There is nothing to eat on the Mall. The nearest food to the palace gates is about five minutes away on Buckingham Gate, the cheapest proper lunch is a street market twelve minutes east, and the best-value sit-down meal is at the far end of the Mall in a church crypt at the far end of it.
Buckingham Palace sits in the middle of a large piece of royal London that was never built for shops. Green Park, St James's Park and the Mall take up most of the ground between the palace and Piccadilly, and the streets that do have buildings on them are ministries, clubs and embassies. So visitors come out after the Changing of the Guard or after touring the State Rooms, look around, and find a single ice cream van.
The fix is to decide which way you are walking before you are hungry. Three directions work, and they cost very different amounts.
Eating near Buckingham Palace at a glance
- Closest real food to the gates
- Buckingham Gate and Palace Street, about 5 minutes on foot
- Cheapest sit-down or takeaway lunch
- Strutton Ground market stalls, Monday to Friday, roughly £7–£10
- Best value with a table and a roof
- The cafe under St Martin-in-the-Fields, about 15–20 minutes east along the Mall
- Most expensive direction
- North into St James's Street and Jermyn Street
- Worst 40 minutes of the day
- 11:20 to 12:00 on a guard-change day, when several thousand people leave at once
Why the ground around the palace is empty
Walk out of the palace forecourt and the parkland begins immediately. The Mall runs for about a kilometre between two rows of plane trees with no buildings on either side; St James's Park and Green Park are managed by a charity that licenses a small number of kiosks and one lakeside cafe, and that is all the catering there is for a very large number of visitors.
Constitution Hill, on the north-west side, has nothing at all. Buckingham Palace Road, along the garden wall towards Victoria, is a long brick blank for several hundred metres. In practice this means the first food you see will be a van, and vans near a royal palace charge what vans near a royal palace charge.
The guard change empties onto three streets at the same moment. The ceremony normally starts at 11:00 and runs for about 45 minutes, and everyone leaves together. If you want a table rather than a queue, either eat at 10:30 before it starts or accept a 20-minute wait at around 12:15. The Household Division publishes the calendar of days, which changes with the weather and with state events.
Photo: CVB · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
Five minutes west: Buckingham Gate and Palace Street
The nearest ordinary shops and restaurants are on Buckingham Gate and the short streets off it, behind the King's Gallery. This is office and hotel London: a few sandwich shops and coffee chains, a couple of pub dining rooms, and some small independent restaurants that have been feeding civil servants for years rather than tourists for a season.
Bon Gusto at 75–76 Buckingham Gate is the obvious sit-down option, an Italian dining room of the unfashionable kind where pasta and pizza land somewhere around £14–£18 and nobody hurries you. It is not the only choice on the street, and it fills at 12:30 with people who work nearby, so either arrive early or expect to wait.
Palace Street, one block further west, has a run of cafes and takeaway counters aimed at the same lunch trade. Prices here are normal central-London prices rather than attraction prices: roughly £6–£9 for a filled sandwich or a hot box, which is a different world from the vans on the Mall.
Twelve minutes east: Strutton Ground, where Westminster actually eats
Strutton Ground is a short pedestrian street off Victoria Street, near St James's Park station, and it is the best-value food anywhere within a mile of the palace. Westminster City Council runs it as a licensed street market, open Monday to Friday from 08:00 to 18:00, with international hot food stalls and coffee alongside clothing and book pitches.
Expect Mexican, West African, Middle Eastern and South Asian counters, a rotisserie or two, and a queue of civil servants between 13:00 and 14:00. Most plates are £7–£10. Go before noon or after 14:00 and you will walk straight up.
The catch is the weekend: this is a weekday market serving offices, so on Saturday and Sunday the street is quiet and you will be back to cafes and pubs. Our round-up of where to eat cheaply across London covers the weekend equivalents.
A weekday lunch here costs about a quarter of what the Mall charges. Two adults and two children can eat properly at Strutton Ground for roughly £30, carry it two minutes to the green outside Westminster Abbey or into St James's Park, and spend the saving on something else.
Fifteen to twenty minutes east: the Mall to Trafalgar Square
The walk from the Victoria Memorial down the Mall, through Admiralty Arch and into Trafalgar Square takes most people 15 to 20 minutes and is one of the better walks in London. At the end of it, in the vaulted brick undercroft of St Martin-in-the-Fields, is a self-service cafe with long tables, hot dishes, soups and cakes. Main courses sit around £12–£16, there is no service charge on a self-service counter, and profits go to the church's charitable work.
Two warnings. First, the opening hours change from week to week, and the cafe closes entirely for private events on some weekdays and Saturdays — the church publishes the coming fortnight on its website, and it is worth a 30-second check before you commit to the walk. Second, it is genuinely busy between 12:30 and 14:00 because it is also the lunch room for half of Whitehall.
If it is shut, you are standing beside the National Gallery, which has its own cafes, and a few minutes from the bottom of Covent Garden, where the same lesson about walking two streets applies.
North into St James's: what the price jump buys
Cross Green Park or walk up Queen's Walk and you are in St James's, which is the most expensive eating within walking distance of the palace and makes no secret of it. St James's Street has restaurant dining rooms where a main course is £24–£34; Jermyn Street has long-established shops and a handful of restaurants at similar money.
St James's Street and Jermyn Street hold a row of this kind of restaurant, mostly Italian or classic British, formal enough to want a booking at lunchtime, with mains in the high twenties. Look for a set lunch: where one is offered it usually brings the bill down by about a third, and it is the sensible way to try this part of town without committing to an evening bill.
