The Edgware Road is Lebanese London and it is well covered. Syrian London is somewhere else entirely: two miles of the Uxbridge Road between Shepherd's Bush and West Ealing, where the restaurants, the grocers and the bakeries are Damascene and Aleppan rather than Beiruti. The two kitchens share an alphabet of dishes and disagree about almost all of them, and this page is about the difference.
For the Lebanese half, our guide to Middle Eastern food on the Edgware Road already has the street, how to order a mezze, the shisha rules and which restaurants serve alcohol. What follows adds the Syrian half, the price arithmetic for two people, and the small number of things you should order in one kitchen rather than the other.
Telling the two kitchens apart
- Lebanese signatures
- Tabbouleh that is mostly parsley, fattoush with fried bread, raw kibbeh, garlic sauce with the chicken, arak with the meal
- Syrian signatures
- Pomegranate molasses in almost everything, Aleppo pepper, cherry kebab, muhammara, stuffed vegetables, fatteh for breakfast
- Where the Lebanese food is
- Edgware Road, Marylebone, Kensington, the King's Road, and a chain with branches across the centre
- Where the Syrian food is
- Uxbridge Road in Shepherd's Bush, The Broadway in West Ealing, and one kitchen in Soho
- What a mezze meal costs
- Our estimate, September 2026: £18 to £28 a head at a neighbourhood restaurant, £35 to £55 a head in Mayfair or Knightsbridge, £8 to £12 for a wrap from a counter
- Alcohol
- Many Syrian restaurants serve none at all. Some Lebanese ones do not either. Ask before you book if it matters
The Syrian stretch of the Uxbridge Road
If you want Syrian food in London, this is where to go, and the two businesses to know share a corridor of road between Shepherd's Bush Market and Ealing Broadway. Both have branches at each end of it, which tells you something about where the community lives.
Abu Zaad, 29 Uxbridge Road, W12. A large, plain, family restaurant, unlicensed, open all day, and the closest thing London has to an ordinary Damascus eating house. Food hygiene rating 4, last inspected 4 March 2026. Its second site, at 20-22 The Broadway in West Ealing, holds rating 5, inspected 11 August 2025.
Damas Gate, 81-85 Uxbridge Road, W12. Not a restaurant but a Syrian grocer the size of a small supermarket, with a bread counter, a sweet counter, a butcher and aisles of things you will not find in a British shop: dried mulberries, three grades of bulgur, pomegranate molasses by the litre, Aleppo pepper in half-kilo bags. Rating 5, last inspected 27 May 2025. Its West Ealing sibling, Damas-Gate Food Centre at 7 The Broadway, holds rating 5, inspected 3 March 2025.
In the centre, Imad's Syrian Kitchen occupies a unit on the upper level of Kingly Court, off Carnaby Street in Soho: rating 5, last inspected 25 June 2024. It is a small, modern room doing a refined version of home cooking, and it is the only central Syrian restaurant we could verify. Expect to pay considerably more there than on the Uxbridge Road for the same dishes.
Go to the grocer even if you are not cooking. A Syrian grocer's bread counter sells flatbread within an hour of the oven, and the sweet counter sells baklava, halawet el jibn and barazek by weight for a fraction of a restaurant's price. Two hundred grams of pastries and a bag of bread is a better souvenir than anything on Oxford Street, and it costs a few pounds. Our guide to cheap eating in London has more in the same spirit.
Photo: © Vyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
The dishes that are genuinely different
Order the same-named dish in a Beirut kitchen and a Damascus one and you get two different plates. These are the five where the gap is widest.
