If 2026 has taught us anything, it is that apparently ten years is now long enough to qualify as nostalgia. The internet is currently in the throes of a collective yearning for 2016, romanticising everything from Snapchat filters and chokers to the music, make-up and general optimism of a time when nobody had yet heard the phrase ‘doomscrolling’.
Nostalgia, it seems, is having a moment. And London’s restaurants have found the same box in the attic.
Prawn cocktails are back. Devilled eggs have escaped the buffet table. Chicken Kyiv is respectable again. Knickerbocker Glories are being served in Mayfair and Baked Alaska is enjoying a comeback without a hint of irony. Somewhere, a Viennetta is waiting for its agent to call.
But this isn’t retro dining for retro dining’s sake. Chefs are rummaging through food’s back catalogue and reviving the dishes that were once glamorous, became deeply unfashionable and are suddenly rather fabulous again.
They have better ingredients, sharper presentation and, naturally, considerably higher prices.
Welcome to London’s nostalgia menu.
Prawn Cocktail: Langan’s Brasserie
Few dishes have travelled the social ladder quite like the prawn cocktail. Once the glamorous opening act to dinner, it eventually became shorthand for suburban dinner parties, wedding buffets and restaurants where the napkins were folded into fans.
At Langan’s Brasserie in Mayfair, the concept has been smartened up without losing what made it good in the first place. Its Shellfish Cocktail combines prawns and shrimp with avocado and Marie Rose, that unapologetically creamy pink sauce that defined generations of prawn cocktails.
There is no attempt to deconstruct it into foam or make you assemble it yourself. Thank God. It is essentially the old favourite after a very expensive haircut.
@langansbrasserie | langansbrasserie.com
Devilled Eggs: Rita’s
Devilled eggs have spent decades hovering somewhere between chic canapé and something your aunt brings to a buffet on a Tupperware tray.
At Rita’s in Soho, they are firmly back in the former camp. For the uninitiated, a devilled egg is pleasingly uncomplicated: a boiled egg halved, with the yolk removed, mixed into a creamy, seasoned filling and returned to the white.
Their comeback makes complete sense. They are small, photogenic, slightly excessive and can be eaten in two bites while holding a glass of something cold. In other words, we were fools to ever abandon them.
@ritasdining | ritasdining.com
Chicken Kyiv: Bob Bob Ricard Soho
There was a period when Chicken Kyiv belonged largely to the freezer aisle. Cut it open, watch garlic butter flood the plate and try not to burn the roof of your mouth. Dinner.
At Bob Bob Ricard Soho, it sits comfortably among the restaurant’s British and French classics, proving that beneath the reputation inflicted upon it by countless supermarket versions is a genuinely excellent idea: chicken wrapped around garlicky butter, coated in breadcrumbs and cooked until crisp.
It is rich, nostalgic and gloriously unfashionable in theory. Which, in 2026, makes it fashionable again.
@bobbobricard | bobbobricard.com
Lobster Thermidor: Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill
Nothing says occasion dining quite like taking an already luxurious crustacean, covering it in a rich sauce and putting it back inside its own shell.
Lobster Thermidor is old-school restaurant theatre at its finest. For anyone unfamiliar with the classic, cooked lobster is combined with a creamy, mustard-spiked sauce before being returned to its shell and browned until bubbling.
At Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill, the Piccadilly seafood institution that has been shucking oysters since 1916, it feels completely at home. This is a dish designed to be lingered over and preferably accompanied by a very cold glass of something.
Minimalism, it is fair to say, was not invited.
@bentleysoysterbar | bentleys.org
Fried Cherry Pie: Milk Burger
If the words ‘fried cherry pie’ immediately transport you to a fast-food counter, that is rather the point.
At newly opened Milk Burger on Westbourne Grove, Executive Chef Jorge Paredes, formerly of Sabor and Michelin-starred OMA, is taking familiar comfort food and giving it a gastronomic glow-up.
