Walk five minutes north-west of the Piazza, to Seven Dials, Neal Street and Endell Street, and the same kind of meal costs £10 to £16 instead of £22 to £30. That is the whole answer. The rest of this page is about which five minutes, and what to order when you get there.
Covent Garden is not a rip-off, exactly. It is a privately managed estate with a very high footfall, and the restaurants with terraces facing the street performers pay rent accordingly and charge accordingly. Paying extra to sit outdoors while a man escapes from a chain in front of you is a fair trade, and you should make it if that is what you came for.
If you want lunch, it is a bad trade, because the streets immediately north and east are full of places that are cheaper, older and better. Our guides to the Covent Garden area and shopping around the Piazza cover what the district is; this page is only about where to eat and what it costs.
Four walks from the Piazza
- Seven Dials and Earlham Street
- 5 minutes north-west; an indoor food market and a run of small restaurants
- Neal's Yard and Neal Street
- 6 minutes north; pizza by the slice, brunch, coffee and cheese
- Endell Street
- 6 minutes north; a fish and chip shop that has been on the same site since 1871
- Trafalgar Square and Villiers Street
- 7–10 minutes south-west; a church crypt cafe and a cellar wine bar
- The cheap hour
- Pre-theatre set menus, roughly 17:00 to 18:30
What the Piazza charges for, and why
The Market Building and the square around it are managed as a single estate, which chooses its tenants and sets its rents. A coffee on a terrace there is often £1 to £2 more than the same coffee three streets north, and a pasta dish that would be £14 in Seven Dials is £20 with a view of the buskers.
What you get for the difference is the seat, the noise and the performance. On a warm evening that is genuinely pleasant. At 13:00 on a wet Tuesday it is money for nothing.
There is a second cost that nobody mentions: time. Restaurants on the Piazza run at capacity from midday, and a walk-in at lunchtime can mean a 30-minute wait for a table you are then rushed out of. Five minutes of walking usually buys you an immediate seat.
Five minutes north-west: Seven Dials
Seven Dials is the junction where seven streets meet around a pillar with sundials on it, and the small grid of streets around it has become the best eating within ten minutes of the Piazza. Our guide to Seven Dials and Neal's Yard covers the area itself.
The anchor is Seven Dials Market on Earlham Street, an indoor food hall in a former banana warehouse with around twenty independent counters under one roof. Opening hours in September 2026 are Monday and Tuesday 12:00–22:00, Wednesday to Saturday 11:00–23:00 and Sunday 11:00–21:00. Plates are roughly £9–£16, there is a proper bar, seating is shared and mostly first-come, and tables of four or more can be booked.
It is the most useful place in the district for a group that cannot agree, because one person can have a burger, another a plate of dumplings and a third a cheese course from a conveyor belt, all at one table. It is also step-free with a lift, which very little else around here is.
Seven Dials Market does not open until midday on Mondays and Tuesdays. Turn up at 11:30 at the start of the week and you will be standing outside a closed door with a hungry family. Wednesday to Saturday it opens at 11:00 and runs to 23:00, which is later than most of Covent Garden.
Six minutes north: Neal Street, Neal's Yard and Shorts Gardens
Neal's Yard is a small courtyard of brightly painted buildings reached through an alley, and it is a better place to sit than to eat. 26 Grains, in the corner, does porridge, bowls and brunch dishes in the £9–£14 range and has been there since the middle of the last decade. The rest of the courtyard is worth a look and a photograph, but the eating improves as soon as you walk back out to Monmouth Street or Shorts Gardens.
Shorts Gardens, just outside the alley, has a branch of the cheesemonger that gave the yard its name and supplies half the good restaurants in London. Buying a piece of cheese, a loaf and a bottle and eating it on a bench is a perfectly respectable Covent Garden lunch for under £12 a head, and our page on where London is still cheap to eat has more of the same.
Neal Street itself runs north from Long Acre and is mostly shops, with ramen, Japanese and Italian counters scattered along it at £12–£18 a main. Our page on pizza across London explains the difference between the styles you will see here.
Six minutes north: Endell Street and the oldest chip shop claim
Endell Street runs parallel to Neal Street and has one thing on it that visitors go out of their way for. The Rock & Sole Plaice at number 47 trades on a claim to have been a fish and chip shop on the same site since 1871, which would make it the oldest surviving one in London. The claim is hard to verify absolutely, but the shop has been in the same family's hands for more than three decades and the tables outside are usually full.
Cod or haddock and chips sits in the high teens for a sit-down portion, less to take away, which is what you would pay anywhere central. It is not a bargain. It is a good version of one specific thing, eaten at a pavement table in theatreland.
The rest of Endell Street has a mix of small restaurants at £14–£20, and it is noticeably quieter than Long Acre one street south.
Seven to ten minutes south-west: the crypt and the cellar
Two very different places near Trafalgar Square are worth the extra few minutes.
Under St Martin-in-the-Fields, on the north-east corner of the square, is a brick-vaulted crypt with a self-service cafe in it, where hot dishes are around £12–£16 and the money supports the church's work with homeless Londoners. It also runs jazz evenings in the same space. One warning: it is regularly taken over for private events on weekdays and Saturdays, and the hours are published a fortnight at a time, so look before you walk.
On Villiers Street, down towards the river, Gordon's is a wine bar that has been trading since 1890 in a low, candlelit cellar with barrel tables. You order cheese, cold meat, pie or salad at a counter for roughly £9–£15 and take it into the dark. It does not take bookings for the cellar, it is full from 17:30 most evenings, and the terrace outside is the better bet in summer. See our guide to London's wine bars for what else is in this bracket.
