Eden Grove - Islington - Studio Apartment

It’s easy to understand why Farang is so popular; it’s an immensely likeable restaurant serving generous and heartwarming recipes from all regions of Thailand – and even with overly eager ordering, you finish up with a bill that isn’t too overwhelming. Each dish, be it the salted turmeric prawns or the whole sea bass with raspberry nahm jim, showcases the hallmarks of Thai cuisine: freshness, vibrancy and a lovely balance of the sweet and the sour. The ‘Feasting’ menus are great for groups, and you’ll find it hard to resist buying some of their homemade produce on the way out too.

There's something so appealing about the simplicity of a restaurant like Primeur. A proper neighbourhood operation, it comes with stripped-back décor, a handwritten blackboard menu and a relaxed, bustling atmosphere. Diners can sit around large communal tables or up at the counters around the edges of the room. The cooking, for its part, avoids overcomplication and puts the ingredients first, as evidenced by grilled pork chop with roquefort butter. Ensure you save room for dessert, too, especially if the textbook custard tart is on the menu.

The brainchild of wine importers and a charcutier, Cadet is a compact bar and shop selling, unsurprisingly, wine and charcuterie. During the week, you can just enjoy some simple bar snacks alongside the wonderful selection of largely French wines. Yet from Thursday to Sunday, a blackboard appears, listing a treasure trove of well-priced and generously flavoured dishes. Expect the likes of pâté en croûte, excellently seasoned rillettes and slip sole with Café de Paris butter. The chatty team will help guide you through the array of enticing wines.

There’s so much going for this former pub which has been transformed into a wine bar and restaurant with a young, on-trend vibe. The place is packed with East London’s coolest diners, many of them at shared tables and all delighting in a concise menu based around high-quality, seasonal British produce. The treacle tart makes for a wonderful end to the meal – and if your sweet tooth is still not satisfied, the same people run The Dreamery ice cream shop across the road. The eclectic wine list specialises in natural options, which the affable and knowledgeable team will happily guide you through

Go for the house martini as you enjoy an array of snacks like crispy buttermilk chicken and crab dumpling that precede the start of The Clove Club's multi-course set menu. The roll-call of prime British ingredients includes Orkney scallops, Wiltshire trout, Torbay prawns, Herdwick lamb and Middle White pork – all starring in seasonally pertinent dishes where their natural flavours are allowed to shine through. The historic surroundings of Shoreditch Town Hall provide the perfect backdrop, with the open-plan kitchen adding a little more theatre to proceedings.

There’s something about Luca that makes it feel like a proper grown-up restaurant, largely because the relaxed clientele just know they’re going to be well looked after. What brings them all here is the expertly rendered Italian food, which is satisfyingly robust yet effortlessly easy to eat. The pasta course will certainly be a highlight – whether that’s cappelletti of salt-baked potato or tortelli of pumpkin with ricotta – but the other dishes, featuring such quality ingredients as Orkney scallops or Hereford beef, won’t ever disappoint. For great value, choose the Express Lunch menu served

There’s no paper menu handed out at this cosy little spot tucked away in a parade of shops off Dalston High Road; just trust the chefs in the open kitchen who’ll produce an intriguing, enjoyable and fairly priced set dinner that’ll leave you feeling sated and contented. The chefs know their butchery and make good use of techniques like pickling and fermenting. Aged Cornish mackerel could be followed by almond anolini; lamb can feature firstly as a broth and then as three different cuts. Consider going for the pairing of natural wines.