Best Restaurants near Café de Paris

Vantra Vegan is a central Soho restaurant built around an all-vegan menu, with buffet and à la carte options, juices, teas, and a calm, health-focused feel. It suits a quick lunch, a casual dinner, or a low-key stop between West End plans. The setting is urban and practical rather than scenic, but its long-running presence since 1999 gives it unusual continuity in a fast-changing part of London.

On busy Wardour Street in Chinatown, this compact bakery-and-tea shop serves Hong Kong-style buns, bubble tea, and sweet snacks in a fast-moving, takeaway-first setting. It is the sort of place you visit between Soho and West End plans: brief, practical, and often crowded, with queues building at lunch, late afternoon, and evening. Expect a small indoor counter, limited lingering space, and a steady flow of dessert runs rather than a sit-down meal.

Evelyn’s Table is a tiny Michelin-starred dining room in the basement of The Blue Posts on Rupert Street, where a fixed tasting menu unfolds at a chef’s counter. The room is intimate, quiet, and tightly run, with around a dozen seats and a strong focus on precision rather than spectacle. It suits planned evenings, not casual drop-ins, and feels most rewarding for diners who want a concentrated modern European meal in central Soho.

Thai Tho Soho is a long-running Thai restaurant on Rupert Street in the West End, set among theatres, bars and late-opening eateries. It is a practical stop for lunch, pre-theatre dinner or a late meal after a night out, with seated service and a compact, urban feel. Expect a busy room, classic Thai dishes and a central location that prioritises convenience over spectacle.

Inside Picturehouse Central on Great Windmill Street, this café-restaurant-bar is built for pre-film drinks, post-screening meals, and quick West End pauses. Expect a compact, contemporary interior spread across several levels, with casual café seating below, a restaurant upstairs, and a members’ bar and roof terrace that looks toward Piccadilly Circus. It is busiest around screenings and meal times, and works best as part of a wider evening out.

YiQi is a walk-in-only Pan-Asian restaurant on Lisle Street in the middle of Chinatown, built around a visible order-and-cook format. Seafood, vegetables, and meats are displayed before being finished with techniques such as binchotan grilling, sous vide, and teppanyaki. The room is relaxed rather than theatrical, making it a practical stop for lunch, dinner, or a pre-theatre meal in central London.

On Gerrard Street in the middle of London’s Chinatown, Dumplings’ Legend is a busy, no-nonsense Chinese restaurant built around dim sum, soup dumplings, and shared plates. It is a place to eat, not linger for ambience: tables turn over quickly, the room stays lively, and the appeal lies in a focused menu served in the thick of West End foot traffic.

The Eight Restaurant is a central London Cantonese spot on Shaftesbury Avenue, set in the thick of the West End’s Chinatown dining scene. It draws diners for HK-style comfort food rather than atmosphere: wonton noodles, roasted meats, lo mein, baked rice and dim sum-style plates served in a casual, compact room. Expect a straightforward meal stop, busy evenings, and a practical location near Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus.

Singapulah London brings Singapore’s hawker-centre energy to Soho, serving laksa, nasi lemak, wonton mee and kopi in a compact, themed dining room on Shaftesbury Avenue. It is a straightforward meal stop rather than a lingering attraction, but the concept is distinctive: a central London restaurant built around Singaporean street-food culture, with a lively, casual atmosphere that suits lunch, dinner or a pre-theatre bite.

FOWL is a vibrant chicken restaurant in St. James’s, London, celebrating the nation's favourite bird with a beak-to-feet menu. Launched in October 2023 by chefs Jack Croft and Will Murray, it features soy-free, pasture-raised poultry from regenerative farms. Enjoy creative dishes, monthly specials with food icons, indoor and outdoor dining for lunch, dinner, and cocktails in a lively atmosphere.