| Dish | The Lebanese version | The Syrian version |
|---|---|---|
| Tabbouleh | Overwhelmingly flat-leaf parsley, with a scattering of fine bulgur, lemon and oil. Green | More bulgur, less parsley, sometimes tomato-heavy. Closer to a grain salad |
| Kibbeh | Often served raw, as kibbeh nayyeh: minced lamb pounded with bulgur, eaten with oil and mint | Usually the fried torpedo, and Aleppo has dozens of regional shapes, including a baked tray version |
| Kebab | Grilled over charcoal, served with garlic sauce and pickles | Kebab karaz: lamb meatballs stewed in a sour cherry sauce, an Aleppo dish with no Lebanese equivalent |
| Red pepper dip | Rarely on the menu | Muhammara: roasted red pepper, walnut, breadcrumb and pomegranate molasses. Nutty, sour, slightly hot |
| Breakfast | Manakish, the flatbread with thyme or cheese, and labneh | Fatteh: warm chickpeas and yoghurt over torn bread with pine nuts and butter. Also ful medames |
Two other markers are worth knowing. Pomegranate molasses is the Syrian kitchen's constant, and it is what makes a Syrian salad taste sour and slightly sweet where a Lebanese one tastes of lemon. And Aleppo pepper, coarse, dark red and mild, is a Syrian spice used in quantity; it is the warmth rather than the heat in a Syrian dish.
Lebanese London beyond the Edgware Road
The Edgware Road is the obvious concentration, but Lebanese food in London is now spread widely enough that you can eat it well in most of the centre. These are the addresses we checked and are willing to name, with their hygiene ratings and inspection dates.
- Marylebone: Fairuz Restaurant, 3 Blandford Street, W1U. Rating 3, inspected 16 January 2025. A long-established sit-down restaurant a street back from Marylebone High Street.
- Kensington and Chelsea: Maroush Bakehouse, 131-135 Earl's Court Road, SW5, rating 5, inspected 28 April 2026; Maroush II, 38-40 Beauchamp Place, SW3, rating 4, inspected 18 September 2025; Ranoush Juice, 86 Kensington High Street, W8, rating 5, inspected 5 September 2024, and 338 King's Road, SW3, rating 5, inspected 28 August 2026; Baba Ghanouj, 105 Gloucester Road, SW7, rating 5, inspected 13 March 2025, which is five minutes from the Kensington museums.
- The West End: Beirut Garden, 218-220 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2H, rating 5, inspected 21 July 2026.
- The City and Clerkenwell: Beirut Grill, 21 Leather Lane, EC1N, rating 5, inspected 5 March 2025, on the lunchtime market street covered in our page on Leather Lane.
- Kilburn and north-west London: Karaz Beirut, 2-4 Willesden Lane, NW6, rating 5, inspected 6 May 2025; Al-Saha, 201 Kilburn High Road, NW6, rating 5, inspected 20 October 2025. Our guide to Kilburn and Queen's Park covers the area.
- Bankside: Arabica, with a stall in Borough Market, rating 5, inspected 17 September 2025, and a restaurant at 3 Rochester Walk, SE1, rating 5, inspected 21 May 2025. See eating near London Bridge.
- Across the centre: Comptoir Libanais, a Lebanese chain whose London branches we checked at Exhibition Road, Wigmore Street, Gloucester Road, Duke of York Square, Ealing, Broadgate, the Royal Festival Hall, London Bridge station and Westfield. Every London branch held rating 5.
One note on the Edgware Road itself: the branch of Maroush trading as Maroush Express at 56-58 Edgware Road holds rating 3, inspected 25 February 2026, while the group's other London sites we checked hold 4 and 5. Ratings attach to addresses, not to brands, which is worth remembering on a street where one family's name is over several doors.
What a mezze meal actually costs for two
The honest answer is that it depends entirely on whether you are sitting down, and we are giving bands rather than prices because we read no menu for this page.
The counter option, roughly £16 to £24 for two. A shawarma wrap each, a portion of chips with garlic sauce, and a fresh juice. This is what the Edgware Road juice bars and the Uxbridge Road counters are for, and it is a complete meal.
The neighbourhood sit-down, roughly £36 to £56 for two. Four or five cold mezze, one hot mezze, one mixed grill to share, bread, and tea. Our estimate for September 2026 is £18 to £28 a head at a family restaurant in Shepherd's Bush, West Ealing, Kilburn or the northern end of the Edgware Road.
The Mayfair and Knightsbridge version, £70 to £110 for two. The same dishes, better rooms, waiter service, a wine list and a service charge. Our estimate is £35 to £55 a head. Whether that is worth it is a matter of what you want from the evening; the cooking is not usually better.
