Up the Hill for Dinner on Kensington Church Street

A street of dealers' windows

Kensington Church Street takes its name from St Mary Abbots, the church at its foot, and rises north from the High Street towards Notting Hill Gate. For generations it has been one of London's antique quarters. The dealers here tend to specialise, one in early English pottery, another in Chinese export porcelain, another in clocks, glass or country furniture, and many of their windows are arranged with the care a curator gives a single case in a gallery.

Most of those shops keep ordinary daytime hours, but plenty of windows stay lit after closing, which makes the street one of the better evening walks in W8. A slow climb past the displays, pausing wherever something catches the eye, turns the route to dinner into part of the evening rather than a stretch to cover quickly. Nobody minds a couple stopping to argue over the date of a teapot through the glass.

St Mary Abbots itself deserves a moment before the climb. The present church is Victorian, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, and its spire rises higher than that of any other church in London, which makes it a useful landmark when arranging where to meet and a fine sight against an evening sky.

When the shutters come down

The restaurants on Church Street are neighbourhood places first. They serve the people who live on Campden Hill, around Kensington Square and in the mansion flats behind the High Street, and the atmosphere reflects that: tables of regulars, staff who know the usual order, a room that fills around eight and empties at a civilised hour. Very little here is built for spectacle, and that is exactly its appeal for a dinner that is meant to be about the company at the table.

It also means the street rewards a reservation. Small rooms fill with locals, particularly from Thursday onward, and a booking made the day before is far safer than hoping for a free table on the night. Reserving under your own name, and asking for a quieter corner, is usually all it takes.

Clarke's and its neighbours

The best known name is Clarke's, where Sally Clarke has cooked a seasonal, market-led menu since the 1980s, with her bakery and shop next door. It is calm, assured and entirely without theatre, the kind of dining room where conversation carries easily across a table and nobody hurries you towards the bill. On a first evening together, that steadiness is worth a great deal more than novelty.

Almost opposite, the Kensington Wine Rooms offer a looser start, with wines poured by the glass from machines along the wall, so a table can taste its way through several bottles before settling on one. A few doors along, on the corner of Campden Street, the Churchill Arms is famous for a frontage buried in flowers and hanging baskets and for the Thai cooking served in its back room, a cheerful, crowded alternative when the evening calls for noise rather than white linen.

Between them, those three cover most of what an evening here might want: a serious dinner, a playful aperitif and a noisy, good-humoured supper. Choosing one for the meal and another for the drink before it is the simplest plan the street offers.

Towards the top of the hill

As the street nears Notting Hill Gate, its character shifts again. The painted terraces of Hillgate Village sit just to the east, a small grid of pastel houses with a pub or two and a few restaurants tucked among them, and the Gate cinema and the Coronet theatre stand on Notting Hill Gate itself. An evening that begins with dinner on Church Street can finish with a film or a play at the top, and the Notting Hill page covers that side of the hill in detail.

From the bottom of the street to the top is under a kilometre, and the gradient is gentle enough that nobody arrives at a table out of breath. Walking up before dinner and taking a black cab down afterwards is the usual pattern, and it suits the order in which the street is most pleasant to see: windows first, food second, the ride home last.

Setting the evening

A dinner date on Church Street works best when the meeting point is specific. The foot of the street beside St Mary Abbots is the obvious one, a moment from High Street Kensington station, and a companion waiting by the churchyard railings is a far simpler plan than two people searching for each other outside a restaurant door.

Three hours at £700 allows for the walk, an unhurried dinner and a cab back to your hotel. Choosing the dinner date proper, four hours at £900, buys time for a glass at the wine rooms first or a nightcap once the plates are cleared, and the lengths either side of those are shown on the rates page. At the churchyard railings, before the climb, her fee is settled face to face; the table itself is reserved in your name, never hers.

Guests staying in SW7 can ask her to meet them at their hotel instead and share a taxi to the church, a ride of only a few minutes. Either way, send the desk the restaurant's name along with the hour of your reservation, and the evening is worked out backwards from there.

Companions who know the street

Bianka has been known to lose an afternoon to the vintage dealers off Church Street, and she reads a wine list by first asking what you are eating. Luna treats the Kensington Wine Rooms as a contest, three whites and three reds tasted blind, the loser choosing dinner, and she rarely has to choose. Margo prefers the quiet of Clarke's and lets a long meal set its own pace.

Luna is one of the auburn companions in the collection, dark red and very direct; Bianka and Margo are both brunettes, one warm and talkative, the other reserved until the evening settles. Any of the three makes the climb up the hill feel like a resident's evening rather than a visitor's.