G0w’s Fish Restaurant and Oyster Bar is a high quality seafood restaurant in London’s Square Mile. In fact, its location is so embedded in the centre of the City it’s basically within spitting distance of Liverpool Street Station (not that we condone that sort of behaviour).
The restaurant has been trading for over 125 years and is one of the few quality dedicated oyster bars in London, although they also offer many other options on the menu, with specials changing “as often as the London weather”. It’s an attractive place to rest and watch the world go by while you slurp down some oysters and good wine.
It’s part of the long established Ball’s Brother collection of restaurants and bars which are a established part of life in the City. It’s plush, swanky, and smoothly run – not edgy, but sophisticated and very much part of the City culture. If Square Mile culture and oysters are to your taste then this is the place for you. And, to be honest, as long as one of the two floats your boat this is worth a trip.
Access from street level is step free thanks to the door having a slight incline rather than a step to get inside. There is plenty of space on the ground floor and considering the number of different reviews we’ve seen which mention Gow’s as a place for watching the world go by, this is presumably the best place to be seated. However, it is still worth saying that there is more seating downstairs which can be accessed via the restaurant’s lift (you need to notify a member of staff to access the lift).
They also have a fully adapted toilet for disabled customers. This has grab rails on both sides, a lowered sink (it’s one centimetre above the ideal recommendation) and emergency cord but does not have a floor length mirror.
The access is good, the oysters are fresh and the city life is vibrant. We give Gow’s a provisional 2.5 BBS Ticks.
