Notting Hill and Holland Park

The part of London people know from a film and almost never book in. Which is a shame, because Notting Hill and Holland Park are among the most discreet places in the city to spend an evening, for reasons that have nothing to do with pastel houses.

Why it is quiet

Nobody is in Notting Hill by accident at ten at night.

That is the whole thing. It is residential, expensive, and there is nothing to walk through it towards. Portobello has a market by day and empties by seven. The streets north of Holland Park Avenue are wide, well lit and almost entirely empty after dark.

Compare that with Soho, which feels anonymous because it is crowded and is in fact the most observed part of central London. Our post on the quietest parts of central London sets out why through traffic is the thing that matters.

Holland Park

Quieter still, and grander. Large stucco houses, embassy residences, and a genuine park in the middle of it.

The buildings here are mostly large conversions rather than mansion blocks, which means fewer flats and a smaller roster than Bayswater immediately east. What there is tends to sit at the upper end of the rate. See Holland Park.

The honest drawback

Getting there and back.

Notting Hill Gate is on three lines and perfectly good. Everything else in the area is a walk from it, and cabs west of the Gate at midnight are close to theoretical. If your evening ends here, know how you are leaving before you arrive. See getting around late at night.

It is also further from the centre than it looks. Twenty minutes to Mayfair on a good run, considerably more on a wet Friday.

Eating

Genuinely excellent, and the reason to build an evening here rather than merely end one.

The neighbourhood restaurants around Kensington Park Road and Westbourne Grove are as good as anything in London for a long, unhurried dinner, and they are neighbourhood places rather than destinations, so the tables are spaced and nobody is turning them. Our post on choosing a restaurant describes exactly this shape.

Book ahead. The good ones are small and they fill.

Where it sits on rates

Middle to upper. Not Mayfair, above Bayswater, and reflecting what a flat costs here rather than anything else.

The roster is smaller than in the areas either side, so this is not the postcode for a same day booking. A day or two of notice makes it straightforward. See Notting Hill and what a booking costs.

What it is actually for

An evening where the point is that it is unhurried and nobody sees it. Dinner somewhere small, a short walk, and a flat on a street with nothing else happening on it.

If you want to be in the middle of things, this is the wrong side of London and Mayfair is the answer. If you want the opposite, there is very little in London that does it better.

Browse the roster, or ring +44 20 7846 3480.