Highbury, British, Modern Restaurant Guide

2024 Review: This “great local” on Highbury Corner has developed from a catering company and supper club into a fully fledged “neighbourhood restaurant, serving proper food at reasonable prices”, with separate all-day brunch/lunch and evening menus featuring modern European dishes.

2022 Review: This “buzzy” Highbury wine bar specialises in hip low-intervention wines, backed up by “great food and service”. The menu is predominantly small-plate bites to accompany the interesting bottles being quaffed, so “they could do with more main course options – but the atmosphere is fantastic”.

A “bloody great night out” is reported by a fan from W12, who made the trip to hang with the hipsters at this “local favourite” off the Holloway Road, near Arsenal’s Emirates, with its blackboard menu of “excellent Mediterranean cooking” and “consistently superb service”, all in a so-now, post-industrial setting (built in the 1950s as a big commercial laundry). An early adopter of the sharing-plates format, it also uses sharing tables to squeeze guests in, but nobody seems to mind too much – “the natural wine list is a bit hit and miss”… isn’t it always?

“Heaving footie pub” near the old Highbury stadium in Finsbury Park – now an “excellent all-rounder for food, service and fun atmosphere... if you can get a table”. Chefs Jamie Allen & Ed McIlroy (aka Four Legs, the duo behind Tollington’s, see also) provide a steady flow of “tasty and interesting small plates, including a good selection of seafood” – but it’s impossible to ignore their Dexter burger, which “oozes cheese and fat and flavour”.