The UK's best chef's table restaurants

We love to watch chefs work, hear the stories behind their dishes or have them talk us through techniques. We hunger for a taste of what elevates their restaurant food. Just what is their secret?

There is no better place to glean such insider knowledge than at a chef’s table. The concept comes in various formats: large tables that pitch you into the theatre of a working kitchen; intimate sessions that operate almost as cookery lessons; counter dining where you can marvel up close at exquisite plating and finishing; or chefs serving you their signature dishes as they reveal the creative inspiration behind them.

Entertaining, enlightening and delicious, here are 10 chef’s table experiences that take you behind the scenes on some of Britain’s hottest food.

Chef's table experiences in London

Evelyn’s Table, London

This 12-seat chef’s counter beneath Soho’s The Blue Posts pub found fame under chef, Luke Selby. With Luke now exec chef at Le Manoir, it’s time for another emerging talent to take the reins. James Goodyear (ex-Hide, Mugaritz, Oslo’s Maaemo) certainly has the CV and exciting ideas for Evelyn’s next phase. Ease into your evening in the first-floor wine bar, The Mulwray, before the culinary theatre begins. Directly before you at the marble kitchen pass, five chefs execute James’ vision – think ultra-seasonal UK produce, classical French foundations, Scandi and Japanese influences across a five-course menu of, for example, glazed quail, pine nut, satay and morels; or West Country lamb, toasted yeast and wild garlic. theblueposts.co.uk

KOL, Marylebone

Founded on a unique premise (can you cook authentic Mexican food using primarily British ingredients?), chef Santiago Lastra’s KOL is one those bucket list restaurants all food geeks want to eat at. Its 20-seat chef’s table – housed in a basement space and dressed like a traditional Oaxacan home complete with its own kitchen – is a memorable way to experience dishes such as langoustine taco with smoked chilli and sea buckthorn, or its adobo-cooked beef short rib and grilled halibut, served with tortillas and various accompaniments. kolrestaurant.com

Ekstedt at The Yard, Embankment

Swedish chef Niklas Ekstedt and his team are known for cooking over open flames, giving dishes a delicious smokiness and creating both warmth and theatre. The new chef’s table at the restaurant's London branch, led by Theres Andersson, gives diners front-row seats to the action. Join chefs in the kitchen to watch wild duck being smoked over juniper leaves, while oysters are plunged into the flames using an ancient flambadou contraption. To the left, a birchwood fire oven is where scallops are charcoaled, langoustine is baked then served in southern Swedish sparkling wine sauce with English truffle, and cep soufflés slowly rise to create a light-as-air dessert. The chef’s table experience is paired with volcanic wines that rotate based on the seasons, but includes special, ungrafted vine grapes ranging from dry, mineral-forward rieslings to assyrtiko using 80-year-old vines from Santorini, and elegant Oregon pinot noir. ekstedtattheyard.com

Chef’s Table @ The Sea, the Sea, Hackney

A remarkable transformation of a Haggerston railway arch, this 14-seat counter dining space has a futuristic glamour entirely in keeping with Portuguese exec chef Leo Carreira’s cooking. As well as running restaurants, The Sea, the Sea is a wholesale retailer of predominantly South West seafood to hospitality businesses. Leo and his team utilise this stellar produce to create cutting edge dishes. For example, dry-aged trout with banana miso or razor clams and caramelised yogurt. At the kitchen counter, chefs work omakase-style, and Leo shares his skills in regular masterclasses. theseathesea.net

Abajo, Mayfair

Colombian chef Miller Prada cooks over fire in his Japanese-Colombian fine dining restaurant, Humo. Downstairs at intimate chef’s table experience, Abajo, there’s space for ten diners, who chefs and sommeliers take on an evocative journey through the regions, communities and culinary tapestry of Colombia. The menu is split into five chapters, each spotlighting a hero ingredient. Corn, for example, is baked into a biscuit topped with grilled corn, its silk dried and fried to garnish trout mousse-stuffed morels and the husk fermented to make miso. Elsewhere, Mediterranean blue fin tuna tops a traditional plantain and coconut tamale, pressed East Sussex quail is charred in shallot ashes and Kagoshima beef brisket is slow-cooked in sugarcane honey reduction. To finish, Merinda tomato is presented in a fresh and delicate dessert medley of gels, ice cream, coal-torched meringue and choux buns. A delicate Japanese rice vodka cocktail kicks things off while wine pairings span south America, Spain, Italy and beyond. A velvet pouch of Colombian coffee beans to take away with the menu is a touching souvenir of a special evening. abajolondon.com