At the top of the street, Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly has several places to eat inside the shop, from a counter to a full dining room, and is where a great many people end up having afternoon tea without having planned to. Budget accordingly.
South-west into Belgravia: Elizabeth Street and Eccleston Street
Belgravia is about 15 to 20 minutes from the palace gates and is a quieter, prettier alternative to St James's at broadly the same prices. Elizabeth Street is a single row of food shops, a bakery, a butcher and a few restaurants; Eccleston Street, parallel to it, has Olivo, a Sardinian restaurant of long standing, where pasta and fish sit around £18–£26.
The Thomas Cubitt on Elizabeth Street is the area's best-known pub dining room, with a pub downstairs and a more formal room above; expect £20–£28 for a main in either. None of this is cheap, but it is a short walk from Victoria and much calmer than the streets around the station.
Pubs within ten minutes of the forecourt
Three old pubs sit close enough to the palace to be a plan rather than a detour. The Buckingham Arms on Petty France is a Victorian corner pub that has appeared in beer guides for decades. The Two Chairmen on Dartmouth Street is smaller and older-feeling, tucked behind Queen Anne's Gate. The Feathers on Broadway is the one most likely to have a table at 13:00 because it is the largest of the three.
Pub food here means a burger, a pie or a roast at roughly £15–£19, and a pint at central-London prices. Where the building matters more than the menu, we have set out the protected Victorian and Georgian interiors in a separate piece on the city's oldest pubs.
What each direction costs
| Direction | Walk from the gates | What you find | Typical main course |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buckingham Gate and Palace Street | 5 minutes | Sandwich shops, coffee, a few Italian and pub dining rooms | £7–£18 |
| St James's Park kiosks and lakeside cafe | 5–12 minutes | Coffee, cake, a small hot menu, a view of the pelicans | £10–£20 |
| Strutton Ground market (weekdays) | 12 minutes | Street food stalls, takeaway only | £7–£10 |
| Trafalgar Square and the crypt cafe | 15–20 minutes | Self-service hot food, museum cafes | £12–£16 |
| Victoria and Pimlico | 10–15 minutes | Fish and chips, a weekday market, small restaurants | £10–£22 |
| Belgravia | 15–20 minutes | Food shops, a bakery, restaurant dining rooms | £18–£28 |
| St James's Street and Jermyn Street | 8–15 minutes | Formal restaurants, hotel dining, department store cafes | £24–£34 |
Treat these as September 2026 estimates for one adult main course rather than quoted menu prices. Check the current one before you sit down, and read our note on how service charges work in Britain so the final bill is not a surprise.
The Victoria question
Victoria station is about ten minutes from the palace down Buckingham Palace Road and is where most visitors end up by default, because it is where their train or coach is. It is also, for its size, a poor place to eat: the concourse is the usual national chains and the good food is in the side streets south and west of it. We have set out those streets, with names and prices, in our guide to eating around Victoria station, and our page on Pimlico and Victoria sets out what else that district holds.
One more option that suits a quiet hour: Westminster Cathedral, eight minutes from the palace, has a cafe in its undercroft that very few visitors find.
Every food business in England has a hygiene rating you can look up in ten seconds. The Food Standards Agency publishes the inspection result and the date for every cafe, stall and restaurant at ratings.food.gov.uk. If a place near a major attraction has no recent inspection listed at all, that is worth knowing before you order.
Frequently asked questions
Is there anywhere to eat inside Buckingham Palace?
Not for casual visitors. Catering inside the railings exists only for ticket holders during the summer opening of the State Rooms, which in 2026 runs from 9 July to 27 September. Outside those dates there is nothing on site, so plan to walk to Buckingham Gate, Victoria or St James's.
Where can I eat before the Changing of the Guard?
Eat by 10:30 and walk to the forecourt afterwards. The cafes on Buckingham Gate and Palace Street serve breakfast from early morning, and the lakeside cafe in St James's Park opens well before the ceremony. Trying to eat between 11:45 and 12:30 on a guard-change day means queueing behind everyone who watched it with you.
Can I take food into St James's Park or Green Park?
Yes. Both parks are open to the public with pedestrian gates open from 05:00 until midnight, and a picnic on the grass is completely normal. Buy at Strutton Ground or a Victoria bakery, carry it in, and use the bins. Barbecues and alcohol are restricted, so check the park rules if that matters to you.
What is the cheapest meal near Buckingham Palace?
On a weekday, a hot plate from a Strutton Ground stall at roughly £7 to £10. At the weekend, a bakery or supermarket meal deal eaten in the park, or a pub lunch in Victoria. Anything bought from a van on the Mall or in front of the palace will cost several times as much for less food.
Are there toilets near the palace if we stop for a picnic?
There are public toilets in St James's Park and Green Park, and more in Victoria station and the large shops on Victoria Street. Most are free, a few charge a small amount, and our guide to finding a toilet in central London lists the reliable ones.
Is it worth booking a table near Buckingham Palace?
For anything in St James's or Belgravia at lunchtime, yes, especially Friday and Saturday. For the market stalls, pubs and sandwich shops, no, but avoid 13:00 to 14:00 on a weekday. Anyone travelling with an allergy should read our page on how allergen rules work in British restaurants before you order at a market stall.
Sources
- Westminster City Council - Strutton Ground Market SW1 (checked September 2026)
- St Martin-in-the-Fields - Cafe in the Crypt (checked September 2026)
- The Royal Parks - St James's Park (checked September 2026)
- Royal Collection Trust - Buckingham Palace (checked September 2026)
- Household Division - Changing the Guard calendar (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - Food hygiene ratings (checked September 2026)