The bread and salad that arrive unasked are usually free, but check. In most Lebanese and Syrian restaurants, hot flatbread, olives, pickles and a raw vegetable plate come to the table as a matter of course and are included. In a few they appear on the bill as a cover charge. It is written on the menu if it applies. Our guide to tipping in London covers service charges.
Drinking, and Ramadan
Many Syrian restaurants in London serve no alcohol at all, and several Lebanese ones do not either. This is not a rule you can read off the shopfront: some unlicensed places will let you bring your own and some will not have it on the premises. Telephone and ask, which takes less time than walking there.
Where there is a list, arak is the drink to try with mezze: aniseed spirit, poured over ice with water so that it turns cloudy, and strong. Fresh juices are taken seriously in both cuisines, particularly pomegranate and mango, and mint lemonade is the thing to order in summer. Coffee comes at the end, very small, very strong and often with cardamom; ask for it wasat if you want it medium-sweet rather than sugared to the top.
During Ramadan the pattern changes everywhere: kitchens are quiet during the day and extremely busy after sunset, and some open only in the evening. Our guide to halal food in London explains the etiquette and what changes, and almost everything named on this page is halal.
Frequently asked questions
Where can I eat Syrian food in London?
Mainly along the Uxbridge Road between Shepherd's Bush and West Ealing: Abu Zaad at 29 Uxbridge Road W12 and at 20-22 The Broadway W13, and the Syrian grocers Damas Gate at 81-85 Uxbridge Road and in West Ealing. In the centre, Imad's Syrian Kitchen in Kingly Court, Soho, is the only Syrian restaurant we could verify.
What is the difference between Lebanese and Syrian food?
They share most dish names and treat them differently. Lebanese cooking leans on lemon, parsley and garlic and includes raw kibbeh; Syrian cooking leans on pomegranate molasses and Aleppo pepper and has dishes the Lebanese repertoire lacks altogether, notably kebab karaz, lamb meatballs in sour cherry sauce, and muhammara, the walnut and red pepper dip.
How much does a Lebanese meal cost in London?
Our estimate for September 2026: £8 to £12 for a shawarma wrap from a counter, £18 to £28 a head for a full mezze and grill at a family restaurant, and £35 to £55 a head at a smart central one. The bread, olives and raw vegetable plate are usually included, but check the menu for a cover charge.
Do Lebanese and Syrian restaurants in London serve alcohol?
Many do not, particularly the Syrian ones. Some unlicensed restaurants will let you bring your own bottle and some keep no alcohol on the premises at all. It is not something you can tell from outside, so ring and ask if it matters to your evening.
What should I buy in a Syrian grocer in London?
Flatbread from the counter while it is still warm, pastries by weight from the sweet counter, pomegranate molasses, Aleppo pepper and fine bulgur. Damas Gate on the Uxbridge Road and its West Ealing branch both held a hygiene rating of 5 when we checked in September 2026.
Sources
- Food Standards Agency - Food hygiene ratings for Abu Zaad, 29 Uxbridge Road W12 8LH and 20-22 The Broadway W13 0SU; Damas Gate, 81-85 Uxbridge Road W12 8NR; Damas-Gate Food Centre, 7 The Broadway W13 9DA; Imad's Syrian Kitchen, Kingly Court W1B 5PW; Fairuz Restaurant, 3 Blandford Street W1U 3DA; Maroush Bakehouse, 131-135 Earl's Court Road SW5 9RH; Maroush II, 38-40 Beauchamp Place SW3 1NU; Maroush Express, 56-58 Edgware Road W2 2EH; Ranoush Juice, 86 Kensington High Street W8 4SG and 338 King's Road SW3 5UR; Baba Ghanouj, 105 Gloucester Road SW7 4SS; Beirut Garden, 218-220 Shaftesbury Avenue WC2H 8EB; Beirut Grill, 21 Leather Lane EC1N 7TE; Karaz Beirut, 2-4 Willesden Lane NW6 7SR; Al-Saha, 201 Kilburn High Road NW6 7HY; Arabica, Borough Market and 3 Rochester Walk SE1 9AF; and the London branches of Comptoir Libanais (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme explained (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Tips, gratuities and service charges at work (checked September 2026)