5 Cheap Eats During your Trip in London 2026 (Veggie but not only) 🍕🍤🍜

 
Looking for London budget travel food tips & cheap eats tricks? Not another generic lifeless AI-powered guide!

 

5 Cheap eats London 2026 featuring seafood stir fry

Hello there, fellow vegetarians and meat eaters, congrats: you’re on the point of spending a few days in what’s going to be one of your favourite trips you’ve ever been on! Welcome to the queen of gastronomic adventures, the global capital of food and diversity that will make your culinary dreams come true: London.

It was my third time visiting this overwhelmingly amazing city that I can never get enough of, so also the third time I got to discover its delicious dishes it always keeps surprising any of us with. Second time of being accommodated in Canary Wharf, so some of our dining decisions were influenced by our base location, of course.

I’ve selected a few highlights of the specialties and places I have explored this time, between 27th of November and the 2nd of December 2025, and, trust me, you won’t go wrong with them if you’re looking for cheap eats on your 2026 London Trip: they’re both yummy and great when you’re on a budget, but don’t have time to run far from the city center or your attraction point just to eat better.

1. Lanzhou Lamian Noodle Bar

Noodle Bar, how funny does it sound? Think of a small dorm or camp room that you have to crampedly share with around 15 people, where instead of beds you have tables. The max capacity is 3 people on a bench, so 6 at a table, but don’t worry about this, you will be surprised at how friendly London’s people that come dine here are! After all, you share the same table in a really homey cozy atmosphere that everybody keeps coming back to!

It’s very popular, situated between Leicester Square and Convent Garden, you can see the cooks making the hand-pulled noodles through the window.
A favourite moment of mine was when a nice Asian lady complimented me on how well I could handle the chopsticks while eating, but don’t worry, you can ask for a fork if you’re not into that! A few limited extra tables await in the basement, there you’ll feel even more like in an Asian home, as they handle cooking related chores on the hallway sometimes. Let yourself be surprised and give it a try, they’ll offer you a very detailed menu, containing halal noodle options as well. You can easily locate it right next to China Town, but it’s cheaper and better, more authentic restaurant.

Yes, there will be a 10% service charge automatically added to your meal, but most restaurants around, in the city center, usually add an at least 12.5% tax, so it’s still better.

Me and my family had 2 types of stir fry: the vegetarian noodles with seafood for me and the noodles with beef for them. As I said, freshly made noodles, right in front of us! We paid 40.5£ for them – 3 portions total. They were AMAZING and my taste buds’ memory will never forget their taste. Neither theirs nor the hot chilli oil’s addition on them! But be careful, that oil can be reaaaaaally spicy! Can’t wait to go back.
 

2. Borough Market

This is your new favourite “let’s grab something quickly, everything smells too yum” kind of food market: you’re surrounded by so many deliciously looking and smelling types of food, so you will most probably not go wrong with the choice you make. In my opinion, it’s the best street food London market, very close to London Bridge and Tate Modern by walk, not far from British Museum by bus or subway (around 25-30 minutes or 50 mins walk time), just keep an eye open for the opening hours. You’ll probably want to arrive to Borough Market food court one hour before lunch time, as it takes some time to explore it and make a choice, while the waiting times can be long too depending on your choice.

I know everybody’s in love or obsessed with the famous Borough Market strawberries, the long lines corner seafood stall or The Black Pig sandwiches, but, for us though, this year it was other 2 main food stalls: Horn OK Please and a Thai one.

It’s the second time I had a Moong Dal Dosa served with Chana Chaat (10£) and amazing Masala Chai (3-4£). This dish is basically a large, crisp fermented lentil pancake filled with spiced potatoes & veggies, with a tangy chickpea salad on the side. Really cool!
From the Thai stall we had the seafood stir fry, chicken Pad Thai, beef curry with rice and blue spirulina sticky rice with mango for dessert, loved it.

You might wonder how we handled the “eating while standing” situation, but we didn’t! We enjoyed the upstairs dining area, above the tiered gallery of seats, where we sat at an actual table under the cozy lights and watched the spectacle of the market below, sometimes listening to the train above, while sometimes admiring the blurry view of The Shard through the translucent, textured panel roof.
Borough Market is really something else – modern, cozy, offering high-end culinary experiences, while being one of London’s oldest markets, with roots stretching back over 1000 years.
 

3. Five Guys

4. Greenwich Market

Now this is one of London’s gems that are closest to my heart, although it’s maybe not the most popular. You might think it’s just a small food market in a little south-eastern part of London, but everything about Greenwich is so magical that it makes you feel like you’re in a cute cozy romantic Christmas movie – considering you’re visiting it in the winter. It can be very easily reachable if you stay in Canary Wharf like we did. When planning your visit, keep an eye on the opening times here as well, as the food court side might have slightly different schedules depending on the day.

I love everything about Greenwich, you can read more about my experience and my Greenwich favourites in this other article I recently wrote, but since we’re talking about food, oh well…
First of all, everything and anything you eat in this food market is cheaper with at least 2-4 pounds than most of the other London markets that are more central, of course, but in this food market you’ll also find many offers and discounts, especially for students, since Greenwich University is nearby.
There are 2 tables and 4 benches you can eat at, plus other stalls with various creative crafts, jewels, clothing articles and special souvenirs.

