Only the Creator truly knows where London’s best biryani lies, a vibrating golden degh on a stove somewhere waiting to be opened up. Most likely, it’s at someone’s mum’s house. But the best value is at Zam Zam, in Cranford where the planes come in so low it’s possible to see passenger’s faces. Zam Zam is almost entirely unknown east of Hounslow but for the south Asian communities around Heathrow it is a legend: a small shop opposite a Hilton hotel staffed almost entirely by Pakistani women honing a chicken biriyani. The response from locals is queues out the door and improbable sequel shops dotted around: Holy Zam Zam 2, Zam Zam 3 Gift of God, Zam Zam 4: Karachi Drift. The biryani costs £3.50, £5 with curry, and is everything a biryani should be: simply a Goldilocks perfect bowl of rice, not too dry and not too wet, steaming hot from the degh, layered, subtly spiced with a building burn that can be cooled with raitha. It’s too far for most people to make the trip out, but it’s possible to sleep easier just knowing it exists.

Some of the city’s most skilled, most exciting and most generous cooking is being done by chefs who hail from the west of Pakistan, where the cooking forms more of a Venn diagram overlap with Afghanistan’s focus on lamb and fat than India. Somehow contriving to be in the middle of nowhere in an area with four train stations, travelling to Hounslow’s Taste of Pakistan is like a pilgrimage for those who worship at the altar of lamb. Chapli kebabs come pockmarked with coriander seeds, stacked like pancakes, leaving behind a trail of oil rather than syrup. Charsi karahi — named ‘charsi’ after someone who regularly uses cannabis — has an acidic, pickled tang that works even better with chicken. Lamb legs can be ordered individually, and everything can be mopped up with the naans as big as torsos, which sit menacingly on hooks at the head of the table. Don’t even think of coming here without a reservation, or face the owner’s legendary clap backs to disappointed non-diners on Google.

One of the most tempting single pages of a London menu is at this Sri Lankan institution in Rayners Lane. The regular menu reels through the island’s greatest hits: dense mutton and potato rolls; brittle lamb samosas filled with nothing but mince, juice and onions; chopped kothu roti accessorised to order. And then, a trap, when it feels like a decision is finally made: a page of specials tucked at the back like a stolen afterthought: fried nethali, plump anchovies popped and crunched whole; garlic fry worth shunning people for a week; chicken liver curry; squid stuffed with egg — together at last; muyal (rabbit); kudal (lamb intestines); and marai (venison) — all fried or curried. The venison fry comes dense and sticky, almost the texture of jerky and dark as molasses, riddled with crispy onions just before the point of burning. Some of the best subcontinental game cooking in London, at a third of Gymkhana’s prices.

Resident in Ealing since 2011, Tetote can stake two big claims: the best Japanese bakery in the capital, and one of the best French bakeries too. It might be truer to say that Eisuke Tomita is one of London’s best bakers. Anpan, adzuki bean buns, and kare pan, curry buns, and hot dog buns stuffed with ketchup, mustard and onions are beautiful without being prissy, and consistently wonderful. Fresh fruit brioches — raspberry, blueberry, apricot — showcase the French-Japanese side of Tomita’s work, while the baguettes are on a par with some boulangeries people get on the Eurostar to visit. It’s takeaway only and any haul is best eaten in waves, making sure that the first is the custard bun, bursting in the mouth with hot creme patissiere as it is shamelessly devoured along South Ealing Road.

What if there were a menu with 100 options, all of which end in eating a dosa? This very specific dream can be realised at Dosa Express, in the back of a mini mall in Wembley which also contains a Goan snack shop and a stall which carefully assembles paan (tobacco, betel nuts, and spices wrapped in betel leaf). Here it’s best to relax into chaos: queue to pay and get a number, try to grab a table before a family of six take three; everything here is self-service, except the cooking. The dosa options are arrayed on the wall in a grid of A4 sheets of paper, ranging from the traditional and the frugal — mysore masala, onion, chutney; butter, ghee — to the Desi Chinese (chilli paneer, Schezwan masala) or the ?! (Powder, chocolate and banana ice cream.) Invite some friends, order 10 and attempt to eat a whole line on the wall in a game of dosa bingo.

Tucked around the corner from East Acton station on an anonymous stretch of the Westway is Yasmina, home to London’s best manakish. Upon tasting his breads it’s not a surprise to hear that chef Ramadan used to be known as Ramadan al Khabbaz or Ramadan the Baker back in Lebanon. Crisp, aerated and so light that they’re in danger of floating away, the manakish are best topped with minced lamb (lahm bi ajeen) or simply za’atar and cheese, drenched in olive oil, and preferably dipped into real garlic sauce and wrapped around pickles. The rest of the menu is equally outstanding, from the fattoush to the kibbeh, which cracks satisfyingly to reveal sticky sweet minced meat.