Behind, London

Miraculously, in early 2021, chef Andy Beynon’s 18-seat kitchen counter venue was awarded a Michelin star, despite lockdowns having restricted this new opening to just 20 operational days. Andy, who previously worked with Jason Atherton and Claude Bosi, has the pedigree to ensure his fish-focussed tasting menu excels. Guests eat at a striking, U-shaped counter, with a team of chefs cooking nearby, who then serve and talk guests through each surprise dish – no menu is provided upfront. These visually ravishing creations might range from trout, Tokyo turnips and a smoked kipper sauce (a kipper buerre blanc with trout roe, apple and chives), to cod with chicken jus, and a roast celeriac, smoked almond, preserved lemon and tarragon salsa. The evening doesn’t end with the bill, either. Each diner takes home a Behind bun, a croissant-brioche hybrid, coated in caramel and granola, for breakfast the next day. behindrestaurant.co.uk

Chef’s Studio Experience @ The Tent (at the End of the Universe), Marylebone

Chef John Javier’s Bedouin-styled Tent restaurant at 17 Little Portland Street is a super-cool cocoon of Middle Eastern-inspired sharing plates, purring DJ sets and live music, where guests dine under a remarkable, theatrical canopy of intergalactic starlight. Down below in the Studio (which, at weekends, operates as a basement nightclub), up to 12 diners can feast on an eight-course, family-style menu of modern Chinese and East Asian dishes, inspired by John’s time in Hong Kong and helming Sydney’s hip Master restaurant. The kitchen is not on display here, but instead – in a private dining/chef’s table hybrid – John serves guests and talks them through his dishes such as pork and prawn siu mai dumplings; lobster noodles with superior sauce; or wagyu beef short rib, malt pickled onion and shio kombu. little-portland.com

Chef’s Counter @ The Grill by Tom Booton, Dorchester Hotel, Mayfair

When, last year, Tom Booton’s name was appended to the Dorchester Grill, it heralded a new era for this grand hotel. Its smart dining room still dazzles – service is well drilled, but its fresh, informal vibe and sharing plates menu embody a shift to modernity. Dishes run from ’nduja scotch eggs to the showpiece “all the chicken” which includes a stuffed crown, glazed wings and chicken pies for two. Four diners can eat at the chef’s counter, where you can watch snacks such as cod doughnuts being finished as chefs barbecue lamb belly skewers. dorchestercollection.com

Aulis, Soho

Operating at a near-perfect intersection of impeccable produce, seasonality, tradition and modernism, Simon Rogan’s restaurants – most notably, his three Michelin star flagship, L’Enclume – serve some of Britain’s most progressive food. At this stylish Soho bolthole, 12 diners are given real insight into how, from Rogan’s Cumbrian farm to the deft work of his chefs (led at Aulis by Charlie Tayler), the group creates dishes such as Newlyn crab on roast chicken skin with oxalis and horseradish vinegar, or pork and eel doughnut, cured pork fat and caviar. Diners sit around a beautiful curving counter, talking to the chefs as they work, plate and enthuse. aulis.co.uk

Chef's tables across the UK

The Kitchen Table @ The Three Chimneys, Isle of Skye

Occupying an historic crofter’s farmhouse by Loch Dunvegan, the idyllic Chimneys has, for decades, made delicious use of regional ingredients such as Skye’s red deer or Sconser king scallops. A table for eight is tucked into chef Scott Davies’s busy kitchen, where the chefs talk to diners as they cook and step out from their sections to deliver modish plates of grilled potato bread with brown crab XO, crab claw, pear and lemon; or steamed, lightly pickled mussels, kohlrabi, lapsang souchong dashi and dill. If staying overnight in The House Over-By, look out for 2024 dates for Scott’s three-hour, three-course cookery classes, which go deep on game and seafood. threechimneys.co.uk

Chef’s Table @ Tallow, Tunbridge Wells, Kent

About as close to the cooking action as the chef’s table gets. On Tallow’s second floor, chef-owner Rob Taylor cooks for eight guests seated at a bespoke kitchen workspace. A staff member pours wines as Rob creates a seven-course menu, chats, fields questions, shares his techniques and his passion for incredible ingredients. These are skilfully used in dishes of, say, red mullet, fennel and bouillabaisse, or treacle-cured ribeye, bone marrow hash brown, roasted carrot and peppercorn sauce. tallowrestaurant.co.uk

