Around Regent Street - What to See and Where to Eat and Drink (1.3 Km)
- philip carey
- Jul 9, 2023
- 10 min read
Updated: Aug 16, 2024
Start at Oxford Circus Station
Finish at Piccadilly Circus Station
THE EXPERIENCE
Fashion and trendy shopping food and drink route
This takes you on a great ‘Eat, Drink and Be Merry’ tour from Oxford Street in the north through Kingly Street, Carnaby Street Heddon Street, and Regent Street before emerging onto Piccadilly and finishing at Piccadilly Circus. It has a wide range of pubs, bars, restaurants, and cafes to suit all tastes and pockets. It also has theatres, amusements and galleries close by as well as being on the edge of the West End shopping district and Soho.
The route is excellent for atmosphere, history, iconic sights, crowds, shops, cinemas, museums, a village feel, narrow streets, and lots of places to eat, drink and be merry.
BEST TIME
Morning- This route can be quite busy along most of this route but it tends to be reasonably quiet in the mornings. The best time to explore the route is early morning when the lighting is at its best and few people are around. It is also a great way to discover places for breakfast.
Day - This route will get busy during the day especially from lunchtime onwards
Evening - This route will be busy in the evening.
ROUTE OVERVIEW
This 1.3 km route starts on Oxford Street outside Oxford Circus Station. It heads down Argyll Street towards Liberty London on Great Marlborough Street where it turns right and then immediately left into Kingly Street. This street has plenty of places to eat and drink along its length and even more when you turn into Kingly Court on the left side towards the end. This has three floors of places to eat and drink and will exit onto Carnaby Street where the route turns right and then right again onto Beak Street before exiting onto Regent Street. The route goes directly across into a small alleyway and the delightful Heddon Street with its great restaurants before briefly emerging onto Regent Street and then down an alleyway called Swallow Street, with its restaurants, to emerge onto Piccadilly by St James's Church. Turning left will take you back to the lights at Piccadilly Circus past the Dilly Hotel.
See the route at speed (1:34)
Use this to see what the route looks like as if you were doing it at speed and to make you more familiar with what you will see along the way.
GOOGLE AND STRAVA MAPS
Use 'My Google Maps' to explore this route's venues. If you are using a mobile device, the map can help you find the start point for the route, navigate to places of interest, and show your position on the map.
What to see and places to eat, drink and be merry.
What to See List
1 Argyll Street and the London Palladium
2 Liberty London
3 Carnaby Street
4 Kingly Street and Court – For food and drink
5 Golden Square
6 Heddon Street
7 Saville Row
8 Regent Street Shopping
9 Café Royal and Glasshouse Street
10 St James’s Church
11 Piccadilly
12 Piccadilly Circus
Around Regent Street - Pubs and Bars
Many bars and pubs are along the route, with more nearby.
Here is a listing of nearby pubs and bars.
PUBS
O'Neill's Irish Pub & Kitchen
Carnaby St, Carnaby, London W1F 7DP
The White Horse
16 Newburgh St, Greater, Carnaby, London W1F 7RY
The Ganton Arms
18-20 Ganton St, Carnaby, London W1F 7BU
Blue Posts
18 Kingly St, Carnaby, London W1B 5PX
Red Lion
14 Kingly St, Carnaby, London W1B 5PR
Old Coffee House
49 Beak St, Carnaby, London W1F 9SF
The Sun & 13 Cantons
21 Great Pulteney St, London W1F 9NG
The Red Lion
2 Duke of York St, St. James's, London SW1Y 6JP
John Snow
39 Broadwick St, Carnaby, London W1F 9QJ
The Crown
64 Brewer St, Greater, London W1F 9TP
Three Crowns
19 Babmaes St, St. James's, London SW1Y 6HD
The Argyll Arms
18 Argyll St, Greater, London W1F 7TP
Masons Arms
38 Maddox St, London W1S 1PY
Glassblower
40-42 Glasshouse St, London W1B 5JY
The Clachan
34 Kingly St, Greater, Carnaby, London W1B 5QH
The Queen's Head
15 Denman St, London W1D 7HN
Shakespeare’s Head
29 Great Marlborough St, Carnaby, London W1F 7HZ
BARS
Antidote Wine Bar & Wine Shop
12A Newburgh St, Carnaby, London W1F 7RR
Ain't Nothin But The Blues Bar
20 Kingly St, Carnaby, London W1B 5PZ
https://www.facebook.com/kinglystreetblues/?locale=en_GB
Cahoots Ticket Hall & Signal Station
5 Kingly St, Carnaby, London W1B 5PF
Simmons Bar | Piccadilly Circus
4 Golden Square, London W1F 9HT
Be At One - Regent Street
10 Beak St, London W1F 9RD
Green Bar
Hotel Café Royal, 10 Air St, London W1B 5AB
5th View
Waterstones
203-205 Piccadilly, St. James's, London W1J 9HD
Aqua Spirit
5th Floor 240 Regent Street (Entrance, 30 Argyll St, London W1B 3BR
Dirty Martini Hanover Square
10C Hanover Square, London W1S 1JH
Downstairs at The Dilly
21 Piccadilly, London W1J 0BH
Slug & Lettuce - Hanover Street
19 Hanover St, London W1S 1YR
Bar Américain
(Zelda) 20 Sherwood St, London W1F 7ED
Old Gotham City
Twenty Air Street, 77 Brewer St, London W1F 9ZN
Around Regent Street - Places to Eat
There is a wide selection of places to eat along the route. These links will help you find the ones that suit your taste and pocket.
