The chair test
Only one question matters: sitting at your table, can you see the river? Plenty of places on the Thames Path fail it. They face the walkway, a wall or the back of another building, and the water is something you pass on the way in. Others pass only at certain tables, usually the ones against the window or out on a terrace that closes when the weather turns.
So when you book, reserve the table rather than the restaurant. A window seat, a terrace table, the corner that looks downstream. The gap between a good evening and a memorable one is often about four metres.
Blackfriars and the South Bank
The western stretch is the most ambitious. Sea Containers London sits right on the water just west of Blackfriars Bridge, and its restaurant looks straight across to the City and the dome of St Paul's. A little further east, Oxo Tower Wharf carries a restaurant and brasserie on its top floor, beneath the tower whose windows spell out a stock cube brand, reputedly to get round a ban on advertising. From up there the view runs from Westminster to the City towers, and a window table is worth requesting well ahead.
Both suit an occasion. Both are formal enough that a companion will dress for the room, and both leave a short walk along the river to finish the night.
Bankside: stage, gallery and pub
Around Bankside the tone relaxes. The Swan, part of Shakespeare's Globe, has a bar and dining room with the Millennium Bridge and St Paul's framed directly opposite, and on performance nights the bar fills with audiences before and after. The Founders Arms, nearer Blackfriars, and The Anchor, an old pub beside Southwark Bridge, both have river frontage where, on a warm evening, the terrace is the view.
These are the tables for a first dinner. The cooking is good without ceremony, the rooms are lively, and the walk between them passes the brick chimney of Tate Modern. Vanessa likes a drink at the Swan before a play at the Globe, and keeps a note of the lines she liked best.
Between the bridges: the easy decks
East of London Bridge, Hay's Galleria and the walkways of More London are lined with terraces facing HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge. They are convenient and the view is undeniable, but most belong to chains and busy bars built for passing trade. Fine for a drink in daylight, less so for a dinner you intend to remember.
The same candour applies to dinner cruises. A table on a moving boat gives the fullest view of all, and some are pleasant, but you are tied to the timetable and the set menu, with no way to leave early if the evening would be better somewhere quieter. We would rather see you on dry land with a good window.
Butler's Wharf: the bridge at the end of the table
Pass under Tower Bridge on the south side and you reach Butler's Wharf, the old warehouse frontage along Shad Thames. Here the riverside restaurants face the bridge almost square on. Le Pont de la Tour and the Butlers Wharf Chop House both have terraces and windows that look at the towers, lit after dark, with the Tower of London across the water. This is the most complete river dinner in the area: bridge, water and a serious kitchen in a single glance.
Behind the frontage, the cobbled lane of Shad Thames runs between warehouses still crossed by iron gangways, and the smaller restaurants there trade the view for character. Bianka prefers one of those, a long pasta dinner at Legare, and walks you to the water afterwards for the view you skipped at the table.
Tides, seasons and the boat between tables
The Thames here is tidal, rising and falling by several metres twice a day, and the view changes with it. At high water the river runs full and close under the terraces; at low water the foreshore appears below the walls, sand and shingle where mudlarks go hunting for clay pipes. Neither is better, but a table booked for a sunset at high tide feels noticeably more like being on the water.
The seasons change the choice too. From May to September the terraces carry the evening, with light until nine or later. In autumn the windows matter more than the tables outside, and in December the river path is dark by half past four, which turns every lit bridge into a lantern and makes the walk after dinner the best part of the night.
One practical detail most visitors miss: the river buses stop at Bankside, London Bridge City and Tower piers, so a dinner at one end of this stretch and a drink at the other can be joined by boat rather than by cab. Services run into the evening; check the last sailing before relying on it.
Putting the evening together
A river dinner wants time. The four hour dinner date by the water at £900 covers a drink, three courses and the walk, and it keeps the evening from becoming a race against the bill. Two hours at £500 is enough if you have eaten already and want the terrace and a glass. Every figure, with travel inside Zones 1 and 2 included, is on the rates page.
Book the table in your own name, tell the desk where and when, and she meets you there. Afterwards the riverside hotels are rarely more than ten minutes away: Sea Containers and the Bankside hotels to the west, the London Bridge hotels in the middle, the Tower Hotel just over the bridge at the eastern end. The Southwark and Tower Bridge pages list them with their stations. Michelle, who sails whenever she can and is happiest near water, is free most evenings; she, Vanessa and Bianka are all on the brunettes page.