The 5 best Christmas dinner venues in Covent Garden

Located in Covent Garden’s ME London hotel is the popular steakhouse, STK. With its high ceilings, and sleek interiors (thanks to the wood dining tables and stylised centrepieces and chandeliers), it’s a modern dining destination that’s suitable year-round. Head to their Strand-based restaurant for a Christmas dinner that’s a delight to the eyes, and stomach.

Guests can expect a private dining experience in either their 150-person bistro restaurant or their smaller 40-person private dining room. On the menu? Roasted turkey or prime rib, mac and cheese, green beans, truffle chips, Yorkshire pudding, chestnut stuffing and cranberry sauce plus a few festive cocktails (and mocktails) to top it all off.

If my grandmother had tinsel, she’d be a Christmas tree or something like that…

Luciano, the Italian restaurant owned by beloved chef (of This Morning fame), Gino D'Acampo, has found its home in the swanky Covent Garden hotel, ME London.

Host Christmas dinners in the restaurant for parties of up to 60 (or semi-private hire for up to 35). Guests can look forward to festive dishes including turkey in masala sauce, green beans, butter and sage, black truffle gnocchi with wild mushrooms and Christmas cocktails like their ‘There’s something about rosemary’ (pear vodka, elderflower, blackberries and apple) and Blackberry Nohito.

Buon Natale!

Having only opened its doors in 2022, Covent Garden’s Amano is a hotel that’s equal parts style and substance – as are the culinary options on offer.

Take their signature restaurant, Penelope’s, a fusion of Spanish and Israeli cuisine. Serving up the likes of Israeli chicken sofrito, and mezze, alongside paella and seafood, it’s a culinary collision that works, set against an ultra-stylised backdrop. And what’s more is that their 20-person private dining room is up for grabs – for all feasts, festive or otherwise.

Christmas dinner has never looked so exciting.

Tomato, tomato, roast dinner or barbecue, in the words of the multi-branch smokehouse, Temper, ‘it’s all f****** delicious’. Bringing an elevated barbecue experience to Covent Garden’s Mercer Walk across 2 floors, the restaurant focuses on rare breed, grass-fed, aged beef that is butchered in-house and smoked in an open fire pit.

While their open kitchen sits centre stage on the first floor, their ground floor The Den space offers a semi-private room for up to 22 guests. Come Christmas, diners can look forward to two set festive menus, the aptly named Festive Feast (£59) and the Fancy Festive Feast (£79) with steak, brisket, cheeseburgers, wood-roasted fish and smoked lamb shoulder to choose from. A selection of wines, spirits and Mexican-inspired cocktails (¿Un Grande Humo, alguien?) are also available for the inevitable festive cheers.

One of the best things about Christmas dinners is sharing. Passing dishes, bottles of bubbly and the bits of conversation that come along with it are essential to any festive feast, no matter your choice of cuisine.

Tapping into this feeling are the Chinese chain restaurant Ping Pong. Across three floors, their Covent Garden branch offer a reliably satisfying alternative to your usual Christmas dinner. At £35 per person, their parcels of joy set menu gives diners a festive twist on the restaurant’s much-loved dumplings and cocktails offering. Think dumplings of the crab and champagne, leek and mushroom variety, black and gold custard buns and popcorn old fashioneds, prosecco and lychee and roses martinis. That’s your meat-eater, veggie, vegan and GF crowd covered, then.