
Summer - and combatting coronavirus - call for outdoor dining
Because it involves both eating and being outside, eating outside is a joy. There’s just something about swatting flies away from food that makes us feel like we’re on holiday. While outdoor dining itself could feasibly be done anywhere, the dullness of lockdown has left us wanting to do so at more formal establishments such as the ones detailed below. Don’t forget to bring a light jacket.
While we’d be perfectly happy eating on the pavement outside any one of our favourite restaurants, eating outside in The River Café’s riverside garden is a privilege. Now, would you like to get your own chocolate nemesis or share?
Offering British food with a distinctly Meditteranean influence, Llewelyn’s is the highlight of Herne Hill. May your people-watching be scintillating.
In a post-pandemic world, we wonder - for hygiene reasons, of course - if tapas is still something we’re obliged to share. Either way, Barrafina’s Adelaide Street location will have tables outside for the first time ever once it reopens - just like its fellow branches.
Days seem to melt away peacefully within the walled garden of Rochelle Canteen, especially when you have some spinach arancini by your side and a pavlova for two to conquer. If you want some respite from the chaos of Shoreditch, this is your safest bet.
At either location of Petersham Nurseries, everything is begging to be photographed. The food, once you remember that it’s there for eating, is primarily Italian. This is outdoor dining for the Instagram obsessive (which would be all of us).
The cafe within Dalston Eastern Curve Garden is Associate Editor Emma’s Firth’s favourite place for this sort of thing. It currently remains closed due to coronavirus, but is raising funds to reopen - support it if you can.