Chef’s Table @ Cail Bruich, Glasgow

Chef Lorna McNee’s one-Michelin-star flagship includes a uniquely intimate two-seat chef’s table. This chic nook at one end of the kitchen pass, set around a bespoke triangular oak table, commands clear sightlines into the kitchen’s creation of tasting menu dishes such as crab, mussel, apple and caviar, or monkfish with langoustine XO, lime and ginger. A key feature of the chef’s table menu is a dish that revolves around an ingredient chosen by the champagne house, Krug. Recently, lemons inspired a barbecued Skye langoustine with smoked lemon beurre blanc, served with a glass of the latest of Krug’s grande cuvée champagnes. cailbruich.co.uk

Paradise Food, near Harrogate

For more than two decades, chefs Frances Atkins, Roger Olive and front-of-house manager John Tullett, held a Michelin star at the Yorke Arms. Today, this talented trio run Paradise, a handsome café-restaurant at Daleside Nurseries. Up to six diners can sit at a polished granite kitchen counter (popular with celebrating groups but also solo diners who want a little company), and watch Frances and Roger do their thing. Think rigorous technique, daily changing, seasonal menus and a desire to let the true flavours of prime regional and home-grown produce shine, in dishes of, for example, slow-cooked hare, rosemary gnocchi, smoked tongue, roots and greens, or rare breed pork belly with black pudding, mustard pommes purée and apple. paradisewithfrj.co.uk

Wood, Manchester

The open kitchen is the natural focal point at chef Simon Wood’s warmly buzzy city centre restaurant. Positioned front and centre before the pass, the chef’s table provides the best seats in the house. Watching any pro kitchen at work is compelling and, better still, this one feeds you a succession of on-point plates as you watch. Expect well executed modern dishes full of clever flavour combinations, such as deep-fried pommes Anna with aïoli; Wood’s coal-roasted celeriac shawarma with koji caramel; or sticky glazed lamb’s sweetbreads with corn, crispy chicken and thyme. woodrestaurantgroup.com

Eòrna, Edinburgh

Take a seat at this swish Stockbridge venue (a kitchen counter set-up, serving 12 guests) and, for around four hours, you’re in the hands of chef Brian Grigor and engaging wine enthusiast Glen Montgomery, two men dedicated to making sure you have a gastronomic blast. As Brian serves his seasonal, six-course menu and explains its evolution, Glen weaves around him pouring the good stuff – around 60 per cent of diners take the wine flight. Dishes might include smoked salmon tranche, cured locally to Brian’s recipe, served with lemon and beetroot purées, fresh apple, radish and smoked caviar, or partridge pithivier with parsnip purée and a duck black pepper jus. eornarestaurant.com

Chef’s Table @ Salt, Stratford-upon-Avon

A special space above Paul Foster’s Michelin star restaurant, its chef’s table is an entirely self-contained experience, with its own bathroom, and diners able to choose their own music. Chefs cook at hobs in and around the chef’s table, and the regularly changing dishes (stuffed saddle of lamb, labneh and green olive sauce; agnolotti pasta made from scratch), differ from Salt’s standard menu. Bookable for four to 10 people, the room is also used for guest chef events, cooking classes and Sunday lunch events, where Paul cooks your roast dinner while spinning his favourite albums. salt-restaurant.co.uk

Mr Smith’s @ Freemasons at Wiswell, near Clitheroe

By night, the prep area at chef Steven Smith’s glossy gastropub is transformed to create a chef’s table for 12 and a four-stool kitchen bench. Both offer rare embedded access to a top-flight working kitchen. There are several menu options but most diners opt for the five-course tasting menu. In dishes of tandoori roast scallop with Thai mussel curry, baked sweet potato purée and apple, or beef fillet with sticky cheek, pickled tongue, gherkin ketchup, beef fat chips and Mr Smith’s sauce (a special gravy full of Steven’s “favourite beefy bits”), that tasting menu fully fleshes out the Freemasons MO. That is, modern British, pub-adjacent dishes elevated by an elegant fine dining finesse. freemasonsatwiswell.com

Photographs by Rebecca Dickson, Charlie McKay