Hide

Ollie Dabbous does not need to raise his voice to get attention, and Hide, his Piccadilly restaurant overlooking Green Park, follows the same principle. Spread across three floors, Hide Below as a cocktail bar, Hide Ground for relaxed all day dining, and Hide Above as the serious tasting menu room, the building lets each register operate on its own terms rather than forcing one mood on every guest.

The tasting menu upstairs is where the reputation was built, earning a Michelin star within months of opening in 2018. Dishes lean on precise technique and a light touch, vegetables treated with the same care as meat or fish, and the wine list, curated with Hedonism Wines next door, is genuinely one of the most interesting in London if you have the budget to explore it.

Hide Ground offers a gentler entry point, a proper lunch or an easy dinner without committing to the full tasting format, and it is where most first time visitors are better off starting before deciding whether the upstairs experience is worth the considerably higher price. Hide Below, the basement bar, has built its own following for pre or post dinner cocktails, with a shorter menu of unusual spirits and a noticeably more relaxed pace than the dining rooms above.

The room itself, full of natural light by day and softly lit by night, avoids the stiffness that sometimes comes with Michelin starred dining. Staff are knowledgeable without being overbearing, happy to talk through a dish rather than simply announcing it.

The honest caveat is cost. The tasting menu at Hide Above runs into the hundreds of pounds with wine pairings, squarely in special occasion territory, and while the cooking is consistently accomplished, it does not always produce the sense of surprise that the most memorable Michelin meals manage. It is very good rather than thrilling on some visits, though rarely less than that.