Watch Wednesday's solar eclipse in London, with a set menu
Three tables with an open western view, for the biggest eclipse since 1999
On Wednesday evening the moon covers 90% of the sun over London, the biggest solar eclipse visible from the UK since 1999. It begins at 6.17pm, peaks at 7.12pm and is finished by 8.06pm, which lands it almost exactly across dinner.
The part nobody mentions is where to look. At its peak the sun sits only about ten degrees above the horizon, due west, so a rooftop on its own is not enough. What you need is an open western view with nothing in the way. Three London set menus have one, and all three are served late enough that you can still be at the table when it happens.
01 · Darwin at Sky Garden
City of London
Two courses £49.50 or three £59.50, daily, thirty-six floors up.
Level 36 of the Walkie Talkie solves the problem by height alone. At around 155 metres nothing in London gets between you and a sun sitting ten degrees above the western horizon, which is not something many rooms in the city can say. The set menu runs every day at lunch and dinner, two courses for £49.50 or three for £59.50, and reads like a proper brasserie list: a chilled cucumber and dill soup or a ham hock terrine with piccalilli, then sea bream with caper butter and samphire, fish and chips, or a grilled pork chop with charred peach and apple slaw. Eton mess or a hazelnut delice to finish. Sky Garden is running the evening as an event in its own right, with free certified eclipse glasses for the first hundred guests at the Sky Garden Bar and a live band and DJ through the night. One thing worth knowing before you go up: the open-air terrace faces south, so for a due-west sun you want to be at the western glass rather than out on the deck.
02 · Rick Stein Barnes
Barnes
Two courses £24.95 or three £29.95, served every day, lunch and dinner.
The cheapest table on this list and, on paper, the clearest view of the three. The restaurant sits on the Thames at Mortlake, in a low-rise stretch of south west London, looking out across open water to the playing fields of Dukes Meadows on the far bank. There is simply nothing tall enough in that direction to block a low sun, which is the rare part. The river runs away to the west here, so the sightline and the eclipse point roughly the same way. The set menu is two courses for £24.95 or three for £29.95 and, unusually, runs every single day at both lunch and dinner, with the kitchen open until 9pm on a Wednesday. A six o'clock table puts you there for all of it. Two things to plan around: the river-view window tables cannot be reserved in advance, so ask when you arrive, and the courtyard takes walk-ins only.
03 · Lemonia
Primrose Hill
Three courses £28.75, Monday to Thursday from 5.30pm, then a two-minute walk.
This one is a trade, and it is worth being straight about it. You will not see the eclipse from the table. Lemonia is a street-level Greek dining room on Regent's Park Road and has been since 1979, all green awnings, hanging baskets and a pavement terrace. What it has instead is an address. The summit of Primrose Hill is 140 metres from the front door, and the ground falls away west towards low-rise St John's Wood, which gives it one of the most open western horizons anywhere in inner London. The three-course set dinner is £28.75, Monday to Thursday from 5.30pm to 10pm, for parties of up to eight. Eat at six, walk up at seven.
All three are on All Set with the full menus and a booking link on each. One rule that matters at 90% coverage: never look at the sun without certified eclipse glasses, however dim it starts to feel.