10 standout women-owned restaurants in London

Italian-born Gaia Enria left a career in marketing to open a fresh pasta restaurant in Shoreditch in 2013. She made this decision out of a deep love for making pasta at home but she was onto something, in the eleven years since London has gone mad for fresh pasta.

Enria’s Burro E Salvia is a pastificio, trattoria, and wine shop. The pastificio is where the fresh pasta is made by sfogline (pasta makers); this pasta is also available for purchase to take home and cook. The trattoria and wine shop offers low-intervention wines, antipasti, and fresh pasta made with seasonal ingredients and inspired by the different regions of Italy.

Burro E Salvia is about the simple pleasure in life: aperitivo, fresh pasta – including Enria’s signature Agnolotti Cavour in butter and sage – wine, cheeses, ham. Nothing fancy. Nothing you have to wrap your mind around. Just the pleasure of fresh and delicious flavours.

Back in 2012, Sarah Bentley founded Made In Hackney, a pursuit that she did not undertake alone, the most extraordinary aspect of this cookery school and charity is community involvement. Made In Hackney equates the health of people with the health of a community, the environment, and indeed, the planet.

Responding to health inequalities, food access, and climate change, Made In Hackney initially began as a cookery school to educate, inform, and teach the skills of growing, harvesting, and cooking plant-based foods. The Made In Hackney community meal service cooks 400 meals for community members and the service also provides food to warm spaces. The intention is simple: foster community, educate and create experiences, but these simple acts have the added benefit of being good for the environment.

If you haven’t heard of Nigerian-born chef Adejoké (Joké) Bakare, don’t be embarrassed but rather be curious. She is a culinary force to be reckoned with. Since winning the Brixton Kitchen competition in the amateurs category in 2019 she has been on a whirlwind journey, from home cooking to opening her West African restaurant Chishuru through to the restaurant recently winning a Michelin star.

Bakare’s cookery, praised for its unique take on West African flavours, spices, and recipes, has captured the culinary heart of London, and that isn’t hyperbole. Bakare was named one of Code's '100 Most Influential Women in Hospitality' in 2022, was shortlisted as 'Innovator of the Year' at the GQ Food & Drink Awards 2022, and was shortlisted as 'Chef to Watch' in the National Restaurant Awards 2023.

All this from a woman who just loved cooking for her friends and family and at one point doubted whether she was cut out for a career as a professional chef. We don’t often use this term but when it comes to Chishuru and Joké Bakare – watch this space.

Rochelle Canteen turns twenty this year, that’s long enough for it to become part of the Shoreditch landscape. The café and restaurant in the old bike shed and garden of the Rochelle School has been beloved for its modern British and European fare consisting of a seasonal, daily changing menu that showcases local produce and ingredients from further afield.

No restrained presentation here, but simple and unfussy plates, dishes that look natural on the plate and look like they’ve been made by somebody who loves fresh produce, its colours and textures, rather than architecture and abstract art.

Rochelle Canteen’s two decades of success come down to business partners Melanie Arnold and Margot Henderson. Arnold looks after the business side of things whilst Henderson develops Rochelle Canteen’s menu. Together the duo have been in business for more than thirty years. Like all of the women on this list, it’s Arnold and Henderson’s story and their love around good cooking and sharing meals that underpin Rochelle Canteen.

When Carole Byron opened Lady of the Grapes it was to shine a light on female wine-makers. Ninety percent of the wines at Lady of the Grapes are produced by women. It’s Byron’s passion for supporting women in wine-making that stands out, it’s a passion that catches like wildfire.

Lady of the Grapes offers around 35 wines by the glass and carafe and more than 350 wines by the bottle. The small, simple menu at the wine and bottle shop consists of cheeses and charcuterie, and the small kitchen serves up seasonal and artisanal French small plates. It’s the epitome of cosy and intimate, two words that are so married together when it comes to describing wine bars but who would ever want a wine bar that wasn’t these two things?

