AngloThai.

AngloThai

There is no rice. John Chantarasak took it off the menu and rebuilt the starch around British heritage grains, choosing naked oat because braised or steamed it kind of has a flavor and a texture that reminds me of whole-grain brown rice (MICHELIN Guide).

Why go

Chantarasak studied classical French at Le Cordon Bleu Dusit in Bangkok, then cooked at Opposite Mess Hall and at Nahm under David Thompson and Prin Polsuk, which he describes as being sent back to the bottom rung (MICHELIN). The method that makes this restaurant work came later, in London, working with Nicholas Balfe of the closed Salon: swap citrus juice for sea buckthorn, rhubarb juice or gooseberries to get Thai sourness out of a British larder, and use mustard leaves and horseradish root to push heat. He and his wife Desiree opened here in November 2024 after years of pop-ups and collapsed deals, and the MICHELIN Guide Great Britain & Ireland gave it One Star three months later, making it the only starred Thai restaurant in the UK (MICHELIN 2025 ceremony). His argument for why substitution is not compromise came from his grandmother, who told him she would always cook in a Thai way but would shop wherever she was: What I find authentic is the authenticity of the product.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Brixham crab with Exmoor caviar on a coconut ash cracker, which runs on both menus, and the Creedy Carver duck with peppercorn curry. If the Carlingford oyster is on, take it: Leonie Cooper found it swimming in a vivid pool of fermented chilli and galangal, resulting in a euphorically numb mouth and full body sweats4. For dessert, the version of mango sticky rice that has no rice or mango in it, a fermented pearl barley pudding cooked in fresh coconut cream with carrot and sea buckthorn sorbet. Cheapest way in is the GBP 65 lunch, Wednesday to Friday.
• Avoid: booking at all if you have an allergy to allium, citrus, coconut, coriander, rapeseed oil or chilli. The kitchen states it unable to accommodate those six6. Also do not fix on a dish you read about, since the venue calls its online menus a guide.

What locals & experts say

• MICHELIN Guide inspectors (2025 ceremony, 10 Feb 2025, Glasgow): one of 22 new One-Star restaurants that year, cited because Thai food is also getting its moment in the spotlight thanks to AngloThai, where John Chantarasak is mining his Thai-British heritage in exciting, delicious ways.2
• Time Out London, Leonie Cooper (Nov 2024), 5 out of 5: the line that explains the cooking better than any menu does, In reimagining some of Thailand's most celebrated dishes via the lens of fastidious fine dining, he uses mystical-sounding, Tolkien-adjacent UK ingredients to mimic Thai food's puckering sour notes. On the room: decked out like a Connecticut beach house with white clapperboard walls and a subtle seaside energy.4
• Her one real reservation, in the same review: she calls the walk to the basement bathrooms redolent of the infamous wave of blood from The Shining, and the raw venison visually, a touch Silence of the Lambs. Both are affectionate, and both tell you the room has a strange streak.4
• Condé Nast Traveller, 2025 Hot List: named among the world's best new restaurants alongside places in Quito, Copenhagen, New York, Chicago, Sydney and Lagos, praised for delicious escapism at its best, cooked with lots of love (reported by Time Out).
• Where London puts it: second in Time Out's ranking of the city's best Thai restaurants as of April 2025.
• Local rec: Jeff has it as "Timeout top thai rec, best New restaurant conde naste." Both halves check out. REAL.

Good to know

• Timing: Tuesday from 5.30pm, Wednesday to Saturday from midday, both until midnight. Closed Sunday and Monday (venue).
• Booking: essential, and MICHELIN notes the restaurant "manages its own bookings," so go direct rather than through a platform. Put dietary requirements in the booking notes and they will call you.
• What it costs: GBP 65 for the Wednesday-to-Friday lunch, GBP 55 more for the drinks pairing. The full tasting menu runs at dinner and Saturday lunch, with supplements of GBP 7, GBP 25 and GBP 35 on the current list.
• Allergens, read this first: the kitchen cannot work around allium, citrus, coconut, coriander root or seed, rapeseed oil, or chilli. Everything else they will try to accommodate.
• Groups: Baan, the private room downstairs, seats up to 16 and takes its name from the Thai word for home.
• Where: 22-24 Seymour Place, W1H 7NL, off the top of Marble Arch. MICHELIN prints 22 and the food-hygiene register files 24; it is one restaurant across both numbers.
• Wine: the list is built on British and European growers, weighted from Britain through Central Europe.
• Hygiene: FSA rating 5, inspected 6 December 2024.
• On the star: confirmed as One Star in the MICHELIN Guide Great Britain & Ireland 2025 and still described that way by MICHELIN in June 2026. The 2026 guide page is live but its badge could not be read by any fetch route, so treat the 2026 edition as very likely rather than verified here.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "Timeout top thai rec, best New restaurant conde naste" REAL.

Verdict

must-visit — The only Thai restaurant in the UK with a MICHELIN star, and it earned it three months after opening. The reason to go is the problem it set itself: cook Thai in Britain without importing the pantry, which means sourness from sea buckthorn, rhubarb and gooseberry instead of lime, heat from mustard leaf and horseradish alongside chilli, and no rice at all, replaced by pearl barley, spelt, emmer and naked oat. Mango sticky rice becomes fermented barley cooked in coconut cream with a carrot and sea buckthorn sorbet. Time Out gave it five stars, Conde Nast Traveller put it on a world Hot List, and the weekday lunch is GBP 65, which is how you get in without the full tasting.