Skip to main content

Bonoo

Archives

The Best Indian Restaurant in London You Need to Know About

The Bonoo Journal We’re Ranked #1 In London. Here’s What That Actually Means. TripAdvisor named us Best Hidden Gem globally. London’s restaurant rankings placed us at the top. Four London Curry Awards across multiple years. This is the story of how precision, consistency, and care built something worth recognising. A small restaurant in Hampstead just became impossible to book. This week, TripAdvisor recognised us as one of the world’s Best Hidden Gem restaurants. At the same time, aggregated data across London’s top restaurant lists placed us at number one. We weren’t chasing rankings. But now that they’re here, we want to tell you what they mean. Book Your Table Now We are booked solid most evenings. Tables are getting harder to find. If you’ve been meaning to try London’s #1 ranked restaurant, book now while availability exists. Reserve A Table View Our Menu Hampstead: 020 7794 8899 · Muswell Hill: 020 8365 2643 #1 Ranked In London #13 Globally (TripAdvisor) 4 London Curry Awards The Rankings Are Real Third-party validation matters. We can’t claim we’re good. They’re saying it for us. These aren’t things we asked for. They’re things that happened because we’ve been consistent. Four times, the London Curry Awards recognised what we do in the kitchen. TripAdvisor’s algorithm — which ranks millions of restaurants worldwide — placed us in its Best Hidden Gem category. When you aggregate the data on London’s top-ranked restaurants, we’re at the top of that list. This isn’t a new opening with backing. It isn’t a trend chasing the latest food fad. It’s an established restaurant that’s been consistently recognised at the highest level for doing one thing exceptionally well: precision cooking. What #1 Actually Means #1 doesn’t mean we’re the biggest. We’re not. We’re in Hampstead. We’re 26 seats. We cook a specific way — tandoor-focused, ghee and olive oil instead of refined vegetable oils, spices blended in-house every morning. We’re not trying to be everything to everyone. #1 means: people who eat with us are telling other people it was worth their time and money. The rating algorithms, review platforms, and award committees are reflecting that back to the market. It means consistency. Not luck. Not one good night. Four London Curry Awards over time. Global recognition on TripAdvisor. Rankings based on aggregated data. It means we’ve built something that holds up under scrutiny. Why We Cook The Way We Do Tandoor is our primary technique. Not an afterthought. Not a gimmick. Every dish is designed with the tandoor in mind. This requires skill, precision, and understanding of traditional methods that most London restaurants have abandoned for speed. Ghee and olive oil are our standards, not compromises. Do you notice the difference? Yes. Your body notices the difference. This is the difference between fine dining and fast food. Spices are blended in-house every morning. Not bought in bulk from suppliers. Not pre-made months ago. This is why every plate tastes alive, not flat. This is why we keep winning awards. Our chef