Tuesday 21 July 2026 4:39 pm
| Updated:
Tuesday 21 July 2026 4:42 pm
The Finalists have been announced for our second annual Toast the City Awards and we’re thrilled to highlight some of the runners and riders over the coming weeks. Today we’re celebrating the amazing steak restaurant Ibai, which is one of 12 Finalists in the Best Restaurant category.Here’s what our food critic – and Toast the City head judge – Steve Dinneen had to say in his 2024 review.Tap here to vote in the Toast the City Awards 2026Ibai review: One of the bestCreating a vibe is a tricky business. You can have the most beautiful dining room in the world and somehow end up with a tragic, inexplicable lack of vibes, even slipping into negative vibe territory, actively sucking the spirit out of your diners (see: Brasserie Zedel).On the other hand, you can have a brutalist concrete space like Ibai, which looks a bit like an especially well-polished abattoir (and was indeed a factory in a previous life), that positively exudes vibes, putting you at ease from the moment you pass through its velvet curtain, conjuring the kind of mood that makes you want to drink altogether too many glasses of reassuringly expensive Spanish red on a school night (which, of course, I did). Situated between St Paul’s and the Barbican, it joins the recently-opened Leydi at the Hyde Hotel as a new opening tempting office workers to hang around after work in of the most historic parts of London. It’s the kind of place that clearly wants to attract a loyal, City-adjacent following, a point underscored by the fact it’s not even open at weekends. Day-trippers need not apply.
