Joké Bakare’s modern West African spot in Fitzrovia is one of the most innovative restaurants in London. Its two-floor space is spacious and cosy all at once, with terracotta tones and tasting menus featuring spices and sauces you’ll want to mainline. Start with a spiced okra martini—the restaurant limits just two per customer, such is its oomph—before enjoying cloud-like sinasir topped with crab meat and egusi ice cream for pudding.

Home to London’s finest jerk pork and chicken, as well as Crystal Palace’s finest tarmac dining room in the shape of the big Sainsbury’s car park behind, Tasty Jerk is the must-visit Caribbean takeaway in London. The stripped-back interior is most notable for its line of perma-smoking steel drums behind the counter that are carefully charring sensational hunks of pork belly and ludicrously smoky chicken. This stuff is best consumed with your hands outside the door.

Few restaurants have both food and feeling that make you go all warm and fuzzy inside, but there’s no doubt that Kaieteur Kitchen does. Owner and head chef Faye Gomes’ cooking and neighbourly hospitality will have you coming back to the excellent Guyanese restaurant in Elephant and Castle again and again. Staple dishes like oxtail and curry chicken are delicious enough, but it’s the specials you want to look out for.

Sharing is caring and there’s no doubt you’ll be doing lots of that when you eat at Zeret Kitchen. The Ethiopian favourite in Camberwell has excellent options for vegans, vegetarians, and meat eaters alike. Warming shuro wot (roasted and blended chickpeas in a hot berbere sauce) and awaze tibs (lamb chunks marinated in peppers and berbere sauce) are regular orders from our side, but whatever combination you get, you’re bound to enjoy tearing and scooping with their excellent injera.

Time is thrown out the window in Ikoyi’s world on the Strand, and course after course from its tasting menu will leave you hopeful that perhaps it will never end. The fine dining restaurant leans heavily on West African influences and spicing. But with its glimmering bronze walls and the overwhelming sense you’ve stumbled into a gourmand’s nuclear bunker, it’s safe to say that this special occasion restaurant is unique unto itself.

Chuku’s is a Nigerian restaurant in Tottenham that will make your jolly little mouth troopers—formal title: taste receptor cells—very happy. The red pepper zing of the moi moi makes it the ultimate dinnertime entrance snack. The suya rub on the prawns and meatballs is a masterclass in steady spice and nuttiness. And the caramel kuli kuli chicken is the kind of crunchy peanut surprise that will make you say “hello poultry legend” out loud.

Honey, I’m home. That’s what we think every time we set foot across the threshold of Maureen’s Brixton Kitchen which also just so happens to be inside Maureen’s actual home. She’s at the heart of this Brixton catering setup where golden deep-fried chicken is passed around and seductive smoke rises out of the jerk pan in the yard. When the weather’s nice, there’s some seating outside but even if the weather’s rubbish, it’s still worth visiting to try some of the most finger-licking chicken.

Wolkite’s godin tibs—sizzling lamb ribs with crisply rendered fat—is superb. Especially with a few spoonfuls of spicy awaze sauce and a cold bottle of St. George lager. In fact, it’s this combination that has got us through a few years of paying to enjoy distinctly less fantastic stuff at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium that’s a hop and a skip away from Wolkite. The Ethiopian restaurant is a true great little place making generous and delicious food that insists on big groups tearing at its injera.

You don’t go to JB’s for frilly service or a fancy environment. You go for one thing and one thing only, and that is the food. The best jerk spot in Peckham is an in-and-out kind of place, even though its portions are never anything less than generous. A jerk chicken meal here is enough to silence even the most persistent of monologue deliverers—the char is present, the marinade spiced and fruity, and the plantain a satisfyingly sweet accompaniment.

If Ewarts Jerk was one of our permanently-on ASMR tracks it would be called something wonderful like ‘Eight hours of continuous smoking drum, cracking tinnies, reggae medley’. Housed in a shipping container in Dalston, this casual Caribbean spot is serving some of east London’s most legit jerk chicken. Get the freshly rubbed, smoky wings and fall hook line and sinker for the perfectly rendered fatty chunks of pork belly.