has built a reputation for consistency and technique over years. Someone who won four London Curry Awards because they refuse to compromise. Someone who cares about methodology, not volume. Ready to taste why we’re ranked #1? Book A Table At Bonoo What This Recognition Means For You You’ll eat food designed with intention. Every dish has a reason. Every component matters. This methodology won four awards for a reason. You’ll experience precision. A restaurant doesn’t end up ranked #1 by accident. It ends up there by caring about consistency, technique, sourcing, and the experience from the moment you walk in. Every detail matters. You’ll know you’re making the right choice. If you’re choosing where to eat in London right now, the data is in. This is where people who care about food are eating. Where We Sit In London’s Restaurant Scene Bonoo is located in Hampstead, one of London’s most affluent and discerning neighbourhoods. This isn’t accidental. Our 26-seat restaurant attracts diners who care about quality over hype, who come back repeatedly because the food is genuine, and who tell their friends because they know they’ve discovered something real. We also have a second location in Muswell Hill, bringing the same award-winning approach to diners across North London who want exceptional Indian cuisine without compromise. When you search for where to eat in London, you’re often looking at crowded, noisy, tourist-focused establishments. Bonoo is different. We’re intimate. We’re intentional. We’re restaurants worth your time and money. Seats26 (intimate) LocationsHampstead & Muswell Hill KitchenTandoor-focused HoursDinner, 7 days a week The Awards Behind The Ranking TripAdvisor Best Hidden Gem (Global). Ranked #13 in the world out of millions of restaurants. This algorithm assesses restaurants globally. The fact that a 26-seat restaurant in Hampstead ranks this highly isn’t luck — it’s excellence being recognised at scale. #1 on London’s Restaurant Rankings. Aggregated data from major review platforms places Bonoo at the top of London’s dining scene. Not tied for first. At the top. Your friends are already going here. 4x London Curry Awards. This is consistency over time. One award is recognition. Four awards across multiple years is proof that we’ve built something that holds up under scrutiny. These come from hospitality professionals who taste hundreds of restaurants annually. What To Expect When You Dine Here The experience. 26 seats. Intimate. Professional service. The kind of restaurant where you can hear conversations, where timing matters, where every detail is considered. The food. Each dish is designed with intention. Tandoor-focused. Built on precise technique. The spices you taste today were blended this morning in our kitchen. The ghee is real ghee. The oil is extra virgin. This is what precision tastes like. The atmosphere. You’re not in a busy London restaurant trying to shout over noise. You’re in a place where Indian cuisine is treated like fine art. Where the chef cares more about consistency than volume. Where you come back because the food is genuine. London’s #1 Ranked Restaurant Book Your Table

