Restaurants, Bars and Hotels Near the Criterion Theatre

The Criterion opens onto Piccadilly Circus, which means the first thing you see when you come out is aimed at people who will never come back. Walk two minutes north and it changes completely. Everything below is timed from the theatre doors, and opening times change, so check before you set out.

Restaurants

Brasserie Zédel (2 minutes). Sherwood Street. Down a staircase off a side street into a massive gilded dining room. The set menu is the best-value pre-theatre meal within five minutes of any theatre in this part of London. Book. It stops serving at 4pm on Sundays.

Masala Zone (next door). Piccadilly. It's in the old Criterion Restaurant, in the same building as the theatre, under the tiled and gilded ceiling the restaurant left behind. The food is good, and you are paying something for the setting, but nothing else is this close: you finish dinner and you are already there.

Bocca di Lupo (4 minutes). Archer Street. Regional Italian small plates, and the best cooking close to the theatre. Worth booking well ahead.

Four Seasons (5 minutes). Gerrard Street. Chinatown begins five minutes from the door and the queue outside this one is for the Cantonese roast duck.

Wong Kei (5 minutes). Wardour Street. Cheap, enormous, several floors, and quick enough to get a group fed properly inside forty minutes.

Gelupo (4 minutes). Archer Street. Gelato from the Bocca di Lupo team across the road. The right idea before a matinee.

Bars and pubs

Bar Américain (2 minutes). Sherwood Street. Upstairs from Zédel and the best cocktail two minutes from the theatre.

The Blue Posts (4 minutes). Rupert Street. Three floors, three different things: beer at street level, wine above it, a restaurant at the top. The bottom two are what you want on the way in.

Waxy O'Connor's (4 minutes). Rupert Street. An enormous Irish pub built around a tree. Not subtle, but big enough to absorb a pre-theatre crowd, which almost nothing else here is.

Hotels

Ham Yard Hotel (3 minutes). Ham Yard. Built around its own courtyard, with a roof terrace and a bowling alley in the basement, and somehow quiet for something three minutes from Piccadilly Circus.

The Londoner (4 minutes). Leicester Square. A big, smart hotel on the square, with a spa and several places to eat inside it.

The Z Hotel Piccadilly (5 minutes). Orange Street. Compact rooms, excellent position. For a night at the theatre that is the right way round.