Open Table London prides itself on bringing together people and the restaurants they love in the moments that matter, offering dining options, experiences, and offers.
The Fork—This is a Tripadvisor company that relies as much on its communities of users as its communities of restaurateurs. You can search by price, cuisine, rating, and special offers.
Hardens – This is probably the UK's most comprehensive independent restaurant guide, with reviews written by its members. It ranks each place by its food, services and ambience and has extensive search capabilities.
Design My Night This site is designed to help you discover and unlock secret, new and unique city experiences, from events to bars and restaurants, but it is also a site to help plan and book online. It has categories for restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs, and 'what's on'.
Afternoon tea This is an Afternoon Tea guide to help you find the 'perfect venue for afternoon tea' in London and the UK. It provides descriptions, offers, booking facilities and an extensive search option.
Around Regent Street - Things to Do
This area has several things to do along the routeor nearby including many theatres, cimemas and museums. Here are some of them.
Twist Museum
248 Oxford St, London W1C 1DH
Piccadilly Theatre
16 Denman St, London W1D 7DY
Sondheim Theatre
51 Shaftesbury Ave, London W1D 6BA
Theatre Royal Haymarket
18 Suffolk St, London SW1Y 4HT
The Piano Works West-End
47 Whitcomb St., London WC2H 7DH
Apollo Theatre
Shaftesbury Ave, London W1D 7EZ
Gielgud Theatre
Shaftesbury Ave, London W1D 6AR
Lyric Theatre
29 Shaftesbury Ave, London W1D 7ES
His (Her) Majesty's Theatre
Haymarket, St. James's, London SW1Y 4QL
Soho Theatre
21 Dean St, London W1D 3NE
The London Palladium
8 Argyll St, London W1F 7TF
The Criterion Theatre
218-223 Piccadilly, St. James's, London W1J 9HR
Vue Cinema London – Piccadilly
19 Lower, Regent St., St. James's, London SW1Y 4LR
Prince of Wales Theatre
Coventry St, London W1D 6AS
www.princeofwalestheatre.co.uk
The Harold Pinter Theatre
Panton St, London SW1Y 4DN
PHOTO GALLERY
This gallery provides a descriptive and visual reference to many sights along this route. Double-click to see the image in full size.
HISTORY & INTERESTING FACTS
From Oxford Circus to Carnaby Street
Argyll Arms
The Argyll Arms pub takes its name from the Duke of Argyll – one of Marlborough's generals whose London mansion once occupied this spot. It's right next to Oxford Circus Station and dates from 1718. This pub and most of its fittings date from the 1860s and is a fine example of what a Victorian pub would have looked like in its day. Argyll Street dates from the 18th century and links Oxford Street to Carnaby Street.
London Palladium
The London Palladium theatre started as The Palladium, a premier venue for various performances, and was built to compete with the London Hippodrome and the London Coliseum. Between 1955 and 1969, Sunday Night at the London Palladium was held at the venue and produced for the ITV network. The show included a performance by The Beatles in 1963. In 2000, it was acquired by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group.
Kingly Street
Kingly Street has a rich history dating back to the 17th century. It was originally known as King Street and was part of the Carnaby Estate, which was developed in the late 1600s by Richard Tyler. The area became a notable residential area during this time. Kingly Street is home to several popular restaurants and bars. The renowned pub, The Clachan, has been a staple on the street for years, attracting both locals and tourists with its traditional British pub atmosphere.
Kingly Court
You can access Kingly Court from Beak Street, Carnaby Street and Kingly Street. This is three floors of open-air alfresco dining with over 20 international concept restaurants, bars and cafés in its vibrant courtyard. It is open air in the summer months and covered in the winter. Kingly Court’s restaurants have been carefully chosen to offer a unique dining experience that can’t be found anywhere else in London.
Carnaby Street
The street dates from the 17th century and takes its name from Karnaby House, which was built there in 1683. Carnaby Street was close to the site of a serious cholera outbreak in 1854, which John Snow, an English physician, traced to a nearby water pump in Broad Street. Carnaby Street is most famous for London’s fashion, and the area is synonymous with the Swinging Sixties. Exclusive boutiques sold the latest Mod looks from the top designers, and groups such as The Rolling Stones and The Beatles shopped there. Today, it is still home to fashionable independent boutiques.