Diwali In London 2026: Dates, Food And Where To Celebrate

The Bonoo Journal Diwali In London 2026: Dates, Food And Where To Celebrate Diwali falls on Sunday 8 November 2026. Here is what the five days actually mean, what people eat, where London celebrates, and how to book a table for the weekend. Diwali 2026 falls on Sunday 8 November. That single detail matters more than it sounds. In most years the festival lands midweek, which means people squeeze the puja in after work and push the family meal to the nearest weekend. This year the main day is a Sunday, so families across North London can give the whole day to it: morning cleaning, evening puja, and a long dinner with everyone at the table. Book Your Diwali Table Now Tables across North London sell out for the Diwali weekend. We are open every evening from 5pm in Hampstead and Muswell Hill, with a private dining room for up to 26 guests for larger family gatherings. Reserve A Table Private Room For Groups Or call Hampstead on 020 7794 8899 · Muswell Hill on 020 8365 2643 6 Nov Dhanteras, day one 8 Nov Diwali, Lakshmi Puja 10 Nov Bhai Dooj, day five It Is Five Days, Not One Most people outside the culture think of Diwali as one night of lights and fireworks. It is actually a five day festival, and each day has its own purpose. Knowing the shape of it helps if you are invited to someone’s home, or if you are planning when to eat out. Dhanteras, Friday 6 November. The day of buying. Traditionally gold or silver, but in practice anything new for the house: kitchen utensils, a small piece of jewellery, sometimes a car if the family has been saving. Jewellers in Wembley and on Green Street have their busiest day of the year. Chhoti Diwali, Saturday 7 November. Also called Naraka Chaturdashi. The house gets its final clean, the rangoli goes down at the doorstep, and the first diyas are lit. In many families this is the cooking day, when the sweets are made in bulk for the days that follow. Diwali, Sunday 8 November. The main day. Lakshmi Puja happens in the evening, usually after sunset, with the house lit and the doors open so the goddess of prosperity can enter. Then the food, and the fireworks. Govardhan Puja, Monday 9 November. Also Annakut in many communities, when a mountain of vegetarian food is offered at the temple. If you want to see the scale of it, the temples listed below put on displays worth the trip alone. Bhai Dooj, Tuesday 10 November. Brothers and sisters. Sisters mark their brothers’ foreheads, brothers give gifts, and everyone eats again. Diwali is not a UK bank holiday, so days one, four and five fall on working days this year. That is worth knowing if you are the person organising the family dinner. Most households in London do the big meal on the Saturday or the Sunday. What People Actually Eat At Diwali There is no single Diwali menu, and anyone who tells you there is has only eaten in one region. What is consistent is the structure: sweets first and constantly, savoury snacks alongside, and a vegetarian main meal on the day itself in most households. Mithai. The sweets are the centre of it. Barfi, cut into diamonds and often silver leafed. Ladoo, the round ones, usually besan or boondi. Jalebi, coiled and soaked. Kaju katli, the cashew fudge that disappears fastest. Boxes of these move between houses all week, which is why most families end up with more sweets than they can eat. Namkeen. The savoury counterweight. Chakli, chevdo, mathri, sev. These sit out in tins for the whole five days and get eaten with tea by anyone who walks in. The regional split. A Gujarati household will make mohanthal and ghughra. A Punjabi one leans towards pinni and chole bhature. Bengali families make sandesh and often mark Kali Puja rather than Lakshmi Puja on the main night. South Indian families in London make murukku and celebrate Naraka Chaturdashi as the bigger day, with an oil bath before dawn. If you are cooking for a mixed group, this is the thing to ask about rather than assume. Why it is mostly vegetarian. On the main day most families keep the food vegetarian, because the meal is tied to the puja. That changes over the rest of the week, and by the weekend after, restaurants across North London are full of families eating everything. Where London Celebrates Diwali London has one of the largest Diwali celebrations outside India, and most of it is free and open to anyone. Diwali on the Square, Trafalgar Square. The Mayor of London’s event, and the easiest entry point if you have never been to a Diwali celebration. It runs on Sunday 25 October 2026, 1pm to 7pm, which is two weeks before Diwali itself. That timing confuses people every year. It is deliberate: the festival gets its own public celebration, and families keep the actual day for home. Expect classical and Bollywood dance, a food market, and a rangoli you can help fill in. Free, no ticket needed. BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Neasden. The marble temple in Brent, and the biggest Annakut display in the country. Hundreds of vegetarian dishes are arranged in tiers as an offering. It is genuinely worth seeing even if you are not religious. Go early on Govardhan Puja, expect queues, and dress modestly. Shri Sanatan Hindu Mandir, Wembley. Smaller, warmer, and easier to visit if the Neasden crowds put you off. Strong Gujarati community presence and an excellent Annakut. Bhaktivedanta Manor, Watford. The ISKCON temple in the Hertfordshire countryside, about 40 minutes from North London. It runs one of the largest Diwali and Govardhan Puja programmes in Europe, on donated land with space to actually move. Book parking in advance. Belgrave Road, Leicester. Not London, but worth the hour and a half on the train if you want the full thing.

