The River Café.

The River Café

Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers opened this in 1987 to feed the staff of Richard Rogers's architecture practice, then let the public in (The Staff Canteen).

Why go

The kitchen is open to the room and built around a wood oven painted shocking pink, which Great British Chefs calls the natural focal point of the dining room (Great British Chefs). Cooking runs on Italian restraint, a few components per plate and everything bought for the season, and Michelin awarded the first star in 1998, held every year since (The Staff Canteen, MICHELIN Guide). Rogers has run it alone since Gray died in 2010, now with head chefs Sian Wyn Owen, Joseph Trivelli and Danny Bohan. The influence shows up in other people's kitchens: Jamie Oliver, Theo Randall, Ed Baines and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall all trained here, and the ingredient-first habit they left with is the reason a plate of squid and rocket became a British restaurant template.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the chargrilled squid with chilli and rocket, which has been on the menu for decades, and the Chocolate Nemesis, which Harden's lists alongside ribollita as a timeless favourite (Great British Chefs, Harden's).
• Avoid: the pizzetta, which Andy Hayler scored 12/20 in March 2026 and called essentially a flatbread with some toppings (Andy Hayler). Sunday evening is lunch only.

What locals & experts say

• Harden's (2026): So good… so expensive…, with the ingredients and cooking are of the highest quality set against a restaurant that has now topped our annual diners' poll vote as the 'Most Overpriced' meal for many years.3
• Andy Hayler (March 2026), 13/20: I can never really reconcile the price here with the quality of what appears on the plate, at £137 a head with one glass of wine.4
• MICHELIN Guide 2026, One Star: awarded for high quality cooking, first given in 1998 and held since.2
• Jeremy Lee, chef-patron of Quo Vadis in Soho (August 2025), puts it fourth on his list of favorite London restaurants and makes the case on consistency: This is a restaurant that has never chased trends. It's brilliantly consistent. He sends you to the pasta and the wood oven, the gnocchi so delicate, you hardly believe they're real, the ravioli filled with ricotta or mascarpone, and the fish, since The wood-roasted turbot remains one of London's great classic dishes. He is plain about the money too. You need to brace yourself for the bill, he says, and still calls it worth every penny.6

Good to know

• Timing: lunch daily 12pm to 3pm, dinner Monday to Saturday 6.30pm to 9.30pm, everyone away by 11.30pm (The River Café).
• Booking: essential. Tables of up to 8 go through the site, larger parties by phone on 020 7386 4200. Sittings are timed, 2 hours for a pair at lunch and up to 3 hours for a large table at dinner.
• Dietary: nothing published. The menus name ingredients but the venue states no allergen, gluten-free or vegan policy, so raise it when you book.
• Getting there: Thames Wharf off Rainville Road, roughly 15 minutes' walk from Hammersmith tube, with valet parking in the evening and at weekend lunch. The terrace sits on the river, so it is the summer-lunch play.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: Iconic restaurant

Verdict

should-visit — A CONTESTED ROW, and both sides are on it. The case for: the restaurant that taught Britain what Italian cooking actually is, open since 1987, a Michelin star since 1998, a wood oven still running, and six chefs in the industry vote still send people here. The case against is now recorded and it is not soft. Harden's 2026 scores the FOOD 2 out of 5 and the service 1 out of 5 at GBP 164 a head, down from 3 and 2 in the 2024 edition, with the proportion of diners calling it not worth it going from a third to two thirds, and Harden's own line that the pushback is growing and ratings are flagging. Andy Hayler scored a March 2026 lunch 13/20 at GBP 137. Primacy puts the plate first, so the room by the Thames and the lineage do not settle this: it holds at should-visit because the practitioner vote is genuinely strong and the kitchen is genuinely historic, and it is one more bad edition from a demotion. Go for the squid and the Nemesis with the bill understood in advance.