French-born Byron isn’t just passionate about informing her guests that her organic and biodynamic wines are made by women, she’s also praised the women she works with at Lady of the Grapes. Championing the women in her life, and educating wine lovers and diners, Lady of the Grapes is Carole Byron’s wine bar but it’s also an expression of her passion which I admire.

Native Londoner Ana Tobias’ resume reads like a delicious pilgrimage through the standout kitchens of the Capital’s best no-fuss restaurants. Cutting her teeth at Blue Print Café, Tobias held stints at River Café and Rochelle Canteen before moving on to the recently revived Clapton favourite, P Franco.

It is from this pedigree that Café Deco is born. Both a child and survivor of the pandemic, the Bloomsbury spot sees Tobias paired with the team behind 40 Maltby Street (of sandwich cross-section fame). Previously a greasy spoon, the renovated place leans heavily on pastel colours, and the small space adds to a sense of homely comfort.

The result is deceptively simple dining that thankfully never strays too far from what a café should be. You can expect brilliant soups, staple museum-café foods like egg mayonnaise, and a smoked salmon blini that will leave you in a heady daze.

When Claire Latten co-founded the Soho wine bar and eatery Ducksoup way back in the Olympian London fever dream days of 2012, London was graced with straightforward, honest food to be eaten on scrubbed wooden tables alongside a bottle of low-intervention wine. It’s an experience that has become more and more popular in the city’s dining scene, forstalling overly experiential ‘concept’ restaurants in favour of something less opaque, more delicious.

Latten’s contribution to the landscape was heralded by her Ducksoup cookbook, which, again, brushed away the chaff in favour of simple cooking underpinned by good ingredients. In the intervening years, the restaurateur and author has helped launch the Hackney cousin Little Duck the Picklery as well as a Devon outpost, Osteria Emilia. If the drinking and eating continue at this level of excellence, we say: the more the merrier.

If you’ve ever found yourself stumbling through the streets of Amsterdam, a gnawing hunger growing inside you, you’re probably familiar with the warm glow of the ubiquitous ‘snack bar’. These pokey little alcoves, stacked with vending machines, have delighted the appetites of lost tourists and in-the-know natives for decades.

Rejoice at Freddie Janssen, then. The Dutch-born proprietor of Dalston’s much-loved Snackbar has brought the final form of comfort food to East London. The menu reads like a teenage layabout’s bedroom daydream: tuna melts join kimchi croque madames – there is even a turkey pie to confront. This being Dalston expect the interior to be chic, minimal, and post-industrial.

Janssen herself is a testament to both the commitment and energy it takes to run a successful restaurant. As chef, waiter, cleaner, and marketer, Janssen and her all-women team deserve the success the good people of Dalston have endowed on this snack bar.

Originally from Colombia, the sisters Valentina and Juliana opened Morena in 2020 for brunch and coffee and have endeared themselves to the Belgravia neighbourhood ever since.

Their venue in Eccleston Yards is an unapologetic paean to all things Colombian and the wider Latin America palate. This, of course, means fantastic freshly roasted coffee alongside culinary bursts of flavour like the salmon tostadas with citrus sriracha mayo. The cocktails are also worth the trip, with a couple of passion fruit margaritas being a compulsive end to any meal.

They bill themselves, in their own words, as “The perfect spot for weekend brunch, a cosy coffee catch-up, or an evening of drinks with friends.” We really couldn’t agree more.

Technically an in-memorium, Florence Knights' tenure at Sessions Arts Club deserves space on this list purely on the legacy it leaves. The departing Head Chef followed a successful stint at Polpetto, Soho, by leading the kitchen of a Clerkenwell Grade II listed courthouse (a serious contender for the best-looking restaurant in London).

The food matched the sublime aesthetics, blow-by-blow. A regular service saw a cluster of delightful surprises leaving the kitchen. You could, one minute, be tucking into a buttery and fluffy prawn croquette before, low and behold, your plate is loaded with smoked eel and confit potato. Surprising, simple, and undeniably tasty.

Whilst Knight’s next moves are yet to be announced, we are filled with confidence that it will prove as delightful as her last. In the meantime, we’ll keep remembering those croquettes.