Office Christmas Party London

CHECK YOUR DATE Christmas · London Organising The Office Christmas Party: What Actually Matters, And What Goes Wrong By Bonoo · Hampstead & Muswell Hill · 9 min read Nobody volunteers for this. Somebody says “we should do something for Christmas” in a meeting, everyone looks at the floor, and whoever looks up last ends up organising it. The job is not difficult. It is just full of small decisions that turn out to matter more than they look, and most of them have to be made before anyone gives you a budget or a headcount. This is what actually determines whether it works. Three Decisions Before Anything Else Everything downstream depends on these, so make them first rather than letting them make themselves. Lunch or evening. This is the most under-considered choice and it changes who can come. An evening event excludes anyone with childcare and anyone with a long commute. A daytime version solves both at once, and it finishes inside the working day rather than eating into someone’s Friday night. How formal. A sit-down dinner sets a different tone to a standing event with food circulating. Neither is better, but a room full of people who expected one and got the other never quite settles. Who is paying for what. Whether the company covers drinks, or a set number, or nothing after the meal, needs deciding before you announce anything. Working it out at the bar on the night is how it goes wrong. The Survey That Saves You A Fortnight Send three questions before you look at a single venue. What day of the week works. Lunch or dinner. Any dietary requirements. That is it. Three questions, a Google Form, a deadline of forty-eight hours. Resist adding a fourth, because response rates collapse the moment a survey looks like effort. The reason to do this first is that it removes the two arguments that otherwise surface in November, when it is too late to act on either. And it gives you something to point at when somebody complains about the date. If your team is large enough to have a range of views, one more question is worth adding: whether people would prefer something traditional or something different. You may be surprised by the answer, and it costs nothing to ask. The Headcount Problem You will need numbers to book. The venue will need numbers to plan. And roughly a third of your colleagues will say “I’ll let you know nearer the time”, which is not a commitment and never becomes one. Two things fix this. A hard RSVP deadline, set early. Not a suggestion, a date. Most venues want final numbers somewhere between seven days and two weeks out, so work backwards from that and give yourself a buffer. Book on a deposit before numbers are final. This is the part people do not realise. A deposit holds a date without a confirmed headcount, which means you can secure a venue in September and chase colleagues through November. Waiting for everyone to confirm before booking is precisely how good dates get lost. Also worth checking your list against joiners and leavers a fortnight out. Somebody always gets missed, and it is remembered. Private Room · Hampstead NW2 9 to 26 guests, no room hire fee, and a £90 deposit holds your date without final numbers. See the room Inclusion Is Where It Actually Falls Apart This is the part that separates a party people enjoy from one they endure, and it is almost always handled too late. Dietary requirements. Around one in four UK adults has a dietary restriction of some kind. In a team of twenty that is five people, and if your form did not ask about allergies, intolerances and preferences, you find out on the night when somebody cannot eat anything on the table. Non-drinkers. There is a clear move across 2025 and 2026 toward beer-and-wine-only or fully dry formats with proper alcohol-free options, precisely because it lowers the social cost for people who do not drink. If you are keeping alcohol, the detail that matters is making the non-alcoholic options visually equivalent: the same glassware, the same garnishes, the same attention from staff. Somebody holding a glass of tap water is being quietly excluded whether anyone means it or not. Religion. Not everyone in your team celebrates Christmas. Keeping the decoration seasonal rather than explicitly religious costs nothing and makes the room easier for everyone. People who are not in the office. Colleagues on maternity or paternity leave are routinely forgotten and routinely hurt by it. Invite them. Whether they come is up to them. Drinks, And The Bit HR Cares About Every story about an office Christmas party going wrong involves alcohol, and the company carries more responsibility for that than most organisers realise. A fully open bar is the format most likely to produce a problem. The common alternative is a hosted bar with a two-drink ticket limit, which caps both the spend and the risk without feeling mean. After that, people buy their own, which most adults consider entirely reasonable. The other practical thing: put food in the room before the drinking starts. Half an hour of people standing with something to eat changes the trajectory of an entire evening. Getting Home Easily the most overlooked detail, and the one you will hear about for months if it goes wrong. Check the last trains from the venue before you book, not after. Check whether taxis actually come to that area at eleven at night in December, which is the busiest night of the year for cabs in London. Check parking if anyone drives. A venue near a station is worth a surprising amount. It is not glamorous but it determines whether people relax or spend the last hour watching the clock. Budget: The False Economy There is no standard per-head figure, and anyone quoting you one has invented it. What is true is that the proportion of

