Best waterside restaurants in London from The River Cafe to Towpath

The heat has come down, the humidity has rolled in: spring in London is here. Ok, with the weather up and down, it’s not like lidos are quite heaving or even the lakes are beginning to feel crowded. But they will soon.

A legend among restaurants, Ruthie Rogers’ influential Italian dining room is still an enviable spot to spend a warm day in west London, even after nearly 40 years. The main dining room is set back from the Thames, but distanced only by a leafy garden that in spring and summer time is filled with tables of deep-pocketed diners, including a good showing of celebrities, feasting on nettle pasta with butter and chargrilled Cornish monkfish with anchovy and rosemary sauce. It is to some unconscionably expensive; the old joke is to go only when someone else is paying. For a similar albeit somewhat more limited — and certainly cheaper — experience, try the newer River Cafe Cafe.

Fin and Lorcan Spiteri have hospitality in their blood — both mum (Melanie Arnold, of Rochelle Canteen) and Dad (Jon Spiteri, once of St John and Sessions Arts Club) are industry titans. But by now the brothers have dextrously made a name for themselves in their own right, having taken over a barge on the Regent’s Canal and converted it into a 10-seat restaurant with space for 40 diners, at least half of whom are probably on dates and ready to be seduced by the eternal charms of soft napery and good-quality glassware. Lorcan is in charge of cooking: expect a simple supper but with expert cooking: duck parpadelle with peas and gremolata, perhaps, or mackerel with borlotti beans and beef heart tomatoes. Fin’s cocktail list is to the point — the rum and cola Old Fashioned is particularly good — and there’s a nice selection of no-and-low drinks offered too. Want more? Jump over, perhaps not literally, to Bruno’s, the barge bar moored up next door.