Chishuru.

Chishuru

Adejoké Bakare taught herself to cook, ran supperclubs, then won the amateur category of a Brixton competition whose prize was a restaurant, and four years later Michelin gave her a star.

Why go

The route matters as much as the star. Chishuru opened in Brixton Village in late 2020 after Bakare won the Brixton Kitchen competition, drew reviews good enough that Jay Rayner said it deserves to be shown some serious love, and then ended sooner than expected (Hot Dinners). She ran a pop-up until this two-floor Fitzrovia room was ready, opened it in autumn 2023 with Matt Paice of Killer Tomato as partner, and in February 2024 took one Michelin star. The guide's own line is short and worth reading twice: A self-taught chef who won a MICHELIN Star in 2024, she is at the forefront of London's West African dining scene, steadily introducing the cuisine to more and more people around the capital1. The kitchen is open, at the back of the ground floor, and the format is a set menu. She has said what the two neighborhoods gave her: Brixton meant one-to-one relationships with suppliers of West African produce, and Fitzrovia brings a lunchtime trade out of tech, fashion and finance.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the fermented rice cake with white crab, pumpkin and sorrel purée, which Hot Dinners put at the top of a run of crab dishes they had been eating3. Bean cake with chicken liver and duck egg sauce. The pepper soup broth with eko and meat floss. The grilled hispi cabbage built off egusi if you are going vegetable. Rice ice cream with baobab and ginger cream. One spiced okra martini, since two is the limit.
• Avoid: booking without flagging a vegetarian, because the kitchen wants notice to build the menu that way. And do not plan to have a drink here first, because there is no bar.

What locals & experts say

• The MICHELIN Guide, on the chef, March 2026: A self-taught chef who won a MICHELIN Star in 2024, she is at the forefront of London's West African dining scene. The guide's own listing tags the room Iconic and bands it four of four on price.1
• Gavin Hanly, Hot Dinners, 5 October 2023, reviewing this room in its first weeks, on the crab: we've had a fair few crab dishes of late and this is firmly at the top. His verdict was an extremely assured Central London debut. His one complaint was about pacing: the three opening dishes arrive together, and he would have wanted all of these to be served individually as opposed to together.3
• Jay Rayner, on the original Brixton Village site: It deserves to be shown some serious love. Quoted here as reproduced by Hot Dinners, about the Brixton restaurant rather than this one.3
• Where Bakare herself eats, from the guide's My London series: Planque in Haggerston to celebrate, where she cooked a four-hands dinner with Seb Myers; Sune by Broadway Market for a date, small, it's dimly lit and you'll order too much wine; Akoko three streets away for anyone who wants more West African cooking, run by her friend Aji, one foot in French fine dining; and the listening bar Jumbi in Peckham.1
• Nothing since the star has been read at source. Jimi Famurewa reviewed it for the Standard and that piece was not fetched, so no line from it is quoted here.

Good to know

• Where: 3 Great Titchfield Street, Fitzrovia W1W 8AX, a few minutes from Oxford Circus.
• Booking: essential, and the restaurant runs its own reservations rather than a platform, which Michelin notes on its listing.
• Format: a set menu. When last published in October 2023 it was three courses at lunch and a longer dinner, with the dinner about double.
• Diet: vegetarian versions of the menu are available, and the kitchen asks to be told in advance. That was the position in 2023 and is worth confirming when you book. No vegan or allergen statement was found.
• No bar: drink elsewhere first. Hot Dinners points at a 28:50 for wine, or The Wigmore and Artesian a short walk away.
• Hygiene: Food Standards Agency rating 4, inspected 9 June 2025 by the City of Westminster. Hygiene scored clean and structural nearly so; the component that pulled the rating off 5 was confidence in management. Stated here because a reader is entitled to it, and it disqualifies nothing.4
• The Brixton years: Chishuru was in Brixton Village from late 2020. Reviews older than autumn 2023 describe that room.

Verdict

must-visit — Build the evening around it. Adejoké Bakare taught herself to cook, ran supperclubs, and won the amateur category of a Brixton Kitchen competition whose prize was a restaurant of her own. That opened in Brixton Village in late 2020, drew raves, and ended sooner than she wanted. She ran a pop-up until this Fitzrovia room was ready, opened it in autumn 2023 with Matt Paice of Killer Tomato behind her, and in February 2024 Michelin gave it a star, making her the first Black woman in Britain to hold one. The cooking is West African with modern technique and it is specific rather than general: fermented rice cake under white crab with pumpkin and sorrel, bean cake with chicken liver and a duck egg sauce, a pepper soup broth carrying eko and meat floss, a vegetable main that reads Nigerian egusi through a grilled hispi cabbage. Hot Dinners called the crab dish the best they had eaten in a run of crab dishes and the room an extremely assured central London debut, with one complaint, about the pacing of the opening plates rather than about anything on them. Two practical things matter before you book. Say in advance if a vegetarian is coming, because the kitchen builds the whole menu differently. And know that the Food Standards Agency rated it 4 rather than 5 in June 2025, on confidence in management rather than on hygiene, which is worth knowing and changes nothing about whether to go.