British restaurants are reborn in American cities

British restaurants – A new wave of British eateries—from a 2021 fish-and-chips spot in New York to fresh pub-style openings across the U.S.—is reshaping how Americans experience “British food,” focusing less on reinvention and more on comfort, familiarity, and flexible dining.

One Friday evening in May, the navy-blue awning under which Dame sits on MacDougal Street looked almost like a quiet promise: come in, eat, and let the food do the talking. Inside, the first move was Pimm’s Cup—an old British staple from garden parties back home—before the real headliner arrived.

Fish and chips came plainly, without any newspaper wrapping in sight. A plate of golden battered fish, thick-cut chips, tartar sauce, and lemon arrived with a bottle of malt vinegar. It was simple, but it felt authentic, and it didn’t try to disguise what it was.

Dessert made the point just as clearly. Sticky toffee pudding—served warm. drenched in dark sauce and cream—didn’t feel like a twist on tradition so much as a return to it. For chef and co-owner Ed Szymanski. the message was that British cooking in America isn’t being “reinvented” so much as reintroduced.

“There’s a lot of similarity between a meat pie and a pot pie, and fish and chips is not that alien of a concept to an American who grew up in the Midwest and has a fish fry on the weekends,” Szymanski told Business Insider.

Dame opened in 2021. built by Szymanski and his partner. Patricia Howard. a hospitality veteran who has worked at some of New York’s notable restaurants. It began as a pandemic-era fish-and-chips pop-up. then grew into a permanent spot—and. in doing so. became one of the leaders of New York’s new British restaurant boom. That momentum was strong enough to bring Szymanski a James Beard nomination.

Demand showed up in the small, practical frustrations of a diner’s life. When the writer tried to book a Friday at 5:30 p.m., the only reservation available was a seat at the bar.

“A common refrain we’d hear from our customers would be, ‘Oh, I wasn’t expecting it to be so good.’”

The British appetite isn’t staying inside New York borders. Los Angeles recently welcomed three new British restaurants. Chicago’s Piccadilly Pub—described as a “neighborhood chippy”—opened last December. Seattle is getting meat pies at Little Beast. Further south, Gordon Ramsay is set to open a London-inspired gastropub at Downtown Disney in California this year.

For diners, this matters because the push is landing right where modern restaurant economics often hurt: people want comfort, but they also want it delivered with care.

That blend—familiar food with a chef’s touch—is visible at Dean’s, which opened in SoHo this spring. Dean’s was built as a British pub with a modern twist, co-founded by British-born chef Jess Shadbolt and Annie Shi.

“There’s more appetite for flexibility, less interest in rigid formats, with people wanting to shape the experience a bit more themselves,” Shi told Business Insider. “That’s exactly what a pub offers: a sense of ease and community that feels especially relevant right now.”

Even when reviews are positive. the vibe is still a work in progress for some diners who came looking for a traditional neighborhood pub. Reviews for Dean’s have been largely positive. but some note that it is “not an everyman’s local pub.” The New Yorker described Dean’s as “a hot downtown restaurant wearing a pub’s clothing.” The Infatuation rated it 8.1 out of 10 and complained about how hard it is to get a reservation. especially when compared with the walk-in culture of a traditional pub.

Dean’s menu leans into comfort food, but with polish. Fish and chips are served with triple-cooked fries and tartar sauce. Guinness bread comes with butter and Marmite. There’s also stargazey pie, a Cornish staple featuring a seafood pie with fish heads poking up out of the pastry.

Even the serving details stay close to British tradition: Guinness is served in true 20-ounce pints.

“It’s less about rewriting the narrative and more about presenting British cooking in a way that feels honest to us. ” Shadbolt said. “We’ve always wanted to showcase its range — the dishes people people know and love. but also the parts of the cuisine that are often overlooked. like preservation. baking. and roasting.”.

The push has a long shadow behind it. British food, internationally, doesn’t carry the best reputation—an attitude linked, in part, to World War II rationing that limited what people could eat. “British food was quite grim,” Szymanski said.

Over the past decade, however, London’s food scene has moved past that stereotype. It has transformed into a hub for regional fare, immigrant-driven concepts, and restaurants shaped by personal history and cultural identity—things New York diners recognize from their own dining culture.

Dishoom, a buzzy UK restaurant group, is taking that logic with it as it prepares to expand into New York in 2027. Dishoom began in London in 2010, opened alongside cousins Kavi Thakrar and Shamil Thakrar, and now operates 15 locations across the UK.

The group is rooted in Bombay café culture—an all-day, communal dining tradition named for the city’s former official name. Although the city is officially called Mumbai, locals still use Bombay in everyday speech.

Its menu brings a mix of dishes familiar to international audiences—chicken tikka, biryani, and samosas—alongside Bombay favorites like crispy prawn Koliwada and Pau Bhaji, with buttery mashed vegetables and soft buns.

Thakrar framed the move as less about exporting “Britishness” than exporting a way of telling stories through food.

“New York is a city we have long admired. ” Thakrar told Business Insider as he gears up to open their first stateside location. “Like Mumbai and London. New York is defined by its diversity. and by diners willing to explore new dishes and cultures.” He added: “It feels like a place that you could easily call home. ” and said. “People are very open-minded.”.

The biggest shift, as chefs and founders describe it, isn’t a demand for “British” as a label—it’s a demand for dining that can bend. Shadbolt sees it in how people use restaurants.

Diners aren’t necessarily chasing Britishness. They’re looking for places where “you can have a quick drink, a full meal, or stay for hours without it needing to be one specific thing.”

Shi echoed that from the pub angle. “The best pubs evolve naturally over time because they’re shaped by the people inside them,” she said. “That sense of informality — where you can come in. stay a while. and feel like you belong there. whether it’s your first visit or your fiftieth — is what makes them so special.”.

For UK transplants like the writer, it’s a small taste of home. For New Yorkers, it’s a chance to see British food not as a punchline, but as a cuisine—and a dining culture—that is both comforting and far more varied than its reputation suggests.

In that sense, Britain’s biggest culinary export might not be fish and chips at all. It could be the more flexible idea underneath the dishes: a way of dining that feels relaxed, generous, and increasingly aligned with what Americans want from restaurants today.

British restaurants fish and chips pub grub Dame Ed Szymanski Patricia Howard Dean's Jess Shadbolt Annie Shi Dishoom Kavi Thakrar James Beard nomination Piccadilly Pub Little Beast Gordon Ramsay Downtown Disney MacDougal Street