London HIghbury Restaurant Guide

“Super spicy (in a good way) cooking”, “really interesting dishes” and “roti to die for” keep aficionados of new-wave Thai cuisine coming back to Sebby Holmes’s Highbury venue – originally a pop-up, but now firmly established after eight years on the scene.

“Simple food done well...and the cheese!!” – this small group has basic eateries attached to their stores as well as “an enormous selection of cheese to buy at retail”. WC1 is by far the most popular outlet – “like wandering into a village restaurant in the heart of Bloomsbury”. “If you like cheese and wine, what’s not to love about this place?”

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”.

A retro shopfront (left behind by a 1940s car showroom) adds to the street cred of this well-known East End foodie hotspot (linked to Westerns Laundry and Jolene). Its fashionable combination of small plates served with natural wines doesn’t inspire as much feedback in our annual diners’ poll as its fooderati renown might imply, but is all positive.

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.

“Heavily embracing the post-industrial vibe” – this “buzzy” hipster feature not far from the Emirates and Drayton Park station (“did they go out of their way to make it difficult to find?”) makes elegant and appealing use of the high-ceilinged space it occupies (originally, of course, a laundry). Five years old now, it’s something of a classic of the contemporary East End genre – “a small plates outlet of quality” combining funky tapas with low intervention wines. It does attract the odd more downbeat critique though: “the food, service and ambience are all fine but in no way justify the prices”.

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.

“Legendary Dexter cheeseburgers and well-flavoured small plates” of “delicious, unfussy grub” hit the jackpot at this “crowded Finsbury Park local” near the old Arsenal stadium, “if you want to eat down-to-earth cooking, served up with charm in a proper boozer”. “With the exception of the burgers the menu changes constantly”, and “attention is on the food not the decor” – although the ‘Four Legs’ duo, Jamie Allan & Ed McIlroy, did strip out the previous incarnation’s Oirish-themed interior before launching here two years ago.