How To Choose a London Food Tour

Afternoon tea ties with seaside fish and chips or a country pub Sunday roast as one of the most quintessential British food experiences. And when it comes to afternoon tea tours, London offers a dizzying array, including ones where you can get the royal treatment (literally).

Alternatively, you can take afternoon tea on a double-decker bus, chow down on finger sandwiches on a Thames river cruise, or enjoy a West Country–style cream tea in Notting Hill. If your budget permits, the best afternoon tea experiences are sheer indulgence—think: storied department stores such as Fortnum & Mason, or classic hotels such as The Ritz. You can even dine in the Orangery at Kensington Palace.

From those filled with antiques along Portobello Road to the street style at Camden Market, London’s markets are a great way to discover the city. And the markets have plenty to offer food fans, too—options run the gamut from fresh fruit and vegetables at New Covent Garden Market to wholesale meat at historic Smithfield Market and gourmet products at foodie mecca Borough Market.

A Borough Market food tour is one of the top London culinary experiences, but London market food walks don’t stop at London Bridge. Discover African and Caribbean favorites on a Brixton Market food tour or gin and international eats on a Camden Market food safari.

Pub culture has been part of British life for centuries, and some of London’s oldest inns claim a heritage dating back to well before the Great Fire of London in 1666. From riverside lodges such as Wapping’s Prospect of Whitby to the East End’s The Ten Bells, known for its ties to Jack the Ripper, historical pubs form a chain of continuity that can stretch back through the ages.

Whether your tastes run to real ale or cutting-edge craft brews, London beer tours can expand your horizons, while small-group tours give you the chance to really dive into history, pint in hand.

When it comes to working out how to pick the best food tour—and where to focus on—many travelers make an understandable beeline for London’s sprawling East End. Brick Lane offers multicultural delights from Indian eateries to salt-beef bagels, while Old Spitalfield Market’s food offerings span the gamut from Ethiopian to Sri Lankan.

Meanwhile, Shoreditch serves up high-end cocktails and buzzing nightlife. But amid the development, plenty of pockets still offer traditional British food tastings, from fry-ups to fish and chips—and even the old-school Cockney favorite, jellied eels.

Soho—and, please note, that’s Soho, not SoHo—has been drawing fun-loving folk since the Swinging Sixties and earlier. Its grimier side has gotten a bit of a facelift in recent years, making it one of the city’s top destinations for cocktails and nightlife—including some of London’s most popular LGBTQ+ venues.

For top-rated food and drink tours, London’s West End is almost as well known as it is for theater, and small-group tours in the evening typically include a cocktail or two to wrap up the night.

While traditional British food is the polar opposite of spicy, Indian cuisine has a rich heritage in the UK. Veeraswamy, London’s oldest surviving Indian restaurant, has been serving up mulligatawny soup and more for a century now, while Gymkhana holds an impressive two Michelin stars.

The balti curry comes from Birmingham and chicken tikka masala may well have originated in Glasgow: It’s sometimes considered a contender for the UK national dish. However, back down 'sarf,' a Brick Lane food tour is as good a way as any to discover the sheer diversity of London’s Indian food scene.

Besides giving the world cheddar (and stilton), the UK has a thriving artisan cheese scene and great connections to the rest of Europe, too. From heritage stores such as Paxton & Whitfield, which has been selling cheese since the 18th century (to customers including Queen Victoria), to Neal’s Yard Dairy, which champions British and Irish cheese, London offers plenty for dairyphiles to love.

This cheese crawl that starts in Mayfair, an upscale neighborhood near Hyde Park, gives you an interactive “cheese quiz” for a cheeky way to eat your way through a few London neighborhoods such as Piccadilly Circus and Covent Garden.

There’s more to London’s sweet treat scene than those bulk-buy candy stores that litter the West End. The city offers a number of artisan chocolatiers, not to mention plenty of Insta-worthy gourmet hot chocolates.

London chocolate tours let you discover how much more there is to the city than mass-market brands such as Cadbury, from heritage luxury such as Charbonnel et Walker in Mayfair to Prestat Chocolates near St. James Park, which likely inspired Roald Dahl's classic tale Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. A guided chocolate tour gives you the best chance of finding (and feasting on) the finest chocolates in the city.

In culinary terms, London isn’t short on history. Covent Garden’s Rules Restaurant, London’s oldest, dates back to 1798; The Quality Chop House is more than 150 years old; and heritage pubs still operate all across the city.

From the coffee house that founded the world’s insurance market to pubs where Dickens drank, you can discover the city’s history with a local guide—and historical London food tours let you do all that and snack as you go. The City of London, a city within the city, is a great destination to put food into its historical context.

London is the spiritual home of gin—so much so that it’s given its name to the world’s most popular style, London dry gin. From cocktail tastings to mixology classes to drinks in a fake prison cell, some of the most unique food experiences in London are on the boozy side: the Ginstitute even lets you create your own gin.

The popular Bombay Sapphire Distillery is a bit outside of London city limits, but tours of Sipsmith Distillery let you discover craft gin well within the boundaries of the Tube map.