Harden’s London Restaurant Awards 2019 winners revealed

Harden’s annual London Restaurant Awards were held at The Langham Hotel today, celebrating the capital’s most popular up and coming food and drink establishments.

The BBC's Nigel Barden presented the awards for each of the 15 categories, as well as for the Outstanding Achievement Award.

• Here's the full shortlist of restaurants nominated for the HLRA

Celebrating everything from the high-end restaurants to coffee shops, pubs and pop-ups, winners were chosen based on more than 50,000 reviews according to the categories decided by Harden’s, with at least two of the four shortlisted for each category having opened in the past year.  

For the first time, an award was dedicated to the best vegetarian/vegan restaurant  - Gautier Soho was the first to take the title and head chef Tom Brown said: "It's great that the vegetarian scene is getting recognised more - within the next year I expect there'll be more competition for us!"

The Outstanding Achievement Award went to JKS Restaurants and the winner of the top gastronomic experience was The Five Fields.

Emily Roux and husband Diego Ferrari picked up best newcomer for their restaurant Caractère. Emily said: "It's been lots of hard work and I'm really proud of what we've achieved. It's great to get this level of recognition from our cutomers, we're really happy." 

London’s best pub/bar was The Wigmore and the best for business award went to The Goring.  La Poule au Pot won the title of best for romance, wine list of the year went to Noize restaurant; The Ritz was crowned best place for afternoon tea ; the best brunch or breakfast award was given to Dishoom ; best fish or seafood went to Cornerstone and Hawksmoor won the award for the best steaks and grills.

Hawksmoor Founder, Huw Got, said: "We opened the first restaurant 13 years ago, it feels amazing to still be in the limelight! The London food scene is really fickle so to be seen an dto be recognised 13 years on is really impressive."

Finally, the winner of the best coffee house was Tab x Tab, the award for the top street food vendor went to The Duck Truck and Bacone was named London’s best ‘cheap eat.’