Five Restaurants to Try This Long Weekend

Rotorino

Located near the Dalston end of Kingsland Road, Rotorino is a smart southern Italian gem from restaurateur Stevie Parle. And they’re keeping la dolce vita going throughout the long weekend. Start the Easter holiday in the right spirit ‘Negroni Nights’ on Thursday — negronis for a fiver, antipasti and music into the wee hours. Come Sunday, it’s all about the roast. Go full Italian with the porchetta and traditional Easter cake, pastieria Napoletana. Viva l’Italia, one might say. —Daisy Meager
434 Kingsland Road, E8 4AA

69 Colebrooke Row (The Bar With No Name)

Consider Tony Conigliaro’s take on the Prairie Oyster an adults-only Easter egg — a “yolk” of spherified tomato juice sits in a ceramic shell, bathed in horseradish vodka, oloroso sherry, pepper sauce, celery salt and oyster leaf. Square it away in one before moving on to Pine Kirs and a plate of jamon Iberico. Age hasn’t withered the Islington bar that brought molecular mixology to the masses in 2009: it still has a genuinely illicit vibe that never veers into gin-in-teacups territory. With all the noise around Untitled, the Terminis and now Gazelle, it would be easy for this one to be nudged out of the frame — but what a shame that would be. —Emma Hughes
69 Colebrooke Row, N1 8AA

Petersham Nurseries

The leafy expanses of Richmond Park are the perfect place to enjoy a Bank Holiday saunter, stroll, or ramble, depending on one’s choice of synonym for “walk.” Before or after, the aspirational-bucolic surrounds of the original Petersham Nurseries are the perfect place to enjoy some seasonal Italian food, revelling in a menu of bountiful produce and virtuous sourcing. The structure is in the River Café lineage, starters of spring plenty followed by carefully cooked proteins: from a recent menu, chargrilled monkfish with camone tomato and coco beans is alluring, while it’s hard to ignore the #beautifulobvious combination of radicchio, blood orange, parmesan and olives on the starters. Save room for a dessert of sorbet or vanilla and olive oil in the stomach; save room in the bag for your latest statement piece of artfully wizened stoneware. —James Hansen
Church Lane, off Petersham Road, TW10 7AB

Ganapati Restaurant

This south Indian corner café with communal tables and homely decor is a Peckham legend, arriving in SE15 years before the fashionable crowd did (and before so many other restaurants did, too.) It remains one of London’s best Indian restaurants. Snacks, thalis, curries, pickles, breads and chutneys are cooked based on the traditions of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Drinks are sourced from local breweries like Fourpure; an excellent wine list includes a rich Croatian malvasia. (Closed Monday.) —Adam Coghlan
38 Holly Grove, SE15 5DF

Daddy Bao

Peckham’s Mr. Bao now has a sister restaurant down south, and locals are giddy. Daddy Bao brings Taiwanese fluffy buns and sticky fillings to Tooting; pork topped with pickles and peanut powder and beer marinated prawns with mooli are both essential dishes. The place has been rammed since opening, and for good reason: the lychee pale ale (made by Old Kent Road Brewery) and fried chicken with smoked miso mayo could not be more welcome in an area fast becoming one of London’s more exciting. —Josh Barrie
113 Mitcham Road, SW17 9PE