The fried cherry pie is perhaps the most nostalgic example. Inspired by the sort of hot, fruit-filled pastry once handed over in a cardboard sleeve, it belongs to the same gloriously unfashionable family as milkshakes, sundaes and desserts that require a warning about the temperature of their filling.
At a restaurant pairing burgers with Champagne, suddenly fried pie feels rather fabulous again. Which, frankly, is quite the career comeback.
@milkburger.uk
Knickerbocker Glory: Dovetale
Before ‘Instagrammable desserts’ existed, we had the Knickerbocker Glory.
A towering glass of ice cream, fruit, sauce, cream and whatever else could reasonably be balanced on top, it was the sort of dessert that arrived with enough vertical ambition to block your view of the person opposite.
Now it has checked into Mayfair.
At Dovetale, the restaurant at 1 Hotel Mayfair, the Knickerbocker Glory is back on the dessert menu, and the fundamental joy remains untouched. It is tall, excessive and completely uninterested in restraint.
After years of desserts described using words such as ‘soil’, ‘essence’ and ‘textures’, there is something wonderfully refreshing about ordering a massive sundae.
@dovetalelondon | dovetalelondon.com
Profiteroles: Café 22
Café 22 could practically have written the manifesto for London’s nostalgic food revival itself. When the Mayfair restaurant reopened this year, its announcement declared: ‘The Classics are back and they’ve had a little work done.’
Exactly.
Its French-inspired menu embraces nostalgia rather than disguising it, with crème brûlée, tarte Tatin and profiteroles among the desserts.
Profiteroles are little choux pastry buns traditionally filled with cream and covered in chocolate sauce. They were once unavoidable, then seemed to disappear while London became distracted by Basque cheesecake and soft serve.
Their return at Café 22 feels almost inevitable. Some desserts do not need reinvention. Sometimes all you really want is pastry, cream and an irresponsible quantity of chocolate.
@the.cafe22 | thecafe22.com
Black Forest Gâteau: Bellanger
Black Forest gâteau might be the ultimate fallen dinner-party status symbol.
Chocolate sponge, cherries and cream once made it the height of sophistication before supermarket versions helped send it tumbling towards culinary punchline territory.
Now Bellanger in Islington has put the classic dessert firmly back among the pâtisseries, which raises an important question: why did we ever stop eating it?
Chocolate and cherries remain excellent friends. Cream has done nothing wrong. The problem was never Black Forest gâteau itself, only the decades of disappointing versions that followed it.
In the grand rehabilitation of retro desserts, this one was overdue parole.
@bellanger_n1 | bellanger.co.uk
Baked Alaska: The Delaunay
Baked Alaska has always sounded faintly impossible.
Ice cream is surrounded by sponge and meringue, then heated to colour the outside without melting the frozen centre. It is part pudding, part science experiment and exactly the sort of theatrical restaurant dessert that minimalism temporarily killed off.
At The Delaunay in Aldwych, it is back where it belongs: in a grand London dining room where ordering something flamboyant feels entirely appropriate.
There is something pleasingly defiant about its return. After years of tiny, architecturally precise desserts arriving on enormous plates, here is a pudding whose entire personality is essentially: look at me.
We are looking.
@thedelaunay | thedelaunay.com
Banana Split: The Wolseley Piccadilly
Few retro desserts announce themselves quite as cheerfully as a banana split.
The formula is gloriously straightforward: banana, ice cream, cream, chocolate and enough additional sweetness to make the original piece of fruit almost nutritionally irrelevant.
At The Wolseley Piccadilly, the banana is caramelised and joined by vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, bitter chocolate sauce and flaked almonds. It is recognisably the sundae of childhood menus, just wearing considerably better clothes.
And perhaps that is the point of London’s nostalgic food revival. The dishes we once dismissed as dated were never necessarily bad. We had simply eaten too many bad versions of them. Now they are back, polished up and ready for another turn at the table.
Somewhere, that Viennetta’s phone has just started ringing.
@thewolseley | thewolseleypiccadilly.com