Finding A Birthday Party Venue In North London When There Are Only Twenty Of You

CHECK YOUR DATE Private Dining · North London Finding A Birthday Party Venue In North London When There Are Only Twenty Of You By Bonoo · Hampstead & Muswell Hill · 6 min read There is a strange gap in the North London venue market. If you are throwing a party for a hundred people, you are spoilt for choice. Halls, function rooms, whole floors of bars. If you want a table for six, any restaurant will do. But somewhere between fifteen and thirty guests, it gets difficult. Too many for a normal table. Not enough to justify a room built for a hundred. And almost everywhere you look, the food is an afterthought to the space. Here is what is actually worth knowing if that is the party you are planning. And if you would rather skip ahead, our private dining room in Hampstead seats 9 to 26, costs £39 a head, and there is no room hire fee. £200–800 Typical North London Minimum Spend £0 Room Hire At Bonoo 9–26 Guests In Our Room The Two Costs Nobody Mentions Upfront Most birthday venues in North London quote you one number and charge you two. The first is room hire, a flat fee for the space, typically £200 to £500 in this part of London and considerably more in central. The second is minimum spend, which is what your group has to spend on food and drink before the venue is happy. Some places charge both. A £300 hire fee and a £600 minimum spend means your party of twenty starts at £900 before anyone has decided what they are drinking. It is always worth asking the question plainly. Is there a room hire fee on top of the minimum spend? The answer varies enormously and it rarely appears on the website. For what it is worth, we do not charge room hire at all. Our minimum is £39 per person on food, and that is the whole of it. Is It Actually A Private Room? This is the question that catches people out most often. “Private dining” can mean a room with a door that closes. It can also mean a corner of the main restaurant with a screen wheeled across it, or a mezzanine overlooking a busy bar. Both are sold the same way. They are very different birthdays. A screened area does not stop noise. If you are hoping for speeches, or a toast, or simply a conversation that runs the length of the table, a partition will not give you that on a Friday night. Ask directly: is there a door? Is the room on a different floor? Will anyone else be in it? Ours is downstairs, with its own entrance and its own staircase, entirely separate from the restaurant above. Once your group is in, the space is yours. Six Questions Worth Asking Most birthday disappointments come from things nobody thought to ask. These are the ones that matter. ✦ Is there a room hire fee on top of the minimum spend? The single most common surprise. Ask before you fall in love with the room. ✦ Does the minimum spend include drinks? A £40 food minimum with a separate bar tab is a very different evening to £40 all in. Neither is wrong. You just need to know which you are agreeing to. ✦ How long is the room ours? Some venues run two sittings. Being asked to leave at nine is not what most people picture when they book a birthday. ✦ Can we bring a cake and decorations? Most places say yes. A few charge corkage on cake, which is worth discovering now rather than on the night. ✦ Is the deposit refundable? Plans change, particularly with larger groups. Ask what happens if you need to cancel and how much notice you need to give. ✦ How are dietary requirements handled? Any group of twenty will include vegetarians, vegans and allergies. Ask whether those guests get a proper alternative or a plate of sides. Why Sharing Food Works For A Birthday There is a practical argument for sharing plates at a party, beyond the fact that they taste good. Twenty people each receiving an identical plate at the same moment is efficient. It is not especially celebratory. Everyone eats, nobody talks across the table, and the meal is over in forty minutes. Dishes arriving in the middle of the table do something different. People reach across each other, pass things down, argue about the last piece of something. It keeps the table talking, which is rather the point of a birthday. It also handles dietary requirements far more gracefully. With Indian tapas, there is always something on the table that suits everyone, rather than one guest being handed a separate plate while the rest are served. Milestone Birthdays Need Slightly More A 30th, 40th or 50th birthday tends to carry more weight than an ordinary one, and the venue has to match that. Three things make the difference. Somewhere people can hear each other. If there is going to be a speech, or a toast, or a slideshow someone has spent a fortnight making, the room has to allow for it. Time. Milestone birthdays run long. People arrive, drift, sit down, get up again. A three-hour booking is the minimum you want, and it is worth asking what happens if it overruns. Something that feels like an occasion. Candlelight rather than strip lighting. A room that has been thought about. Guests notice, even if they never mention it. Birthdays At Bonoo Our private dining room is downstairs at our Hampstead restaurant on Finchley Road, with its own door and its own staircase. It seats 9 to 26. There is no room hire fee. The minimum is £39 per person on food, which for a group of twenty comes to £780. That sits comfortably below what most North London venues charge once hire and minimum spend are added together. Drinks are

