The oldest restaurant in this part of London is a family cafe on Bethnal Green Road that opened in 1900 and still has the same surname over the door. Work outwards from that, and from three streets around Arnold Circus, and you will eat better in Shoreditch than anyone queueing on Shoreditch High Street.
The area has a reputation for churn that it has earned. Rents rose, a wave of openings followed, and a fair number of them lasted eighteen months. But a second Shoreditch runs underneath it: cafes, delis, pubs and dining rooms that have been in the same buildings for between twenty and a hundred and twenty years, mostly north and east of the bars rather than in the middle of them.
Our Shoreditch area guide covers the street art, the markets and the nightlife. This page is the food, and it is deliberately narrow: everything here is north or east of Commercial Street. What lies south and west of that line belongs to our page on eating near Liverpool Street, and the curry houses have their own page.
Where the survivors are
- Bethnal Green Road
- A listed family cafe from 1900; the cheapest cooked breakfast in E2
- Calvert Avenue and Arnold Circus
- A bakery and shop from 2002, and its cafe next door
- Columbia Road
- A pub and a pizzeria. Impossible on a Sunday before 15:00
- Cheshire Street
- One free house, quiet, with a history it does not advertise
- Redchurch Street
- The expensive strip; a coffee roaster and a pub that both held on
- Top of Brick Lane
- One 24-hour bagel bakery worth the queue, and one next door we do not name
Bethnal Green Road, and a room that has not changed since 1946
At 332 Bethnal Green Road, about twelve minutes' walk east of Shoreditch High Street station, there is a small cafe with a marmite-yellow Vitrolite front and a marquetry-panelled interior fitted in 1946. The business opened in 1900 and has been run by the same Italian family since. The interior is protected, which is why it still looks the way it does, and the food is a cooked breakfast, a plate of pasta, a bacon sandwich, a mug of tea. It holds five stars from an inspection in October 2025.
You will queue at the weekend. Go on a weekday at 09:30 and you will walk in. It seats very few people, everyone shares tables, and the whole thing costs a fraction of what brunch costs three streets west. Our guide to the full English breakfast explains what arrives and in what order.
This is the cheapest genuinely interesting meal in the area, and it is cash-friendly and fast. A cooked breakfast here sits in our £8 to £12 band for September 2026, against £16 to £22 for brunch on Redchurch Street. The difference buys you a listed interior and a family who have been doing this for four generations.
Arnold Circus and Calvert Avenue
Arnold Circus is a raised circular garden with a bandstand, at the centre of the Boundary Estate, which was built in the 1890s as one of the first council housing schemes in the world. The streets radiating from it are quiet in a way nothing else here is.
On Calvert Avenue, running east from Shoreditch High Street to the Circus, there is a bakery and provisions shop at 15 and its cafe next door at 17, both open since 2002, rated five in June 2025 and three in October 2026. The shop sells bread, cheese, preserves and vegetables; the cafe does eggs, toast and coffee at small tables. One caution: a third business on the same short street holds a rating of 2, so read the sticker in the window rather than assuming the street is uniform.
Columbia Road, which is two different streets
On Sunday morning, Columbia Road is a flower market and cannot be walked along, let alone eaten in, before about 15:00. On the other six days it is a narrow Victorian street with a handful of small shops and some of the best eating in E2. Our guide to the flower market covers the Sunday version.
Along the street there is a pub at 80, rated five in March 2026, and a pizzeria at 93, five in May 2026.
Two places on this street hold a rating of 2. As elsewhere on this site, we do not name a business the regulator rates below 3, and on a street this short that is worth saying out loud.
Cheshire Street, and the quietest good pub in E2
Cheshire Street runs east off Brick Lane above the railway bridge. At number 73 there is a free house, rated five in February 2025, which was owned in the 1960s by the Kray twins and has said very little about it ever since. It now sells a long list of beers, has a small back room and a garden, and is the pub to go to when Shoreditch High Street is unbearable. Food is limited and a separate kitchen operates from the same address, rated four in March 2026.
The rest of the street is vintage clothing, a mini-market and a coffee counter. It is the calmest way to walk from Brick Lane towards Bethnal Green Road, and the direction most visitors never take. Our page on historic pubs in London covers the ones with older interiors.
Redchurch Street: the expensive strip, and what held
Redchurch Street is the most changed street in the area. Ten years of openings have left a run of design shops, hotel bars and restaurants, and the turnover has been high. Two things on it have lasted.
- A New Zealand coffee roaster at 58, which opened here in the early 2010s and roasts on site. Five stars, March 2026. The coffee in London page has the rest of the roasteries.
- The pub on the corner, five stars in February 2026, which predates all of it and has a decent kitchen upstairs.
There is also a fish and chip shop at 117, rated four in March 2026, which is a more useful thing to know at 22:00 than any of the above. For the walls that brought most people to this street in the first place, see our page on street art tours in Shoreditch.
