Novikov

The Dual-Room Model That Defined a Mayfair Moment

When Arkady Novikov brought his Moscow restaurant empire to Berkeley Street, the move landed at a particular inflection point in London's high-end casual dining story. The address, 50A Berkeley Street, W1J, sits in a Mayfair block where the density of well-funded restaurants is higher than almost anywhere else in the city, and where the competition is less about Michelin stars than about room atmosphere, late-night stamina, and a menu broad enough to satisfy a table of six with conflicting appetites. Novikov operates two distinct rooms under one roof: an Italian kitchen and an Asian kitchen, a format that in other cities might read as hedging but in this postcode functions as a genuine operational statement. The crowd it draws tends to prefer this kind of breadth. Compare that to the single-minded tasting-menu discipline of CORE by Clare Smyth or Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library, and the positioning becomes clear: Novikov is not asking you to surrender your evening to a kitchen's narrative. It is asking you to eat well, stay late, and come back.

How the Meal Tends to Unfold

The experience at Novikov is not structured around a tasting progression in the way a counter-format omakase or a modern tasting menu would be. There is no pre-set arc, no amuse-bouche signalling the kitchen's intentions for the next two hours. What the room offers instead is a different kind of sequence: one that the diner controls, built from a menu that runs across Italian and Asian registers depending on which room you are seated in. This kind of guest-led progression has its own logic. You begin where you want, a crudo, a cold appetiser, something from the raw section, and the meal builds or slows according to appetite and conversation rather than chef's clock. The kitchen running until 1:30 am on every day of the week is not incidental to this. It means a table booked at nine in the evening does not feel the subtle pressure that shortens meals at restaurants with earlier last orders. The pace is the guest's to set.

That said, the Italian-Asian format does create an internal sequencing question that a single-cuisine menu does not. Do you commit to one room's logic or move between registers? For groups, the answer tends to be both: lighter Asian cold courses giving way to richer Italian pasta and protein, with the meal broadening rather than narrowing as it progresses. This is not the kind of cooking that rewards comparison to the restrained, season-locked tasting menus at The Ledbury or Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. The context is different: the format here is abundance and choice, not curation and constraint.

Where Novikov Sits in the Mayfair Restaurant Tier

Mayfair's restaurant tier divides broadly into two camps. One is the critical-recognition bracket, where Michelin stars and high OAD scores organise the hierarchy and where the meal is framed as an event. The other is the high-spend casual bracket, where the room's atmosphere, the lateness of last orders, and the reliability of the kitchen across a large and varied menu matter more than any single creative statement. Novikov belongs to the second camp and is positioned confidently within it. Opinionated About Dining, which tracks this kind of restaurant more carefully than most guides, placed Novikov at #639 in its Casual Europe ranking for 2025, having ranked it at #475 in 2024. In 2023, under the Classical category, it received a Recommended designation. The movement across categories and ranks across three consecutive years reflects both how the guide has reclassified formats and how the restaurant has maintained a presence in the tracking without dropping off.

The comparison is useful: volume and ambition are not opposites in this bracket.

The Chef and the Kitchen's Orientation

Marco Torri heads the kitchen at Novikov London. The relevant fact here is not his biography but what his appointment signals about the restaurant's Italian room: a named chef in a high-profile Mayfair address carrying Italian-Asian dual billing suggests a kitchen that takes its Italian credentials seriously enough to staff it accordingly. The Italian dining tradition in London has deepened considerably over the past decade, with the city now sustaining serious pasta programs, careful sourcing of Italian produce, and wine lists built around regional Italian labels rather than international varietals. Novikov's positioning within that tradition is as a high-energy, full-service Italian room rather than a quiet, low-key trattoria. The distinction matters for understanding what you are booking.

Planning a Visit: Practical Details

Novikov is open seven days a week from noon to 1:30 am, which gives it one of the longer operating windows of any restaurant at this level in central London. The late close is a genuine differentiator for groups who want to eat after theatre, after an event, or simply later than most kitchens will accommodate. Berkeley Street is within easy walking distance of Green Park and Piccadilly Circus stations.

For visitors building a broader London itinerary, our full London restaurants guide covers the city's dining tiers in detail. If you are extending the trip beyond central London, The Fat Duck in Bray, L'Enclume in Cartmel, Moor Hall in Aughton, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, and Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton represent the range of what serious UK destination dining looks like outside the capital. Within London itself, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay remains the clearest point of contrast at the formal end of the spectrum. For accommodation and after-dinner options in the same neighbourhood, our full London hotels guide, our full London bars guide, our full London wineries guide, and our full London experiences guide cover the adjacent decisions.