough to attract smart young locals with their friends, their dates and their parents. Expect good sushi (there’s a bi-monthly sushi rolling school here, for those who want to learn to make their own) and a few Japanese classics such as deep-fried tofu with grated daikon in dashi broth. Much of the menu, however, steers away from the old school, giving a gentle nod to the East – roast pork belly with green beans, for instance, made piquant with piri-piri hoi sin; or rib-eye with exotic mushrooms and truffle sauce. There’s a decent wine list and plenty of saké, and while the à la carte isn’t prohibitively expensive, the set lunch is ridiculously cheap.

“Can’t stop recommending it” exclaims a devotee of Battersea Rise’s casual French wine bar and restaurant. We concur: Soif is still streets ahead of the local competition. The daily menu doesn’t only base itself on Gallic soil – charcuterie features heavily, but Italian coppa is listed alongside rillettes and cornichons; Lindisfarne oysters are up there with Gorgonzola and burrata – though classic French-Mediterranean flavours are the mainstay. Whether you eat tapas-style (clams, chilli, garlic and lemon, say) or go for a more formal meal (Montbéliard sausage with choucroute and potatoes, followed by pannacotta), the cooking is invariably up to scratch. Staff are keen their customers enjoy themselves, and happily make recommendations from the huge and impressive list of organic and ‘natural’ terroir-led wines and French ciders. The split-level room decorated with French posters soon fills, but hard wooden chairs discourage lingering, so tables usually aren’t long in coming free.

Give yourself time for lunch at the Nurseries. In our opinion it’s a kooky, lovely place, though getting there isn’t easy – driving is discouraged, public transport is slow, and once there, service, though gracious, can be ditzy. It has been years since Skye Gyngell moved on, and the kitchen has never scaled the same heights since. Still, with many ingredients sourced from the beautiful walled garden of Petersham House and a River Café-esque team in the kitchen, you can expect up-to-the-minute seasonal cooking. 

Langoustine might be teamed with a colourful salad of dandelion, pistachio, fennel and nasturtiums, while ‘today’s game’ could appear with an autumnal assembly of horn of plenty, cavolo nero and polenta. Prices are high, yet this is a unique spot. If time or budget are important, try the tea room in the next-door glasshouse, which has great simple food at half the cost and without the wait.