Guide to the most outrageous dishes in London

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The outrageous Italian food at Mammasantissima is 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.