London is sleeping on its Pakistani restaurants. Perhaps it’s the prevalence of strict no alcohol policies; perhaps it’s that many of them are still working class hubs. Perhaps if more Londoners took measure of the cuisine, the food would change irrevocably. Schrodinger’s chaat. Aladin’s Kebabish in West Hendon is being slept on by many but it doesn’t matter to about one thousand Pakistan families: it is one of the few restaurants that come close to capturing the essence of Karachi and the must-order dishes make up the “holy trinity”: haleem, nihaari and Karachi qorma. The meat porridge of haleem contains the ghost of the strands and fibres it once was, rich and glutinous, lifted by the table addition of ginger, chillis, coriander and lemon. The nihaari is among the city’s best, the fat forming little islets bobbing in an ocean of red oil, above a shank that can be dismantled completely with the back of a spoon. The qorma — either chicken or lamb — is unlike any korma Londoners know, inspired by the Mughals but rich without being creamy, with spicing heavy on black pepper and a subtle acidity. One of London’s best curries.

For those who have been to New York, LA and Mexico and wonder why London doesn’t have a great torta, well this is the next best thing. At Sam’s Sandwich, the titular Sam, Samir Ladoul makes art in the medium of Algerian sandwiches. Meat comes in the form of marinated chicken, lamb’s liver, kofte patties or merguez, made fresh every lunchtime by the butcher across the street who uses Ladoul’s spice mix. Choose two of these and they will be fried with egg and chips into one scoopable mass, while discs of bread, so cushioned they spring back at the merest hint of pressure, are halved and then carefully filled with the prudent additions of olives, harissa and mayonnaise. The result is generous and hefty, meaty and rich, but leavened by the bitterness of olives, the tang of harissa and the lightness of the bread. The sort of sandwich to stop anyone in their tracks.

There are many reasons for the small plate explosion, but deep down people know the starter/main course/dessert paradigm is clapped and what everyone secretly wants from a menu is a succession of snacks. Enter Kaipiras by Barraco, a Brazilian boteco bar tucked away on a back street in Kilburn. All the best things are in the starter section: mandioca frita, fat chips of cassava that make a mockery of every fried potato pretender; torresmo, undersold on the menu as pork scratchings but in reality crisped hunks of fried pork belly, fat fluffed up and creamy; and calabreza acebolada, Brazilian sausages and onions that arrive shaking and sizzling in the pan. This is perfect drinking food, to be guzzled down with the three C’s: ice cold Chopp, caipirinhas, or straight cachaça.

London’s Filipino chefs take divergent approaches: Some don’t mess, serving dishes as traditionally as possible. Others have taken the bones of Filipino cuisine and put new flesh on them, never claiming authenticity. Rommel Bustarde’s approach at Mama’s Kubo is somewhere in between, the food recognisably Filipino but looking outwards, tidying up and straightening lines of what is a notoriously riotous cuisine. A liver adobo is at the top of London’s pantheon: soft, creamy, honking with garlic, paired with an off menu garlic rice that can be felt on the breath the next morning. Sisig radiates like a sun, pig finely chopped, less heavy on the offal than other versions but with a strong crispy caramelisation of the heat of the pan. Pancit palabok is a cipher of a rich carbonara, with pancit for spaghetti, dried fish providing parmesan’s umami, pork rind for guanciale, egg the texture of tofu and then a whole load of prawns and squid. Finish with taho, layered silken tofu in a pool of lukewarm syrup, hitting all the comfort points of a morning bowl of porridge sweetened with honey.

Kululu has only been open for a few months, propping up the counter of a kosher deli in Hendon called ... Hendon Kosher Deli. Elad and Ella assemble sandwiches the size of new-borns, sourcing challah from Just Kosher in Borehamwood that provides the barest lip service to resistance, letting the fillings speak for themselves. Pairing those fillings is an art form: salt beef, sliced thin as baloney and piled up, should be ordered simply with pickles and mustard. Egg salad was ordered with an outstanding sticky steak and onions, but even better would be sweet hot peppers, saving the egg for three huge schnitzels the width of escalopes; disregard the cold aubergine completely. The salt beef and the steak are £12 and the schnitzel is £10 plus accessories: these are proper prices for proper sandwiches, and the money is going on the superb ingredients rather than the rent. Don’t sleep on it — Kululu is easily in London’s top 5 sandwich shops and can only get better.