Pubs where a pint is not £8
Three old pubs within ten minutes of the Piazza are worth knowing. The Lamb & Flag on Rose Street is the oldest of them, reached through an alley and almost impossible to find by accident. The Harp on Chandos Place is narrow, long and famous for its cask beer. The Princess Louise on High Holborn, eleven minutes north-east, has a Victorian interior of etched glass screens that divide the bar into snugs, and it belongs to a brewery that prices its beer well below the West End average.
On a weekday all three fill up from about 17:30, so aim for 16:00 or wait until after 21:00. Food is limited in the first two and straightforward in the third, so treat them as a drink rather than dinner, Our page on ordering at a British bar explains the unwritten rules if this is new to you.
The cheap hour: pre-theatre menus
Covent Garden and the streets around it contain more theatres than any comparable area in Europe, and the restaurants have built their pricing around the curtain. Between roughly 17:00 and 18:30, a great many of them offer two or three courses at a fixed price, commonly £22–£32, for dishes that would be £40 or more an hour later.
The conditions are the point: you usually have to order by a stated time and be finished by about 19:00, and the choice is narrower than the full menu. If you have tickets anyway, this is the best-value proper dinner in the West End. If you do not, book the early slot regardless and have the evening to yourself afterwards.
Our guides to how West End theatre works and buying tickets for less cover the other half of the evening, and the Royal Opera House has its own cafes that anyone can use during opening hours without a ticket.
An early set menu plus a standing ticket can cost less than dinner alone at 20:00. Two courses at £25 before the show and a cheap seat is a genuinely good evening for under £50 a head, which is not a sentence you can often write about this part of London.
Names in old guidebooks that are no longer there
Two long-running Covent Garden institutions still appear in printed guides and in a great many online lists, and both have gone.
Food for Thought, the vegetarian basement cafe on Neal Street, closed in 2015 after more than four decades. The nearest equivalents today are the meat-free counters at Seven Dials Market and the restaurants on our vegetarian and vegan page.
The India Club, on the Strand above a small hotel, served its last lunches in September 2023 after a long campaign against redevelopment. It had been open since 1946. There is no replacement for it, and nobody should be sent to look.
Check a place still exists before you build an evening around it. Central London restaurants close quickly and lists go stale. The fastest independent check is the Food Standards Agency register at ratings.food.gov.uk, which shows every inspected premises with the date it was last visited: a business that stopped trading drops off it.
The other direction: Soho and Chinatown
West of Charing Cross Road, ten minutes from the Piazza, the prices change again. Soho has the density of small restaurants that Covent Garden lacks, and Chinatown around Gerrard Street does roast meats, noodles and dim sum at £10–£16. Both run far later than Covent Garden does; the places still cooking after midnight are on our late-night eating page.
If you are walking that way after a show, Leicester Square and theatreland sits between the two and is the part to walk through rather than stop in.
What you will actually pay
| Where | Walk from the Piazza | Typical main course | Booking needed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Piazza and Market Building | 0 minutes | £20–£30 | Yes at peak times |
| Henrietta Street and the south side | 2 minutes | £18–£28 | Yes in the evening |
| Seven Dials Market | 5 minutes | £9–£16 | Only for four or more |
| Neal's Yard and Shorts Gardens | 6 minutes | £9–£16 | No |
| Endell Street | 6 minutes | £14–£20 | Rarely |
| Crypt cafe, Trafalgar Square | 7 minutes | £12–£16 | No |
| Chinatown | 10 minutes | £10–£16 | Rarely |
| Pre-theatre set menu, anywhere central | varies | £22–£32 for two or three courses | Yes, always |
Every price band here is our September 2026 estimate rather than a quotation; only the Seven Dials Market hours are taken from the market's own listing. Check the current price before you order.
Frequently asked questions
Why is food in Covent Garden so expensive?
Because the Piazza and the Market Building are a managed estate with very high footfall and correspondingly high rents, and because a terrace facing the street performers is something people will pay extra for. The restaurants three streets north pay less and charge less for broadly similar food.
Where is the cheapest place to eat near Covent Garden?
Seven Dials Market for a hot plate at £9 to £16, a slice of pizza in Neal's Yard for a few pounds, or bread and cheese from the shops on Shorts Gardens eaten outside. Chinatown, ten minutes west, is the cheapest proper sit-down meal in the wider area.
Can I eat well near Covent Garden without booking?
Yes. Seven Dials Market, the Neal's Yard places, the fish and chip shop on Endell Street and the crypt cafe at Trafalgar Square are all walk-in. Anything with a terrace on the Piazza, and anything at all between 18:00 and 20:00 on a Friday or Saturday, needs a reservation.
What is a pre-theatre menu and is it worth it?
A fixed-price menu of two or three courses served in the early evening, usually between 17:00 and 18:30, at roughly £22 to £32. You order by a set time and finish by about 19:00. For anyone with a ticket it is the best value in the West End, and it is open to people without one too.
Are there toilets around Covent Garden if we eat outside?
There are paid toilets in the Market Building and beside St Paul's Church, and free ones in the larger department stores and stations nearby. Our guide to public toilets in central London lists which are free and where the accessible ones are.
Sources
- Seven Dials Market - opening hours and traders (checked September 2026)
- Covent Garden (Shaftesbury Capital) - eating and drinking on the estate (checked September 2026)
- St Martin-in-the-Fields - Cafe in the Crypt opening times (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - Food hygiene rating search (checked September 2026)