The Insider’s Guide to London During Frieze Week

Frieze London remains a mainstay of the international calendar due to the caliber of the city’s art world and its taste-making dealers, historically epic collections, and a group of unflaggingly brilliant artists. London also happens to be one of the few places left on earth where one can experience the pleasure of perfected hospitality. With the fair running through October 18 and its satellites (the new London Invitational and the beloved 1-54 Fair at Somerset House) around the corner, we asked a few select Londoners how to make the most of your visit.

Where to see great art

Hung La, the founder behind fashion line Lựu Đạn, suggests arriving without a plan, starting around Dover Street, and wandering through David Zwirner, Sprüth Magers, Thaddaeus Ropac, and Gagosian galleries. Writer Jonah Freud, who cofounded the library, bookshop, and bar Reference Point on Arundel Street, recommends a similar approach but a smaller circuit: two rooms, 46 and 52, at The National Gallery. “I never really plan what I’m going to see; I like walking in cold and being surprised.” Gallerists Sadie Coles, of Sadie Coles HQ, and Leopold Thun, who cofounded Emalin in Shoreditch, recommend The National Gallery, too.

Tish Weinstock, the author of How to Be a Goth, attends to the classics. She suggests Tate Modern for the surrealists, and loves The Wallace Collection. Stella Bottai, senior curator at large at the Aspen Art Museum and cocurator of the contemporary program at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, is a sucker for house museums. She goes to the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in Canonbury Square for the Medardo Rosso wax and plaster sculptures and the Morandi etchings of the outskirts of Bologna, which she visits when she feels homesick. Freddie Powell, who founded the gallery Ginny on Frederick, is biased, being on the Frieze Focus selection committee, but picks it anyway, and is watching for what Rose Easton and Bukia Vakhania will do in the tent.

For the best show in town

Artist Stefan Brüggemann is quite specific: he recommends This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, which features major Magritte works set against responses from more than forty later artists. For something more insider, he says, Emanuel de Carvalho’s postcard show at his gallery, Gathering, is on through November 7. Thun says Raven Row consistently manages to show exactly the right artist at the right time (art students still tell him what a 2023 Lutz Bacher exhibition meant to them, and he cannot wait to see what they do with Sturtevant). Serena Lightner, director of relationships at St. Clement, calls Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at the V&A through November 15, a must-see, and adds Pulse, Pause, Repeat, the Carmen Herrera show at Lisson, to the mix. Powell and Bottai both point to Alex Margo Arden at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation. “Nobody makes an exhibition quite like Alex,” Powell adds.

Yana Peel, global head of arts and culture at Chanel and a performing arts connoisseur, recommends Sadler’s Wells Theater and Christos Papadopoulos’s minimalist choreography. For theatre, she picks Golden Boy at the Almeida, starring Josh O’Connor, whose story of the Faustian bargain between a life in the arts and the pursuit of money and ambition “feels incredibly poignant, even 100 years on.” Writer Song-I Saba, who runs the tinned fish label PYSCIS with her father, goes to the Puppet Theatre Barge for one of Tess Tomassini's shadow puppetry shows with the P.L.P.C. troupe, or the Phoenix Arts Club in Soho on musical theatre open-mic night.

To impress the insider

Saba would send you to The Yellow Bittern, or Polentina in Bow, “a really special little Italian restaurant operating out of a garment factory canteen.” Peel recommends Table 4 at the River Cafe, with Ruthie Rogers on it. Coles books The Grand Divan at Simpson’s on the Strand, which Lightner also loves for old-world London vibes.

La suggests getting your friends out of London without actually going very far: lunch at Petersham Nurseries, then a few hours in Richmond Park, where “you can walk far enough that London almost stops existing.” For something closer, he recommends Mount Street Gardens, a hidden oasis in the middle of Mayfair with a huge palm tree that feels completely out of place in London. “You just have to know where the side door is,” he notes.

Actor and writer Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, meanwhile, says he went rowing in Regent’s Park once. “I was quite impressed. Would do it again.”

For people-watching

Coles would try Dorothy’s on Savile Row, for viewing well-dressed gentlemen. Powell says Nando’s, or Selfridges with his mother, Ginny (his gallery’s namesake). Stewart-Jarrett picks Daylesford Organic on Westbourne Grove, “with judgement.”

The Elizabeth Line is Bottai’s recommendation. “I may be biased, but I’m also right!” she says.

