The fine art of cuisine usually revolves around carefully balancing flavours to craft a gourmet delicacy, but there’s something to be said for the opposite approach as well. The one where you just pile everything on, defying all laws and reason, more and more, until the final result makes eyes pop just from the description. In this list, you’ll find the absolute peak of culinary indulgence in the capital – the most outrageous dishes in London. Enjoy!
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Guide to the most outrageous dishes in London
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The most outrageous dishes in London
- 1Polo Bar Pancake Tower Challenge
- 2Chick 'n' Sours The Whole Fry
- 3The Blues Kitchen Deep-fried delights
- 4Story The Oil of Life
- 5Koya Unique fusion udon
- 6Maxwell's Bar & Grill Get freaky
- 7Fishcotheque A gourmet Scottish treat
- 8Meatliquor Deep-fried mac 'n' choreezo
- 9Blacklock All-in roast
- 10Big Mamma Group Over-the-top from arrival to dessert and beyond
- 11Elvet Steakhouse Wrap it in gold
- 12The Famous Cock Tavern Not for calorie-counters
- 13Fowl When you gaze into the chicken pie...
- 14Mammasantissima Big social media hits
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The most outrageous dishes in London
Pancake Tower Challenge
For anyone who’s ever eaten a stack of pancakes and wished for just one more, the 24/7 Polo Bar sees you. Their Pancake Tower is described as an epic stack of ten pancakes, filled with your choice of berries, cookies and cream, or banoffee. It’s billed as a challenge, so if you manage to demolish this decadent structure within 15 minutes, you get a free bottle of prosecco, but there’s nothing wrong with taking your sweet time with it. Emphasis on sweet.
- 176 Bishopsgate, The City/City of London
- Website •
- Read more on Thatsup
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The Whole Fry
It’s fried chicken. Pardon, it’s A fried chicken. A whole chicken, gently dipped into boiling oil and fried until it’s encased in a crispy shell, to be pierced with a satisfying crunch only by your teeth. The restaurant says the Whole Fry is meant for two people, but there are those out there who proved they’re not chicken by braving it on their own and living to tell the tale. Due to the brining process involved in the preparation of this delicacy, you’ll have to order it 48 hours in advance.
- 390 Kingsland Rd, Dalston 1a Earlham St, Covent Garden
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Deep-fried delights
Cons: the famed love-them-or-be-quite-indifferent-to-them Oreo cookies are deep-fried in batter, which makes it hard to twist them apart and separate the filling from the biscuit. Additionally, dipping them into milk doesn’t work as well as one would hope for, so that’s both of the traditional Oreo-eating methods down the drain. Pros: they’re deep-fried in batter.
- 40 Acre Lane, Brixton 111-113 Camden High Street, Camden Town 134-146 Curtain Rd, Shoreditch
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The Oil of Life
Even Michelin-starred restaurants aren’t averse to throwing down an outlandish dish or two. Chef Tom Sellers’ Southwark restaurant tells an edible story through its menu, with signature classics such as Candle, a beef-dripping "candle" that melts to provide the dip. The Oil of Life, meanwhile, is simply yet jarringly described as "baked potato ice cream". In fact, the dessert is composed of caramel fudge, chocolate mousse, a potato cake glazed with dark chocolate, and, yes, potato ice cream. Table-side, it’s garnished with olive oil. Bon appétit!
- 199 Tooley Street, Southwark
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Unique fusion udon
You wouldn’t expect a ramen restaurant to find it’s way onto this list, but the Soho branch of Koya offers a dish that’s sure to turn heads on both sides of the world. The Full English Udon is a bowl of udon noodles with a fried egg, bacon strips and shiitake mushroom floating in the broth. Is it ramen? Is it a fry-up? Is it both? Neither? Work the answer out as your slurp up your noodles, then glance further down the menu at the Full English rice dish and be thrown for another loop.
- 50 Frith Street, Soho
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Get freaky
The global freakshake trend has hit London hard, with various joints around the capital trying to outdo each other in just how much decadence you can pile onto a glass before it all comes down. The original trendsetter, Maxwell’s Bar & Grill, might still reign as the king of the freakshake game, however, with its thick salted caramel shake topped with whipped cream, salted caramel sauce, marshmallows and a whole donut.
