Farringdon restaurants — the best restaurants in Farringdon and Clerkenwell's converted rooms

Farringdon and Clerkenwell trade on converted industrial buildings — a former courthouse, old print works, warehouse conversions — and the kitchens inside them tend to match the ambition of the architecture.

What Farringdon is for

A destination lunch worth booking weeks ahead, in a building with real history behind it.

Worth a wander

Clerkenwell Green and the surrounding lanes, quieter than Smithfield but just as close to the City — one of the few genuinely old street layouts left in this part of London, since the area escaped the worst of the postwar rebuilding that reshaped much of the City fringe.

A working history worth knowing

Clerkenwell’s industrial past runs deeper than the current wave of restaurant conversions suggests — this was London’s centre for watchmaking and precision engineering through the 19th century, and later a printing and publishing district, which is why so many of the area’s best rooms still sit inside genuine former workshops and print works rather than purpose-built restaurant space.

Exmouth Market, a pedestrianised strip a few minutes from Farringdon station, has been a food destination since well before “Farringdon dining” became a phrase — Moro anchored the street from 1997 onward, and the market itself still runs a stall-based food offer alongside the sit-down restaurants.

Getting here

Farringdon station is genuinely well-connected — the Elizabeth line, Thameslink, and the Circle/Hammersmith & City/Metropolitan lines all stop here, making it one of the easier parts of central London to reach directly rather than via a connection. It’s a five-to-ten-minute walk to most of the neighbourhood’s restaurants from the station, and close enough to Smithfield and the City fringe that all three areas are walkable in a single evening if the plan calls for it.

How it compares to Smithfield next door

Farringdon and Smithfield blur into each other geographically, but the dining register differs slightly: Smithfield still runs on the meat market’s early-hours rhythm (serious breakfasts, nose-to-tail cooking), while Farringdon and Clerkenwell proper lean more toward destination dinners in converted industrial buildings, with Exmouth Market adding a more casual, market-stall layer on top.

What it costs

Farringdon and Clerkenwell’s destination restaurants — the kind built into a converted courthouse or print works — sit at a genuine special-occasion price point, reflecting both the ambition of the cooking and the cost of the buildings themselves. Exmouth Market’s more casual stalls and smaller kitchens bring the average down considerably if a big-night-out budget isn’t the plan.

The courthouse story

Sessions Arts Club’s building is a genuinely rare survival — the old Middlesex Sessions House, a working courthouse until the mid-20th century, later spent decades derelict before its recent restoration into a restaurant that kept much of the original courtroom architecture intact rather than stripping it out.

It’s one of the clearest examples anywhere in London of a building’s previous life staying visible in its current one, and worth knowing the history before a visit rather than discovering it by accident once inside.

When to visit

Smithfield’s early-morning rhythm bleeds slightly into Farringdon’s own breakfast scene, but the neighbourhood proper comes into its own from lunchtime onward — Exmouth Market in particular is at its best on a weekday lunch or a weekend afternoon, when the stalls and the surrounding restaurants are both running at full tilt.

Frequently asked questions