Friday night and the Holborn Dining Room is heaving. Not at all bad for High Holborn, an area traditionally reserved either for late night drinkers from the outer reaches of the legal profession or office workers heading for Holborn tube on the daily grind home.

This leafy corner of London, between Oxford Street and Edgware Road, has quietly become an enclave of fashionable hotels and restaurants. The Georgian mews, crescents and squares here are far enough away from the hookah restaurants and shoppers to offer a bijou clutch of boutique properties and hidden gems living in peaceful harmony.

Any lovers of a good Korean barbecue or a Thai hot pot will simply get the best of both worlds here. Moo Krata is the brainchild of Thai restaurant entrepreneur Fah Sundravorakul, whose Shuang Shuang hot pot restaurant on London’s Shaftesbury Avenue has been causing a bit of a stir, if you’ll forgive the pun.

Tucked away on London’s fashionable Old Brompton Road (some might even call it Chelsea)  just a short stroll from Earl’s Court station, Flora Indica is so introvert you might mistake it for one of those curious old book shops.

The Grand Trunk Road may be one of Asia’s oldest and longest roads at 2,500 kilometres stretching from Kabul in Afghanistan to Chittagong in Bangladesh. But now it has a spur running through London’s leafy South Woodford in the shape of Grand Trunk Road restaurant.