Along Regent Street
Regent Street
Regent Street was named after the Prince Regent, who would later become George IV. The street’s layout was completed in 1825 and was an early example of town planning, replacing earlier roads and slums, including Swallow Street. John Nash’s street layout has survived, although all the original buildings have been replaced following reconstruction in the late 19th century, apart from All Souls Church at Portland Place. Regent Street was designed for high fashion and to compete with Bond Street. It retains this reputation today.
Heddon Street
Heddon Street is a small, quiet, U-shaped side street and alleyway off Regent Street – almost opposite Beak Street – with several great places to eat and drink, including Mano Mayfair and Gordon Ramsey’s Heddon Street Kitchen. England’s first cabaret club opened its doors at 9 Heddon Street in 1912. David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album cover of 1972 was shot on Heddon Street under the K West sign – (pre-the street’s 2000 re-design).
Apple Store
The Apple Store opened on Regent Street on 20 November 2004. At the time, this was the first such store in Europe. However, the building dates back to 1898 and it was the studio of the Victorian Mosaic Salvietti of Venice. He also did several mosaics in St. Paul's cathedrals, as well as the Houses of Parliament and the Albert Memorial. Look for the four coats of arms and two lions above the arches.
No Tall Buildings
You will notice as you look around that there are not a lot of tall buildings in this area. That is because Regent Street is a conservation area, and you needed to maintain strategic views across the whole length of the street because the place is affected by Primrose Hill to the Palace of Westminster strategic view line.
Hamleys
Hamleys is London’s oldest and largest toy shop stretches over seven floors and has over 50,000 lines of toys and receives around five million visitors a year. It was founded by William Hamleys as “Noah’s Ark” in High Holborn in 1760 and moved to its current site on Regent Street in 1881. In 1938, Queen Mary, consort of King George V, gave Hamleys a royal warrant, and in 1955, Queen Elizabeth II granted the company a second royal warrant as a “toys and sports merchant. It was bombed five times during the Second World War.
Around Piccadilly Circus
Café Royal
The 5-star Hotel Café Royal at 68 Regent Street in Piccadilly, was originally set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant.
By the 1890s the Café Royal had become the place to see and be seen at. Its patrons have included Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, Noël Coward, Brigitte Bardot, J. Paul Getty, George Bernard Shaw, Mick Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor, Muhammad Ali and Diana, Princess of Wales.
The Café Royal closed in December 2008 and David Chipperfield Architects, with Donald Insall Associates, restored and transformed the building into a hotel with 160 rooms and suites. It now contains an array of dining rooms and bars, a private members club, meeting rooms, a ballroom and a wellbeing spa and gym with an 18-metre pool. The Oscar Wilde Lounge provides a traditional afternoon tea service.
Piccadilly Circus Lights
Yoko Ono once spent an estimated £150k to display the lyrics from her late husband John Lennon’s song Imagine. For three months in 2002, the words ‘Imagine all the people living life in peace’ were displayed simply in black on a white background.
St. James’s Piccadilly Church
The beautiful church of St. James’s was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1684 and is the only one he built on a virgin site. It has been the parish church for the area of St James since 1685. The church was severely damaged by enemy action during the London Blitz in October 1940 and was restored in 1954. Today, the church also performs many concerts and has an outdoor market.
The Dilly Hotel
The Dilly Hotel on Piccadilly has been here since 1908, when Norman Shaw designed the luxurious Piccadilly Hotel with a swimming pool behind the columns. It was formerly known as the Le Méridien Piccadilly and has been called The Dilly since it opened again in the spring of 2021 as a 5-star luxury hotel. Archer Hotel Capital owns it, and it has over 200 rooms, two restaurants, bars and a dance studio.
The Piccadilly Theatre
The Piccadilly Theatre is located at the junction of Denman Street and Sherwood Street, near Piccadilly Circus. The impresario Edward Laurillard acquired a site behind Piccadilly Circus occupied by derelict stables and built a theatre there. It was designed by Bertie Crewe and Edward A. Stone with a simple façade that concealed an elaborate Art Deco interior with a 1,232-seat auditorium decorated in shades of pink. It was claimed that if all the bricks used in the building were laid in a straight line, they would stretch from London to Paris. In its early years, the theatre presented a wide range of productions and was briefly a cinema. Notable productions at the Piccadilly have included Grease, Jersey Boys, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, Death of a Salesman and now the stage adaptation of the Oscar-winning Moulin Rouge! The Musical.
VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE AREA
Click on the picture below to go on a 360 virtual tour of the shopping areas and look around.
Use the route to explore this location by looking around in 360, taking in the sights and sounds, listening to an audio recording about the area and going on a virtual tour.
Browse the gallery to find out what you can see along the way.
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