Home › Eat and drink

The Best Middle Eastern Restaurants in W1: Seven Picks, From a Soho Kabab Counter to Lebanese Meze in Mayfair

The best Middle Eastern restaurants in W1 cover far more than one cuisine: Jerusalem-style cooking at a Soho kitchen counter, Tehran kabab-house grilling, a Syrian chef's dining room above Carnaby Street, vegetable-led sharing plates, Persian all-day cafés in Fitzrovia and Marylebone, and a Lebanese restaurant on Curzon Street. We picked seven and checked every address and the opening hours quoted here against each restaurant's own website or its Michelin Guide listing in October 2026. All seven are inside the W1 postcode; Honey & Co's original Lamb's Conduit Street restaurant is in WC1, so its Great Portland Street site is the one listed here.

1. The Palomar, Soho

34 Rupert Street, W1D 6DN. Opened in May 2014 where Soho meets Chinatown, The Palomar cooks Middle Eastern food shaped by Jerusalem, with bread baked in-house daily and a menu prepared fresh each morning. The seats to get are at the kitchen bar, where the chefs work in full view and the noise is part of the evening; the back dining room is calmer. The restaurant says it has held a Michelin Bib Gourmand since 2014, and the wine list leans to minimal-intervention bottles. It is three minutes' walk from Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square stations.

2. Berenjak, Soho

27 Romilly Street, W1D 5AL. Berenjak is modelled on the kabab houses of Tehran: a small, packed room with a counter facing the tandoor and the charcoal mangal grill. The Michelin Guide lists it as a Persian restaurant and singles out the coal-cooked aubergine and lamb shoulder kabab. Order the breads and dips, a couple of kababs and the rice, and sit at the counter if you can. It is small and fills up every night, so book ahead.

3. Imad's Syrian Kitchen, Soho

Top floor, Kingly Court, W1B 5PW. Imad Alarnab ran restaurants in Damascus before he came to the UK as a refugee, and his Kingly Court dining room, reached down the walkway beside the Dr Martens shop on Carnaby Street, has become one of the warmest rooms in Soho. Expect Syrian home cooking: falafel, hummus, fattet and slow-cooked lamb. It is one of the few places on this list that does breakfast, served until 11.30am Monday to Saturday. Open Monday to Wednesday 8.30am to 9.30pm, Thursday and Friday 8.30am to 10pm, Saturday 9am to 10pm and Sunday 11am to 9pm.

4. Bubala, Soho

15 Poland Street, W1F 8PR. Bubala, Yiddish for "darling", is a vegetable-led restaurant inspired by Middle Eastern flavours, where everything is made to share. The easiest order is the "Bubala Knows Best" set menu, which brings the dishes out in waves. It suits a group with vegetarians in it, or anyone who has eaten their way through too many kababs. Open Monday to Friday noon to 3pm and 5pm to 11pm, Saturday noon to 11.30pm and Sunday noon to 10pm. There are also branches in Spitalfields, King's Cross and Covent Garden.

5. Honey & Co. Great Portland, Fitzrovia

216 Great Portland Street, W1W 5QW. Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer's Great Portland Street site is a deli by day and a wine bar and dining room by night. At lunchtime the counter is filled with sandwiches, salads, dips, cakes and pastries to eat in or take away; in the evening the counter becomes a communal table and the menu moves to seasonal Middle Eastern sharing plates and larger dishes, with a wine list put together with Keeling Andrew. It is a short walk from Great Portland Street and Regent's Park stations, and good for groups.

6. Naroon, Fitzrovia and Marylebone

65 Great Titchfield Street, W1W 7PS, and 17 New Cavendish Street, Marylebone. Naroon is a Persian restaurant group with two W1 dining rooms and a takeaway counter next door to the Fitzrovia site, at 63 Great Titchfield Street. It works from breakfast to dinner: the Fitzrovia restaurant is open every day from 10.30am to 10.30pm, which makes it useful when you want rice, kababs and stews outside normal lunch and dinner hours. It also has a private dining room for birthdays and team dinners.

7. Noura Mayfair

16 Curzon Street, W1J 5HP. Noura is a Lebanese family business: Nader and Jocelyne Bou Antoun started out in Lebanon in the 1970s, opened in Paris in 1980 and later brought the restaurant to London. The Mayfair restaurant is the classic Lebanese meze experience, with cold and hot meze, charcoal grills and Lebanese wine, and there is a lounge alongside. It is a short walk from Green Park station, and handy for a long lunch before or after a walk round Shepherd Market.

How to choose

For more places to eat in the postcode, see our where to eat in W1 guide, the best restaurants in Soho, cheap eats in Soho and Chinatown and our list of Michelin-starred restaurants in W1, or go back to the W1 London homepage.

Addresses and opening hours from each restaurant's website and the Michelin Guide, checked October 2026. Hours change around holidays; check before you go.