- 34 King St, Covent Garden
- Website •
- Read more on Thatsup
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A gourmet Scottish treat
Admittedly, the deep-fried Mars bar is more of a Scottish institution, with many a chippy up north happily battering the chocolate treat and throwing it in the fryer. That doesn’t mean London can’t get in on the decadent sweetness, however. Unlike the classic Edinburgh “out of the fryer and into the paper wrap” approach, the Fishcotheque goes a step further by serving the Mars bar on a plate, with a scoop of ice cream and chocolate sauce to boot.
- 79A Waterloo Road, South Bank/Southwark
- Read more on Thatsup
Deep-fried mac 'n' choreezo
As a dish, mac ‘n’ cheese is already pretty indulgent by itself – slathering anything in cheese sauce will pretty much guarantee that, doubly so if the slatheree is a carb-heavy pasta dish. That wasn’t enough for the Meatliquor team, though. Asking themselves how to dial up the decadence, they went and added chorizo and marinara sauce to their five-cheese macaroni and, to top it off, deep-fried the whole thing. There’s a no less outrageous veggie version as well, don’t worry.
- 74 Northcote Rd, Battersea 7 Dartmouth Rd 37 Lordship Ln 133B Upper St, Islington 17 Queensway 15 Hoxton Market, Shoreditch 37-38 Margaret St, Marylebone
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All-in roast
The Blacklock restaurants take inspiration from the London chophouses that became a thing in the 17th century. It’s fitting, then, that their All In Sunday roast option features enough meat to feed an entire village, smoothly getting rid of the eternal “beef, lamb or pork” dilemma by saying “yes, please” to all. The heap of roast meat comes with all of the trimmings as well, naturally. You might want to bring a partner for this one.
- 13 Philpot Ln, The City/City of London 16A Bedford Street, Covent Garden 28-30 Rivington St, Shoreditch 24 Great Windmill St, Soho 5 Frobisher Passage, Canary Wharf/Tower Hamlets
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Over-the-top from arrival to dessert and beyond
For the Big Mamma Group restaurants, outrageous is ground zero and they build on that. These meticulously thought-out restaurants overwhelm the senses with over-the-top decor and indulgent Italian food and drinks. Dolci are a big part of that, with each restaurant boasting its own decadent signature dessert, ranging from a ten-tier chocolate cake at Carlotta to a giant lemon meringue at Circolo Popolare.
- 94 Kensington High St, Kensington 15 Henrietta St, Covent Garden 54-56 Great Eastern St, Shoreditch 77-78 Marylebone High St, Marylebone 40-41 Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia
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Wrap it in gold
Located in East London, Elvet Steakhouse serves halal-certified food and alcohol-free cocktails. It's a trendy spot with low lighting and elaborate decor. Plenty of indulgent cuts of meat are on the menu but you can really go all-out with a fillet steak wrapped in 24 carat gold. If you'd rather have a different steak, you can also request for it to be wrapped in gold.
- 392 Romford Rd, Newham
- Website •
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Not for calorie-counters
To be honest, there's no shortage of heavy-duty dishes on the menu at The Famous Cock Tavern. The Islington pub originally made our list thanks to its Pizza Cone, but even though that's no longer around, don't expect to get off lightly here. Their current daily-calorie-intake-in-one special is the Triple Threat Burger with three beef patties, triple bacon, triple burger cheese slices. and triple onion rings, drizzled with cheese sauce and served in a toasted bun with ketchup, burger sauce, iceberg lettuce, chopped onion, and gherkin.
- 259 Upper St
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When you gaze into the chicken pie...
Fallow spin-off Fowl turned heads with its viral chicken head pie. The modern chicken shop espouses a beak-to-feet culinary philosophy, meaning they strive to use every part of the chicken in their kitchen. When it comes to the Sunday special chicken head pie, that means an actual chicken head plopped down in the middle of the pie, staring accusingly right back at you as you dig in.
- 3 Norris St, Westminster
- Website
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Big social media hits
The outrageous Italian food at Mammasantissimais really commanding attention on social media. Visit this elaborately-decorated restaurant for classic pizza and pasta dishes as well as some more OTT options. there's creamy risotto served in a wheel of cheese but many guests come for seafood and lobster bowl, a decadent platter served in a pizza dough bowl.
- 98 Boundary Rd, Hampstead
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