London's five best festive menus and pop-ups

As the festive season gets underway, restaurants all over London are staging pop-up events and offering Christmas menu options to get you into the Yuletide spirit.

Here are five of the best festive menus and pop-ups this Christmas.

Franco Manca

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Sourdough pizza purveyors Franco Manca may have started life as a hole in the wall in Brixton, but these days they are an institution with branches all over the capital. This Christmas, the chain has devised a rotating menu of specials that embraces "comforting ingredients" to create delicious pizzas for the colder months.

The tomato-free butternut squash pizza with roasted pine kernels and Colston Bassett Stilton is unexpectedly delicious. A Gloucester Old Spot sausage pizza made with radicchio Trevisano and finished with a drizzle of white truffle oil is equally toothsome.

For meat aficionados, there is a free-range, cured British bresaola pizza with organic tomato, watercress and mozzarella from Somerset-based producer Frank & Lloyd.

All the restaurant's pizzas are made using slow-rising sourdough and baked in a Neapolitan wood-burning oven at 500 degrees.

To wash it all down, the restaurant offers a good range of organic, chemical-free wines including the Cirelli Rosso, a dry and fresh red, and a rather more floral Folicello Lambrusco.

Coppa Club Igloos

The Tower of London has an unexpected new neighbour: seven giant PVC igloos that adorn the restaurant's Thames-facing forecourt. Inside each bubble, you can enjoy a menu of "modern European-type stuff", the Daily Telegraph says, including porchetta with vin santo raisins, clementines, rainbow chard and roasting juices; slow-cooked duck leg with chorizo, butter beans, thyme and orange gremolata; or roast turkey with all the trimmings. The cocktail list features a Spiced Berry Caipirissima and a Maple Old Fashioned.

Meatliquor

Every year, Meatliquor puts together a new festive burger and this year is no exception. The XXXmas burger is made with free range turkey, an Old Spot pig patty, crispy bacon, stuffing crumbles, gravy and cranberry sauce. According to the Londonist, the burger is "unexpectedly traditional," by Meatliquor's standards but "there's absolutely nothing wrong with that." If you're not in the mood for a burger, go for the XXXmas Garbage Plate: free-range Heron's Farm roast turkey, pigs in blankets and crispy stuffing crumbles over fries, served with gravy and cranberry sauce on the side for good measure.

The De Beauvoir Deli

If you like masses of meat all in one place, then you will be delighted by De Beauvoir Deli's Christmas sandwich, which is back again this year by popular demand. Alongside the roasted turkey, you also get streaky bacon and stuffing made of sausage meat and yet more bacon. Chestnuts, cranberry sauce and mayonnaise complete the festive feast.

Four Seasons Winter Garden

With food inspired by Christmas markets on the continent, such as onion soup, juicy Bavarian sausages and croque monsieur, the Four Seasons Winter Garden is one of the more high-end pop-ups in town. The Winter Garden also has a selection of warming Hennessy cocktails to choose from and mulled wine to warm you if your Tiny Hand is Frozen.