London Highbury Restaurant Guide

“Amazing and quirky Thai-inspired dishes” hit the spot at this Highbury 10-year-old from Sebby Holmes, a former Begging Bowl and Smoking Goat chef (“I’ve never tasted more exciting cuisine!”). “Service is spot-on – as it needs to be to navigate the menu”. Any downsides? – It’s “noisy”.

“A nice lunchtime respite from shopping in Marylebone High Street” – this characterful café attached to a specialist cheese shop (and its siblings in Bloomsbury and Highbury) “showcases the best of the cheeses they stock” – “there are a few non-cheese dishes, but with cheeses this good, stick to what they do best”. Top Menu Tips – “go for the raclette or the fondue savoyarde”.

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: “Delighted to see this has survived the pandemic!” – this little Sardinian local, not far from the Arsenal ground, delights its Highbury fanclub. They say it serves “Islington’s top pizza”.

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”.

“It’s so cute!” – this hipster hotspot in Newington Green still carries the ‘Barnes Motors’ signage of its origins as a 1940s car showroom, with a large glass frontage (which opens in summer). It’s “a wonderful place to while away a sunny afternoon, and very pretty for a candlelit evening too”. Choose from the blackboard menu of numerous, well-realised small plates, plus wines, beers and other tipples.

2022 Review: “A lovely local coffee shop” in Highbury – this four-year-old majors on “tasty fresh bread/pastries and delicious coffee” and “also sells a nice range of deli bits/wines etc”. The same team have opened a second site on nearby Gillespie Road.

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?

Inspired by the comfort food of Rome and Lazio, a neighbourhood spot in Highbury launched in summer 2025 by a ‘dream team’ of locals – Ed Templeton, co-founder of high-flying guest-chef showcase Carousel, and actor Theo James (White Lotus; The Gentleman), with Milan-raised chef Naz Hassan running the kitchen. The dolci are home-made, and thick-cut porchetta sandwiches are served to take away on Arsenal match days.

2024 Review: This micro Italian wine bar in Highbury’s Blackstock Road (formerly the Light Eye Mind arts space) opened in March 2023 and operates as a bottle shop and café by day and a 20-cover wine bar by night, serving low-intervention Italian wines along with cheese and salumi from small producers and pasta. The cakes are from Forno in Hackney, and they produce their own small-batch gelato. Co-owner Leonardo Leoncini ran Highbury’s Farewell Cafe, which closed in 2021.

“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”.