POLPO Italian Restaurant Chelsea

You'll find yourself on Duke of York Square in Chelsea, ducking into this stripped-back Italian that doesn't try too hard but somehow gets everything right. Polpo trades in Venetian cicchetti—proper little plates that encourage you to order loads and share messy, delicious food with whoever's opposite you. It's the kind of place where you'll accidentally spend three hours nursing cocktails and ordering another round of croquettes, surrounded by other Londoners doing exactly the same. The crowd's genuinely mixed: locals who've made it their regular, date-night couples, groups of mates. Nobody's dressed up, everyone's having a laugh.