It was hard to choose what to savour and which stall from but it couldn’t have been better, finally chose an Asian stall with many different dish options. As an appetiser we picked the steamed vegetable buns – so fluffy and hot…, as well as the steamed BBQ Pork Buns and the pan fried pork dumplings that the guys loved. What they truly adored though were the huge hearthy portions of roast duck on noodles that were simply impeccable, a beautiful dream come true, that they couldn’t finish in the end. As for me, I enjoyed the prawn dumplings on noodles, which was something really new that I would recommend as well for pescatarians. We added a few extras – soy sauce, spicy Sriracha mayo and of course a very little amount of hot chili oil.
You can also enjoy dessert – I got the steamed custard buns that I didn’t get to taste in China Town, but make sure to order them towards the end of your meal, they’re better hot – mine would have been more creamy, had I kept this into account.

All in all, our Greenwich market visit was concluded with a happy next-level culinary ending that didn’t empty our pockets. Keep in mind that there’s a small market-store very close to the food market, on your way here from the Greenwich Foot Tunnel or Cutty Sark ship, that you can purchase some good beer from or anything you feel would go well with your food.

5. Sainsbury’s

If you’re looking for another unconventional and even cheaper option, this is it: Sainsbury’s meal deals or ready meals that you can just heat up at home in the oven or microwave. Any type, from British ready meals, Chinese & Asian, Indian, slow cooked, to Mexican, vegetarian, halal, Mediterranean, at very reasonable prices around 3-4£ for a portion or less and sometimes 2 for 6£ kind of deals or discounts with a Nectar card. If you don’t have a Nectar card – which is probably the case – you can just ask somebody around you for one, we did this everytime and everybody was friendly and helpful, got pretty nice discounts for every type of shopping we did! Including the sweets and treats we got to bring back home to family and friends.
This year we went shopping to the big Sainsbury’s we managed to find closest to Canary Wharf on our way back to the accommodation, in between Whitechapel, Cambridge Heath and Spitalfields. I think the Sainsbury’s dinner or lunch options can be really great when you’re on a budget, but still want to experience the same kind of dishes that you’d find in food markets or restaurants, with a pretty good quality – I totally love this supermarket hack.
We got an Indian vegetarian pumpkin dish, British beef in black beans sauce with rice and Thai chicken noodles, but also various little yummy things that we wanted to taste such as cheddar, scotch eggs, Marmite, London Pride beers – one of Londoners’ favourite beers – and so many other snacks, smoothies etc.
Another popular option for a well-priced store is Tesco, you’ll probably have an Express version of the store around and you can proceed the same way, they have clubcards that you can borrow as well and good offers sometimes.
Sainsbury’s and Tesco act as your best budget friends.

 

*Bonus

Last but not least, here comes the bonus I mentioned in the beginning: a small but yummy and possibly convenient fish and chips London bar that you will for sure find pretty close to you in any neighbourhood.
The last we tried was in Canary Wharf region, called Britannia Fish Bar, which has a chill local vibe – they allowed us to purchase some beers from the store next door, as they did not serve any. No place to dine outside, so we ate inside at their little three-person bar. They were pretty friendly, gave us suggestions on our fish & chips options, also gave us sauces recommendations – the curry sauce & mushy peas.
The first was flavourful, but Claylands’ was better, and the mushy peas were not my cup of cake – strictly personal preference – they’re too bland for me. Nevertheless, the cod came out amazingly battered, crispy, yummy, huge portions as well- so I would recommend sharing 2 basic portions for 3 people, because 1 for each was too much. So definitely do not buy the large portion for 1 person ever either, not even if you’re truly hungry, trust me!
Although the fish was amazing, I missed the gravy that other two places I had been to were adding to the fish, it would have been nice to have again. But it was good anyway, we were content.
#1 fish & chips place to me still remains Claylands Fish Bar, I can still feel the taste of their curry sauce or gravy from 2 years ago and dream of them… plus, back then they had Tuesday offers of 1 + 1 for free, so it was truly great.

All these being said, I hope you’ll let London surprise you with everything it has to offer and, no matter what your budget is, I promise you’ll find lots of British or exotic cheap eats you can totally afford to explore.
My guide is here to help you with ideas or aspects of the culinary part of the trip that really matter when you only have a counted or limited number of days there, in a place that you’ll maybe never ever visit again in your life.
It might be your first visit to London, as well as your last, so be sure to enjoy every bit of it. Keep in mind my suggestions to make sure you don’t miss anything good – you definitely won’t fail!
Of course, in the meantime feel free to check out my other London related guides with tips and tricks, such as My 1 Christmassy Day Trip to Greenwich or 5 Day Itinerary for Your Long Awaited London Trip. Thank me later, enjoy! 😉

P.S.: All my articles are written entirely by me in my own quiet moments, without any AI meddling. I believe in and have a deep thirst for real, raw content and authenticity, so that’s exactly what I’m offering. In today’s messed up copycat world, I hope you can find in my blog posts and articles a small refuge to clear your mind and warm your soul.