Cafe Cecilia

Cafe Cecilia sits on a residential stretch of Andrews Road, a short walk from Broadway Market and London Fields, in a building with none of the polish its reputation might suggest, more converted corner unit than designed dining room. Max Rocha, who came up through the River Cafe, Spring and St John, named the restaurant after his grandmother and opened it there in February 2022, since when it has become one of the more consistently praised restaurants in east London.

The kitchen serves breakfast through dinner: kippers, boiled eggs and Guinness bread in the morning, and a shortish, ingredient led menu in the evening built around whatever’s good that week. Onglet with chips and a fizzing green peppercorn sauce is the dish most often mentioned by regulars, alongside simple, well handled fish and a wine list that doesn’t try to overreach. The menu changes often enough that a second or third visit rarely repeats the first.

It topped Time Out’s list of London’s 50 best restaurants in 2023 and has stayed on it since, unusual for a place this understated in its own presentation. There’s very little sense of occasion built into the room itself; the cooking does the work, and the staff carry the atmosphere the room itself doesn’t try to manufacture.

It isn’t flawless. Reviewers, including largely positive ones, have noted burnt toast at breakfast service and unrendered fat on a pricier rib of beef, evidence that a kitchen this in demand doesn’t always land every plate at the level its best dishes suggest. Given the prices at dinner, that’s a fair thing to flag rather than nitpick, especially on the more expensive cuts where the margin for error should be smaller.

Book ahead for dinner, and treat the breakfast and lunch menus as the more relaxed, lower stakes way in if a table isn’t available for the evening, and as a genuinely good option in their own right rather than a consolation booking.