The best restaurants in North London: The cosy restaurants edition
It’s difficult to keep a small, cosy, independent restaurant in business in London. Inevitably, character gets swapped for brand, ambience gets swapped for affected aesthetics, and a menu becomes something that can’t be deviated from. Chef/owner Mandy Yin of Sambal Shiok (below) has written extensively about the costs and difficulties of running such an independent restaurant. Still, she cooks on, and I continue to champion such establishments by writing on.
Continuing this cosy restaurants edition (see East London and Notting Hill), here are the best restaurants in North London.
Sambal Shiok
Sambal Shiok has become one of London’s most popular restaurants. The small laksa bar on Holloway Road would always end up in one of my blogs because it offers some of my favourite things: cosiness, laksa, and sambal.
It’s best to dine with somebody so you can go halves on everything. Fried chicken with a peanut sauce, aromatic beef rendang with rice and pickles, and – this is when you should definitely order one each – curry laksa with chicken and prawn and the fluffiest pillows of fried tofu (perfect for soaking up the fiery slightly coconutty sauce).
Date night, with a mate(s) or solo, Sambal Shiok is good for any occasion, and it is a great place to warm up with a bowl of laksa on a cold rainy night. Dining solo shouldn’t prevent you from going, it just means you’ll slurp the noodles in double time. It also shouldn’t prevent you from ordering seconds with a side of achar pickles.
Holloway Road, N7 | sambalshiok.co.uk
Rossella
Beloved North London family trattoria. It’s more open and spacious than some other restaurants in this blog but still offers plenty of cosiness and warmth despite that. It’s a classic, unpretentious Italian restaurant through and through. And I love it. From the red glass candle holders on the tables to the bread baskets to the spaghetti carbonara, it has all the hallmarks of the Italian restaurants of my childhood.
Chef-owner Luca Meola focuses on classic dishes made with quality ingredients and his front-of-house team ensures the atmosphere in the restaurant is one where you want to sit back, relax, sip your wine, and enjoy hearty Italian food that’s simple and utterly delicious.
Chef Meola has followed in the footsteps of his father who opened the original Rossella restaurant in 1960 in Benevento, Italy, and later a trattoria in London in the late 1970s. Family-oriented, passionate, and a firm favourite of Kentish Town (and nearby) denizens, Rossella is all feel-good food and wines from the family vineyard from Benevento.
Kentish Town, NW5 | rossella.co.uk
The Parakeet
Nothing like its overly chatty green namesake you can spot (and hear) all over London, although it is (a dark) green on the inside; The Parakeet offers seasonal British menus with dishes cooked over an open flame. When a place is so popular reservations open on the first of every month you wonder whether the hype (and the wait) is worth it. I’m happy to report The Parakeet’s open-flame cooking is, indeed, worth it.
The dark green tones, wood accents, candlelight, and stained glass will make you want to kick up your feet by the fire, whisky or brandy in hand, with a dog curling up in sleep at your feet. Some might prefer the trendy modern minimalism – The Parakeet is for people who like old pubs and antique shops.
The ingredients celebrate the best of the British land. The dishes taste as lovely as they look. And they’re not stingy with portions either, being just the right amount. There’s plenty of substance to go along with The Parakeet’s strong aesthetics so that when you dine here you feel like you’re in good hands – and you feel inspired to order a dish you normally wouldn’t elsewhere.
Kentish Town, NW5 | theparakeetpub.com
Cadet
The return to simple, minimally rustic wine bars speaks to a need for a simpler time, before the constant bombardment of media and news algorithms – at least, that’s what it feels like when you take refuge in one of the many caves à manger populating metropolitan areas everywhere like a patch of dandelions in spring.
Cadet is my favourite wine bar and restaurant in North London. With Cadet, you can forget about the world outside or what’s happening on your phone; the atmosphere is punctuated by conversations, the clink of bottle to glass, the scrape of forks on plates, and a desire to while away the hours.
The daily changing menu is written on chalkboards on the wall and small enough that you know it is fresh, seasonal, and delicious. You’ll want to InstaTok or TikGram it, but I suggest you don’t and instead just enjoy the food, the wine, the ambience, and the person you’re with.
Newington Green, N16 | cadetlondon.com
Tollington’s
It was once Tollington’s fish and chip shop and now it’s Tollington’s seafood-led tapas restaurant as cosy as you like. I hope for these kinds of restaurants in every city and town and visit: small spaces with equally small menus so I don’t feel overwhelmed, where everybody leans into an atmosphere of sharing good food with the people they love.
There are hat-tips to Spain everywhere beyond the tapas menu: the earthy yellow walls could trick you into thinking you’re in Sitges instead of Finsbury Park; there’s Estrella on tap and readily available vermouth.
Before my departure from social media, I had been following the food inspirations of Ed McIroy and Jamie Allan (the chef-owners of Tollington’s) through Spain, and inspired they were, not stopping at the border between Spain and Portugal but blazing in – you can taste it in the likes of the cod with red peppers, the squid, and the bifana. It’s a place where you’re always game for one more plate and just one more drink.
Finsbury Park, N4 | Tollington’s Instagram
Trullo
Trullo is a North London institution at this point, opened in 2010, it’s had a good decade and a half of serving simple and immensely delicious Italian-inspired dishes through a seasonal, daily changing menu, with handmade pasta and charcoal grill dishes in the starring roles.
Candlelight, pasta, curtains intimately halfway up the window, and wood accent throughout, every aspect of Trullo is an example of what comes to mind when you hear the words cosy restaurant. Highbury is bustling on the other side of the windows but in Trullo, it’s plates that fill you up – no small plates here – just enough to make you want a digestif after dessert.
Pasta lovers love it, but me? Well, I follow the scent of charcoal cooking to wherever it leads me, and more than once it has led me to Trullo.
Highbury, N1 | trullorestaurant.com