Café Deco

Verdict

Café Deco is one of the better-value Michelin Plate restaurants in central London, considerably easier to book than most of its peers. The cooking is seasonal British contemporary at a ££ price point, the service is warm rather than formal, the wine list is more considered than the room's bistro feel suggests. If you want technically sound, flavour-forward food without the ceremony or the bill that comes with the city's ££££ bracket, this is a strong booking. The main misconception to correct before you arrive: this is not a café in any meaningful sense. The name undersells it.

About Café Deco

Café Deco sits on Store Street in Bloomsbury, a short walk from the British Museum, the location explains part of why it remains relatively off the radar for destination diners. The neighbourhood lacks the restaurant-district pull of Mayfair or Soho, which works in your favour: tables are genuinely easier to secure here than at comparable-quality venues across town.

Chef Anna Tobias runs a weekly-changing menu built around seasonal British produce with clear European influences. The format is deliberately unfussy. Dishes arrive looking simple, the skill lies in the seasoning and the combinations rather than in architectural plating. That domesticity is intentional, it is the thing most likely to wrong-foot a first-time visitor who expects Michelin Plate recognition to mean elaborate presentation. It does not here. What it means is that the kitchen understands its ingredients and knows when not to interfere with them.

The menu typically opens with shareable snacks; charcuterie, mussels in escabeche; before moving through starters that demonstrate a confident hand with acidity and seasoning: salt cod fritters with aïoli, artichoke vinaigrette, tuna with radish. Main courses are proportioned for appetite rather than aesthetics. A Spanish-influenced stew of sausage, morcilla, bacon and beans sits alongside lighter options like baked brill with potato. Desserts hold their own: crema catalana, rhubarb ice cream, the kind of cake (chocolate and walnut, for instance) that reinforces the domestically confident register the kitchen operates in throughout.

Service involves the chefs directly. They bring dishes to the table and explain them without theatre. This is not a gimmick: it means questions about provenance or preparation get an informed answer rather than a rehearsed one, it gives the room a quality of attention that larger restaurants with separated front and back of house rarely achieve at this price level.

The Wine List

The wine program at Café Deco is worth booking for in its own right, particularly if you approach it as a weekly-changing menu pairing exercise. The list skews European and shows real specificity in its selections: expect producers and regions that a list assembled for broad appeal would not risk. A Tarragona Macabeu-Muscat blend and a cherry-ripe Sicilian Frappato are the kinds of choices that signal a buyer with genuine curiosity rather than one filling categories.

For a wine-focused visitor, the combination of an adventurous, largely European list and a kitchen that changes weekly creates a pairing dynamic that rewards repeat visits. The food's emphasis on acidity, cured proteins, assertive seasoning gives the wine list clear reference points to work from, the aïoli-heavy dishes, the escabeche, the morcilla stew all point naturally toward the kind of textural, mineral-edged European whites and medium-weight reds the list appears to favour. This is the kind of list where asking for a recommendation will produce a better result than picking by grape variety alone.

At the ££ price tier, it is unusual to find a wine program with this degree of considered selection. Restaurants in the ££££ bracket, CORE by Clare Smyth, Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library, offer deeper cellars and sommelier-led service, but Café Deco's list punches above its price category for the explorer who wants something interesting in the glass without the markup that comes with a tasting menu format.

How It Compares to Other London Restaurants

For the broader Modern British and contemporary cooking category in London, see our full London restaurants guide. If you are exploring beyond restaurants, we also cover hotels, bars, wineries, and experiences across the city.

For British Contemporary cooking in a similar vein but different register, Anchor & Hope on the South Bank offers strong, produce-driven plates in an equally unfussy room. Apricity in Mayfair covers some of the same seasonal ground with a stronger sustainability focus and a more urban-cool aesthetic. Outside London, comparable sensibilities surface at Hand and Flowers in Marlow and hide and fox in Saltwood. For British Contemporary cooking in entirely different geographic contexts, Jaan by Kirk Westaway in Singapore and Dog and Gun Inn in Skelton demonstrate the range of the genre. At the three-star end of the British spectrum, The Fat Duck in Bray, L'Enclume in Cartmel, and Moor Hall in Aughton occupy a different register entirely. Gidleigh Park in Chagford works if you want a country-house format with comparable seasonal seriousness.

Know Before You Go

• Price tier: ££ (mid-range; accessible for central London)
• Cuisine: British Contemporary, weekly-changing seasonal menu
• Booking difficulty: Easy, one of the more accessible Michelin Plate venues in London
• Location: 43 Store St, Bloomsbury WC1E 7DB, short walk from the British Museum and Tottenham Court Road
• Recognition:
• Service style: Chefs serve many dishes themselves; expect informed, direct conversation rather than formal front-of-house performance
• Wine: Largely European list with adventurous selections; ask for a recommendation rather than ordering by varietal
• Group size: Well-suited to tables of 2–4; the intimate room means larger groups should check availability in advance