If you’d like an extra-special treat

Lightner recommends Mouki Mou on Chiltern Street, and says not to miss the rooms downstairs for the clothes, shoes, and bags. Then grab something delicious from the Corner Shop on the way home.

For dessert, Saba goes to J Sheekey and orders the off-menu item of iced berries with hot white chocolate sauce, “and then ideally catch a show that someone else has had the foresight to book.” For something more permanent, she buys books, from John Sandoe, London Review Bookshop or Tenderbooks, and loves MagCulture. Coles gets her fix at Anderson & Sheppard on Clifford Street. Thun says the best presents he has bought in three years, for himself and for others, have been hooks, stools, and doorstops by Martino Gamper, who delivers same-day within London.

To gaze at something charmingly old

Three contributors sent Sir John Soane’s Museum: Powell, Weinstock, and Lightner. Powell goes with Charlotte Edey, and says the Pablo Bronstein exhibition there “still lives rent free in my head.”

Two also sent a Wilton’s, though not the same one. Freud means the restaurant in St James, “but try not to gaze too obviously, as the aged clientele tends to dislike staring.” Brüggemann means Wilton’s Music Hall in Shadwell, wonderfully worn-in Victorian London. Stewart-Jarrett takes a walk around the City of London: Cannon Street, Moorgate, etc. “It’s full of secrets and is the oldest part of London,” he explains. Bottai and PEEL both point to the London Zoo, which, near Frieze London and Masters, is almost a miniature history of British architecture: Berthold Lubetkin and Ove Arup’s Penguin Pool is there, as well as Cedric Price and Lord Snowdon’s walk-through Aviary, and Hugh Casson’s monumental Elephant House. They’re all worth a visit.

Where to go for dinner

Thun would send you to Dalla in Hackney, for “the best Italian food outside Italy,” beautifully furnished by its owner, Gennaro Leone, who also runs the design gallery Spazio Leone. (Bottai and Saba agree.)

Brüggemann suggests Brat: wood-fired cuisine, a fantastic whole turbot dish, and a room that feels special without being too formal. Weinstock says China Tang, for the dim sum and the cocktails. Powell recommends Sessions Arts Club. La has a whole list: Dim Sum Duck on King’s Cross Road for Cantonese, Normah’s in Bayswater for Malaysian, Mountain on Beak Street for smoky Spanish food done over the fire, Trullo for pasta, BAO Soho when he wants it louder, Koya Soho for udon. Or, in his own neighborhood, The Latimer for a pint and pub grub. “No guest list, no Fashion Week, no bullshit. Just your local, a pint, and the same characters at the bar,” he says.

Where to check out something you don’t see every day

Lightner has a special fondness for the view from the Penthouse at St. Clement at dusk (it will run you handsomely). Saba also knows the rarified: the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum, “if you can get a ticket.” Brüggemann likes the Dennis Severs' House, part historic house, part immersive theatre.

For Bottai, the best place is V&A East Storehouse, Diller Scofidio + Renfro's museum turned inside out, where the storage rooms are put on stage along with the usually hidden work of a collection. A glass balcony looks straight into the conservation studio, and on weekdays you may catch the conservators at it. “If, like me, you have a museological fetish, this place is for you,” she says. Stewart-Jarrett, meanwhile, has three words: leave Zone 2.

Where to find some peace

Coles suggests you hightail it altogether, hitting “the Eurostar for Paris.” But if you are intent on staying, Freud has an unmarked viewpoint of the Thames Barrier on the north side, just behind the airport, next to the car repair store.

Others prefer to look for greener spots. Brüggemann takes St Dunstan in the East Church Garden, which has ruins and greenery hidden in the City. Stewart-Jarrett prefers Victoria Tower Gardens on Millbank—strange and not completely silent, but with an amazing view of Westminster Palace and an unobstructed one of the river. The gardens also hold the Buxton Memorial by Samuel Sanders Teulon, commemorating the abolition of the slave trade in Britain in the 1830s. Bottai walks Abney Park in Stoke Newington, a vast Victorian cemetery that’s lush and cool even on the hottest days. Peel points to the Italian Gardens in Hyde Park for solitude, overlooking Henry Moore’s The Arch; and Love Supreme Projects, her yoga studio in Notting Hill, for a bit of community.

For the truly depleted, we recommend following Weinstock’s suggestion to head to the great indoors of the wellness lab. “Sitting for an hour in a sealed hyperbaric oxygen tank is the only peace I’m ever going to get,” she adds. Especially at the end of Frieze week.