The bagel bakeries at the top of Brick Lane
Two bagel bakeries stand within a few doors of each other at the northern end of Brick Lane, and they are the most photographed food in East London. They are not equivalent. The one at 159 is open around the clock and holds a hygiene rating of 4 from an inspection in October 2025: salt beef with mustard and pickle, or smoked salmon and cream cheese, handed over in a paper bag in about forty seconds, for less than a supermarket sandwich.
Its neighbour, the older of the two and the one with the yellow front, was rated 2 at its most recent inspection in April 2026. We do not name a business the regulator rates below 3, whatever its history and however many lists it appears on. Go to the one at 159.
Our page on salt beef, bagels and Jewish London explains the history of the trade here and where else in the city it survives, and the Brick Lane and curry page takes the southern half of the same street.
The pie and mash shop on Hoxton Street has left the food register. It is still named in guidebooks and in a good many online lists of surviving eel and pie houses. A business that no longer appears on the Food Standards Agency register has almost certainly stopped trading, so do not plan a walk around it. There is a working street market on Hoxton Street, run by Hackney Council, and a fish bar at 198 rated five in July 2026.
Eating around a night out
The bar streets are Shoreditch High Street, Curtain Road, Rivington Street and Old Street, and the sensible order is food first, drinks after, because almost nothing on those streets is set up to feed you properly after 21:00 on a Friday. Two long-standing exceptions on Rivington Street are a chop-house at 32, rated five in January 2026, and a cocktail bar at 65 that opened in 2009 and holds five stars from February 2025. Our cocktail bars page covers the drinking side.
Further east, a restaurant in a former factory off Wadeson Street has been serving since 2004 and is rated five stars in February 2026. It is a fifteen-minute walk from the bars and considerably calmer. For the streets that are still cooking after midnight, see late-night food in London, and if you are staying nearby, our page on staying in Shoreditch and the east is honest about the noise.
What you will pay, by street
| Where | From Shoreditch High Street station | Typical main or plate | Booking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bethnal Green Road cafe | 12 minutes east | £8–£12 | No, and it queues at weekends |
| Bagel bakery, top of Brick Lane | 10 minutes north-east | £4–£8 | No, open 24 hours |
| Calvert Avenue shop and cafe | 5 minutes north-east | £9–£15 | No |
| Columbia Road pub and pizzeria | 12 minutes north-east | £13–£20 | Sensible at weekends |
| Redchurch Street | 4 minutes east | £18–£28 | Yes in the evening |
These are our own bands for September 2026 rather than quotations from menus, and we do not link to any restaurant, pub or cafe website: several domains that look like an East London restaurant's own site now belong to somebody else. For the cheapest options across the city, see cheap eats in London. One more cross-reference worth making: the Thai restaurant on Shoreditch High Street that opened in 2014 is covered on our Thai food page, and the long run of Vietnamese cafes on Kingsland Road has its own page under Vietnamese food on Kingsland Road.
Frequently asked questions
What is the oldest restaurant in Shoreditch?
The family cafe at 332 Bethnal Green Road, which opened in 1900 and has been run by the same family since. Its 1946 interior of marquetry panelling and Vitrolite is protected, and it holds five stars from an inspection in October 2025. It is a cafe rather than a restaurant, and that is part of the point.
Which bagel shop on Brick Lane should I go to?
The one at 159, which is open 24 hours and was rated 4 by inspectors in October 2025. Its older neighbour was rated 2 at its most recent inspection in April 2026, and we do not recommend a business the regulator rates below 3. Order salt beef with mustard and pickle, or smoked salmon with cream cheese.
Is Shoreditch expensive to eat in?
It has both extremes within ten minutes' walk. Redchurch Street and the hotel restaurants sit at £18 to £28 for a main course on our September 2026 estimate, while a bagel is under £8 and a cooked breakfast on Bethnal Green Road under £12. The cheap end is generally further east.
Where can you eat in Shoreditch on a Sunday?
Columbia Road is a flower market until about 15:00 and its restaurants are besieged until then, so either arrive before 10:00 for coffee and a pastry or come back mid-afternoon. The pubs on Columbia Road and Cheshire Street serve all day, and the bagel bakery at the top of Brick Lane never closes.
Do I need to book in Shoreditch?
For the restaurants on Redchurch Street, yes, especially Thursday to Saturday. The cafes, the bagel bakery, the fish and chip shop and the pubs are all walk-in. Thursday to Saturday evenings are the hardest, because the bar crowd arrives at the same time as the dinner crowd.
Sources
- Food Standards Agency - Food hygiene ratings search (checked September 2026; used to confirm that each business referred to here is registered at the address given and to exclude those rated below 3) (checked November 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (checked September 2026)
- Hackney Council - Markets and street trading, including Hoxton Street Market (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - Food allergy and intolerance advice for consumers (checked September 2026)