This one is for all foodies based in the capital—you’re going to want to listen up.
If you’ve ever tried to get a table at one of London’s most talked-about restaurants only to find a weeks-long wait, Taste of London is essentially the cheat code. Running from June 17 to 21 in Regent’s Park, the festival brings together some of the city’s best restaurants under one roof, or rather one very large stretch of parkland, with over 130 dishes available across the five days.
The festival has been a London staple for over two decades.
Taste of London has been running every year since 2004, starting out at Somerset House before settling into its current home in Regent’s Park, where it transforms a section of the park into what regulars describe as a proper foodie destination. It’s been called the greatest restaurant festival in the city on Tripadvisor, and London itself was recently named the fourth best city for food in the world by Time Out, so the competition it’s drawing from is genuinely strong.
Beyond the restaurants, the festival also includes live cooking demonstrations, entertainment, bars, and a market with around 160 artisan producers selling products you’d struggle to find anywhere else. It’s the kind of event where you can spend several hours moving between stalls, picking up things you’ve never tried, and discovering restaurants you’ll be booking for months afterwards.
The Taste Exclusives are the dishes worth planning your visit around.
Alongside the regular restaurant menus, 26 dishes have been created specifically for the festival and won’t be available anywhere else. These Taste Exclusives are one-off creations made for the event, and they tend to be the most interesting things on offer because restaurants use them to experiment with combinations they wouldn’t necessarily put on a permanent menu. They cost a little more than the standard dishes, but they’re genuinely unique to this festival.
This year’s highlights include an ancho chilli-glazed braised wagyu taco with tahoon mayonnaise and crispy shallots from Sexy Fish, ume miso cod kushiyaki from Los Mochis, and XL lamb chops with aromatic spice mix and peanut sauce from Roti King. Other exclusives include bulgogi beef from Oka Restaurant, a Singapore lobster laksa from Singapulah, masala crab moons from Pahli Hill Bandra Bhai, and a wagyu beef crispy pastry from DakaDaka. The full list of all 26 exclusive dishes is at the end of this article.
There are eight sessions across the five days to choose from.
The festival opens on the evening of June 17 with a dedicated opening night party from 5:30pm. From Thursday through Saturday there are daytime sessions running from 12pm to 4pm and evening sessions from 5:30pm to 9:30pm. The final session on Sunday June 21 runs from 12pm to 5pm, making it a slightly shorter finish to the weekend. Evening sessions tend to have a livelier atmosphere while daytime sessions are generally a bit more relaxed and easier to move around in.
Choosing which session to attend often comes down to what you want from the experience. If you’re going primarily for the food and want to cover as many stalls as possible without feeling rushed, a daytime session gives you more breathing room. If the entertainment and overall atmosphere matter as much as the dishes, an evening session is the better fit.
Tickets are on the pricier side, so it’s worth going in with a plan.
General entry costs £24 and doesn’t include any food or drink, so everything you eat and drink on the day is on top of that. Individual dishes range from around £6 to £10, with the Taste Exclusive dishes sitting slightly higher at around £12 to £14 each. If you’re planning to try four or five dishes and have a couple of drinks, budgeting around £60 to £80 per person is realistic, and more if you lean toward the exclusives or the bars.
Tasting tickets start from £39 and include entry plus two signature dishes, which takes some of the edge off the cost if you’re going mainly for the food. VIP packages are also available and cover fast-track entry, access to a private lounge and bar, a glass of champagne, a snack, and the chance to try the Taste Exclusive dishes as part of the package. For more information and to book tickets, visit london.tastefestivals.com.
Reviews are genuinely mixed, so knowing what to expect matters.
The festival has passionate fans and equally passionate critics, and both camps make reasonable points. On the positive side, regulars describe it as the best food festival in London, praising the atmosphere, the variety, and the chance to discover restaurants and independent producers they’d never have found otherwise. Several reviewers mention leaving with a new food obsession or a product from a small producer that became a permanent fixture in their kitchen.
On the other side, the cost is a recurring complaint. Some visitors feel that paying entry and then spending £8 to £12 per small plate adds up faster than expected, and a few reviewers have noted that portion sizes don’t always feel proportionate to the price. The quality is also described as uneven across stalls, with some offering genuinely exciting food and others feeling less special. Going in with a shortlist of dishes you specifically want to try, rather than wandering and deciding on the spot, tends to make for a more satisfying and better-value day.
The independent market is worth as much of your time as the restaurants.
With 160 artisan producers at the market, there’s a strong case for spending at least as much time browsing the stalls as eating at the restaurant stands. These are small independent businesses selling products that don’t have mainstream retail distribution, which means the market is genuinely one of the better opportunities in London to find unusual condiments, specialist ingredients, small-batch drinks, and food products that you simply can’t pick up in a supermarket. It’s the part of the festival that tends to produce the most unexpected discoveries.
Experienced visitors often recommend doing a lap of the market early in the session before committing to buying anything, since getting a sense of everything on offer first makes it easier to go back to the stalls that genuinely caught your eye rather than spending your budget on the first interesting thing you see. Plenty of producers offer tastings, so it’s also one of the less expensive parts of the day.
Here’s the full list of 2026 Taste Exclusives.
Baharat chicken from Aram By Imad, kabuli pilau from Afghan Caravan, crayfish and prawn roll from Rondo, ume miso cod kushiyaki from Los Mochis, wagyu no sumiyaki from Roka, sirloin steak with chips and peppercorn sauce from Steak and Company, NY striploin from Oblix, XL lamb chops from Roti King, serranito pintxo with ibérico ham from Prince Arthur Belgravia, and polpette alla ‘nduja from Harry’s Dolce Vita.
Also on the list: parmigiana bombs from Big Mama Group, homebaked lamb shoulder pita pocket from Gallio, ancho chilli wagyu taco from Sexy Fish, TakoTori feast from Taro Japanese Restaurants, Orion black cod from Orion by Alex Webb, bulgogi beef from Oka Restaurant, Mama’s summer special from Mama Li, spiedino di bombetta from Eataly, jaeyuk yori from YORI, premium dim sum platter from Dim Sum by Chai Wu, slow cooked short ribs from Chai Wu, Singapore lobster laksa from Singapulah, beef fillet with dressed crab and sourdough crostini from Rottura, masala crab moons from Pahli Hill Bandra Bhai, inferno schnitzel from Schnitzel Heaven, and chebureki wagyu beef crispy pastry from DakaDaka.
