Why Lords NYC Is the Modern British Bistro You Need to Eat at Right Now

Lords is the kind of place that makes you wonder why you ever slept on British food in the first place. Tucked into Greenwich Village, this modern English bistro leans hard into nose to tail cooking, cozy pub vibes, and the kind of rich, comforting dishes that make you want to linger over one more martini and definitely one more fry. Here’s a rundown of what I got!

Starters

Started off with a Scotch egg that immediately sets the tone. Instead of a basic sausage wrap, Lords uses curried lamb around a soft boiled egg, laid over an herby crème fraîche that cools everything down just enough. It’s crispy, warmly spiced, and rich without being heavy, and it’s one of those bites that makes you realize why this dish has a cult following here.​

Next up, the Oyster Kilpatrick leans into the restaurant’s throwback British roots in the best way. A plate of grilled oysters arrives blanketed with guanciale and a brown butter mignonette, giving you smoke, fat, and tang all in one slurp. It’s salty, luxurious, and feels like the move if you’re posted up at the bar with a martini.​​

To round out the opening spread, there’s the pinkytoe crab and uni on sourdough toast. Both the crab and uni add this natural sweetness onto the thick toast, with Meyer lemon cutting through all that natural richness and keeping each bite bright instead of heavy.

The Off‑Menu Burger and Proper English Chips

There’s a lot of buzz around the burger at Lords, and it absolutely lives up to the hype. It’s technically off the menu and very limited, they only make about a dozen a night, so if you want one, you have to show up early; at 6 p.m., there was just a single one left. What arrives is a big prime beef patty cooked perfect medium‑rare, rested in brown butter Worcestershire, then topped with house‑made Welsh rarebit (a sharp beer cheese) and a thick slice of raw white onion, all on a soft pretzel bun. It’s one of the most unique, over the top rich burgers in the city, the kind of bite where you’re not totally sure anything more decadent exists.​​

As good as the burger is, the “proper English chips” nearly steal the spotlight. These are fries exactly how you want them to be: big, triple cooked, crisp on the outside and creamy in the middle, and perfectly salted. Drag them through the garlic aioli on repeat, and it’s very easy to decide these are your new favorite fries, full stop.​​

Dessert

Just when it feels like you should have ordered a salad somewhere along the way (oh I absolutely should have), dessert goes all in on comfort. The apple and quince crumble lands at the table bubbling and warm, topped with honey ice cream that melts down into all the fruit and crumbs. It’s classic, cozy, and basically what you want from a British leaning dessert in the West Village.​​

Alongside that, there’s a bright green apple sorbet that cuts through all the richness from the rest of the meal. It’s tart, refreshing, and exactly what you want a few bites into that crumble and burger combo.​​

The sticky toffee ice cream might be the most fun of the trio. Lords takes the edge pieces of their sticky toffee pudding and folds them into a house‑made brown sugar cream cheese ice cream, so you get chewy, caramelized bits in every spoonful. It’s nostalgic and inventive at the same time, and it fits the whole nose to tail, nothing goes to waste mentality, just applied to dessert.​

Conclusion

Lords feels like the rare restaurant that absolutely understands its own lane: deeply comforting British food, turned up just enough, in a room you actually want to hang out in. Come early, order the Scotch egg, chase down that off‑menu burger and a pile of proper English chips, and then lean into dessert and figure the salad out another day. I definitely have to go for their brunch, it looks incredible, and I heard that there are no limits on burgers on the weekends!