The best restaurants in London open for Christmas Day lunch and dinner

This grand Mayfair restaurant – open since 1976 – is a London institution and as such, is offering a classic Christmas Day feast. It's £195 a head, and includes scallop gratin or foie gras terrine, before a big ticket roasted norfolk bronze turkey with pigs in blankets, honey-roasted parsnips, roast potato, yorkshire pudding, roasted chestnuts and sprouts.

Perhaps our favourite of the London branches of Hawksmoor, this big, glammy room inside the Grade I-listed St Pancras London Hotel, with its double-height ceilings, intricate molding, and uber-extra glitz was designed in 1873 by the daddy of gothic revival architects, Sir George Gilbert Scott. Open on Christmas Day and with £200 per head menu (£75 per child), come for smoked salmon, charcoal-roast scallops, fillet carpaccio or ash-baked beetroot salad as well as charcoal-roasted, dry-aged prime rib with beef-dripping roast potatoes, buttered carrots, sprouts, chestnuts, maple glazed cows-in-blankets and bone marrow stuffing. No turkey, though. Which might just be a good thing. 

Tucked down a sought-after Mayfair mews, this venerable establishment, in varnished wood and tartan, is festive perfection. Three decadent courses and an amuse bouche, as well as mince pies and glass of Champagne is £175 and is served between 12-4pm. 

Piccadilly's grand dining room will be open on Christmas Day from 11.30am to 5pm, with a festive lunch that does all the classics: think smoked salmon, turkey with the finest of trimmings and Christmas pudding with brandy butter. Want to go off piste? Pump the veggie baked cauliflower gratin and fig and apple sticky toffee pud. The Christmas menu is £90 per person (and a not-too-bad-at-all £70 for the vegetarian option). 

Plough face-first into the festive set menu from Dinner by Heston Blumenthal alumni Will Murray and Jack Croft, whose St James’s Market space is all about being sassily sustainable, growing their own produce and doing their own whole-animal butchery. At £250 a head for seatings on December 25, expect salmon belly crumpet, dressed Devon crab, beef tartare with oyster mayonnaise, mushroom parfait with Wiltshire truffle, and a main event of bronze turkey, or venison wellington. Save space for a special pud of yule log and mince pies.

London’s oldest Indian restaurant – it opened way back in 1926 – Veeraswamy scored their first Michelin star in 2016. Open for Xmas Day – alongside sister spots Chutney Mary in St James’s and Amaya in Belgravia – their three course a la carte menu is £120 a head and if you opt for the lunch seating, a live band will be playing. Who needs turkey when you can have meltingly soft paneer and Travancore prawn curry? 

Step inside the Great Northern Hotel’s Rails Restaurant for a classy three courses, including roasted squash & rocket salad, roast turkey, beef sirloin, or black cod. It's £115 a head including that all-important welcome glass of something fizzy. Mince pies, as well as cheese and chutney are also on the menu, and there are two seatings: 12pm and 3pm – leaving you time to get home and snooze away in front of a Paddington movie. 

Want to escape all things Christmas, but still fancy eating well on December 25? Head to Tayyabs. It’s business as usual at this Whitechapel stalwart – and there’s not a whiff of turkey in sight, just their regular, extensive menu of Punjabi dishes to pick from. The kebabs are fiendishly good, as is the chilli-spiked lamb served simmering in a karahi.

The flashiest spot in town, The Ritz’s double Michelin-starred restaurant is of course open on Christmas Day. Black-tie lunch is six-courses, with a live band and a visit from Santa with gifts for all the kiddies as well as a caricaturist for some reason. It’s a beefy £670 per adult and £365 per child. Alright for some!

This is the first year that super-chef Ollie Dabbous’s Michelin-starred restaurant-and-bar complex Hide will be open on Xmas Day. The £295 menu comes from Chef Director Josh Angus and includes a Cornish lobster cocktail and the choice of Yorkshire turkey, bread sauce and cranberries; 30-day dry-aged Lake District striploin of beef, bone marrow red wine jus; or salmon en croûte with pommes purée & champagne sauce.

Sale e Pepe Mare - the seafood focussed younger sibling of classic London Italian restaurant Sale e Pepe - will be open Christmas Day for the likes of linguine vongole, gambero rosso, and lashings of tableside tiramisu. Find it inside The Langham Hotel in Marylebone. 

There’s a gentleman’s club feel to this grand, Grade II-listed Victorian building (once a library) and the high ceiling, book-lined gallery and crisp napery convey a sense of occasion. Perfect then for Xmas dinner, where Executive Chef Vivek Singh offers four courses of Indian cooking, including a garam masala-spiced Christmas pud. Available 12-4pm, it's £150 a head.