Indian Takeaway In Hampstead: What Travels Well, And What Really Doesn’t

ORDER NOW Takeaway · Hampstead & Muswell Hill Indian Takeaway In Hampstead: What Travels Well, And What Really Doesn’t By Bonoo · Hampstead & Muswell Hill · 6 min read Every restaurant will tell you their food travels beautifully. Most of them are being generous with the truth. The honest position is that some Indian dishes are genuinely better twenty minutes after they leave the kitchen, some hold up perfectly well, and a few should really only be eaten standing next to the person who made them. We run Indian takeaway in Hampstead and Muswell Hill, so we have a fairly good view of which is which. Here is what we would actually tell you if you rang up and asked. What Improves On The Journey Slow-cooked curries are the obvious winners, and it is not just that they survive, they genuinely get better. Anything built on a long-simmered base continues to settle as it sits. The spices keep marrying, the sauce thickens slightly, and the whole thing becomes rounder. A black lentil dal that has been cooking overnight and then sits in a container for twenty minutes on the way to Finchley Road is arguably at its best when it arrives. Rich, dairy-based curries behave the same way. Korma, makhani, anything with cream or ground nuts in the base, the fat carries flavour and holds heat well, so they arrive hot and taste more developed than they did leaving the pass. Biryani travels exceptionally well for a different reason. It is sealed, layered and designed to be steamed in its own vessel. Twenty minutes in a container is not far off what it was doing in the kitchen anyway. What Holds Up Perfectly Well Tandoor dishes are more robust than people expect. The dry heat of the clay oven leaves meat charred at the edges and tender inside, and that texture does not collapse in transit the way anything fried in batter would. Lamb chops, chicken tikka, salmon tikka, tandoori prawns, all fine. They lose a little of the immediate smokiness you get sitting three feet from the tandoor, but the essential thing survives. Grilled vegetables are the same. Our tandoor-roasted broccoli arrives with the char intact. It is a slightly different dish to the one served at the table, but it is still very much the dish. Samosas and anything deep-fried and dry travel better than most people assume, because there is no sauce to soften the pastry. They stay crisp for a surprisingly long time. What We Would Gently Steer You Away From Chaat. All of it. The entire premise of chaat is the contrast between something crisp and something wet, assembled seconds before you eat it. Put it in a container and the crisp element surrenders almost immediately. By the time it reaches you it is a perfectly nice bowl of soft things, which is not what it was meant to be. Anything crisp that arrives already sitting in sauce has the same problem. If a dish depends on a textural contrast, that contrast is the first casualty of a car journey. Breads are more nuanced. Naan is fine if eaten promptly and genuinely disappointing if left twenty minutes on a kitchen counter while everything else is unpacked. Order it, but eat it first rather than last. Dosa does not travel. Nobody has solved this and we are not going to pretend we have. Ordering Better A few things that make a genuine difference when you order Indian food in Hampstead or anywhere else. ✦ Order breads for fewer people than you think Two naans between four is usually right for a takeaway. Bread that sits is bread that goes cold, and you will almost certainly have rice as well. ✦ Mix wet and dry An order of four curries arrives as four bowls of sauce. Balance it with something from the tandoor and something fresh, and the meal has some shape to it. ✦ Collection beats delivery for texture Not by a lot, but by enough. Ten minutes in your own car with the bag on the passenger seat is kinder to food than a driver with three other drops. ✦ Unpack immediately Steam trapped in a sealed container is what turns a good takeaway into a soggy one. Lids off the moment it lands, even if you are not eating for five minutes. ✦ Say if you are eating later If food is going to sit for half an hour, tell us. There are things we can do at our end, packing differently, holding a bread back, that make a real difference. Reheating, If You Have To Curries reheat well. Gently, in a pan, with a splash of water if the sauce has thickened too far. The microwave works but heats unevenly and can split a cream-based sauce. Tandoor dishes want dry heat, a hot oven for a few minutes rather than a microwave, which steams them and undoes the point of cooking them dry in the first place. Rice is best microwaved with a damp piece of kitchen paper over it. Naan wants an oven or a dry pan, briefly. Ordering From Us We do Indian takeaway in Hampstead from 675 Finchley Road, and in Muswell Hill from Fortis Green. Both restaurants offer collection and delivery, and both serve the same menu as the dining room, modern Indian tapas, small sharing plates rather than one large main each. Everything is prepared with certified halal ingredients, with vegetarian and vegan dishes throughout rather than confined to a corner of the menu. Collection is available through our website. Delivery is on Deliveroo, and it is worth checking you have the right branch, we have two, and they are four miles apart. Open seven days a week from 5pm. Collection & Delivery Order Indian Food In Hampstead Modern Indian tapas from 675 Finchley Road, Hampstead and Fortis Green, Muswell Hill. Halal certified. Open 7 days from 5pm. ORDER NOW BOOK A TABLE Hampstead NW2 ·

Indian Supper Club London: What to Expect

Bonoo Indian Tapas — London’s No.1 Indian restaurant on Tripadvisor and 4x London Curry Award winner — hosts an exclusive Indian Supper Club on 31st July. 10 bites, live piano, unlimited drinks. Just 25 guests.

Healthy Indian Food in London

Discover how Bonoo Indian Tapas in Hampstead is reimagining Indian food — tandoor cooking, ghee, fresh ingredients and a menu that proves Indian dining can be genuinely healthy.