💸How to eat for cheap in London🍕🥙

As we know, London is expensive and forking out for meal after meal really mounts up. We have a few tips up our sleeve to keep costs down on food during your visit.

Picnic

Well duh we hear you say, but London has so many beautiful parks that it would be wrong not to take full advantage of them, not only can you keep food costs down by heading off for a picnic, it can be a really great way to relax away from the more crowded areas you might be visiting during your stay.

Book an apartment/aparthotel

There are tons of lush apartments you could stay in instead of a hotel, and many of them have all the great amenities you find in hotels so you don’t have to feel like you’re missing out on having a gym, pool, restaurant, bar etc. The best thing is they have a kitchen or kitchenette so you can make your own meals, enjoy breakfast at your own time, cook a picnic to take on the go or even come back to your home from home at the end of the day and make a meal and watch a movie.

Some of our favourites include Bermond’s Lock and The Collective.

Try some amazing street food

London is famous for its street food, from Camden market to Borough Market and the 100s more places that have street food on offer, you can literally find anything at all from worldwide cuisines to one-off food trucks, anything is possible in this amazing city.

Change the time you would usually book

Of course, many restaurants and cafes have offers on, such as lunchtime specials, 'buy one get one free' offers or cheaper options usually in between meal times when not a lot of people would be looking to dine. Depending on the offer you can sometimes just change the time of your booking to take advantage of the cheaper rate. If the 'lunchtime special' ends by 5 pm but you wouldn’t want to eat before then, you can make your booking for 4:45 pm and take advantage of the offer, as the food won’t be cooked and delivered to you before 5 pm anyway.

Sign up to email lists of places you want to eat

If there is a certain chain restaurant you want to eat at, sign up to their mailing list a while before you go, they will send you an email with any special offers they have on, upcoming offers, or even a discount code for you to use when you visit.

Check social media

Head to Instagram or any other social channels of a few of the places you would like to dine at and see if they have posted any offers recently, we have found this a good way to find some offers in the past including kids eating free at Bill's this past summer.

Go bottomless

We are seeing more and more places with bottomless offers, and not all of them are restricted to brunch. There are tons of themed brunches out there, but you can also get great bottomless offers at restaurants as well as places offering unlimited cake, ice cream, chicken nuggets and anything else you can think of.

At Gordon Ramsey's Street Pizza restaurants you can enjoy unlimited pizza AND unlimited ice cream.

Download apps

You can sometimes find offers available on an app only, so it’s worth downloading the apps of restaurants you like, many of them also let you pay or even order using the app.

Find a great discount offer

Discount sites such as Wowcher, Groupon and Buyagift often have amazing deals on great restaurants including big chains such as Marco Pierre White and Hard Rock Café and some awesome London staples such as Shaka Lulu and London Secret Garden. Time Out also offers amazing deals to places like Sea Containers restaurants and Inamo.

We will also be sharing great deals we find - stay tuned.

Check out our post with top tips on booking your London trip.