Root

Root is Josh Eggleton and Luke Hasell's vegetable-led small-plates restaurant on Wapping Wharf, opened in 2017 on the former site of Eggleton's own Chicken Shed and now part of the wider Pony Restaurant Group family alongside sister sites in Wells and Bath. It won a Michelin Bib Gourmand in its first full year and has since been named among the UK's best restaurants by the Good Food Guide -- serious, sustained critical credibility for a genuinely small, chef-led room, even though "Pony family" ownership means it is not a single standalone independent in the strictest sense.

The kitchen's signature is an ever-changing, vegetable-first small-plates menu -- gnudi-style ewe's curd dumplings with braised greens and preserved lemon is the dish reviewers keep coming back to -- with a couple of fish and meat options each night rather than a meat-led menu with vegetables as an afterthought. Confirmed directly from Root's own group-bookings page: dinner service runs Monday to Saturday, 5:30-9pm, so both early-week target nights are live, and the restaurant already runs a structured group-booking process -- two set menus, £40pp (small plates and dessert) or £45pp (adding fish specials), a £10pp deposit against the final bill, and 12.5% service.

Two things are worth flagging honestly rather than glossing over, both already caught by the existing research and confirmed again here. First, £40-45pp sits above what this series would typically want to spend per head, a genuine budget stretch rather than a comfortable fit. Second, and more structural: Root's own policy moves any party over 10 onto its covered, heated terrace rather than the main dining room -- workable, with blankets provided for cooler nights, but a materially different setting from an inside table. Wapping Wharf's shipping-container strip is busy and popular, which cuts against "visibly quieter early-week," though a confirmed Monday/Tuesday dinner service is a real, concrete advantage most names on this list cannot match.