Lowri Griffiths Reviews Five Restaurants in N4 Through N7, Discovers That Natural Wine Has Become Inescapable, and Finds One Genuinely Excellent Meal

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

By Lowri Griffiths | The London Prat

In the interests of local journalism and personal appetite, I have spent the past three weeks eating my way through a selection of North London restaurants in the N4 to N7 postal range. The following is what I found, how much it cost, and whether the experience was commensurate with the bill, which is the only question that matters after the food has been eaten and the receipt has been absorbed into the chaos of my Monzo account.

The Natural Wine Bar (Unnamed, You Know Which One)

There is a natural wine bar in Finsbury Park. There may be several natural wine bars in Finsbury Park; I encountered one specifically, which served me a glass of orange wine described on the menu as “funky, oxidative, natural” and which tasted like someone had accidentally left a bottle of decent white wine open for several days and then served it anyway and pretended this was artisanal. The wine was eighteen pounds a glass. I drank it. I ordered another. By the third glass I had convinced myself I understood what “funky” meant as a wine descriptor and had opinions about malolactic fermentation. The food — small plates, always small plates — was very good. The bill was not small.

The Genuinely Excellent Meal

A Turkish restaurant on Seven Sisters Road, which has been there for many years and charges fifteen pounds for a combination platter that will solve any problems you currently have, was the best meal of the audit. The lamb is excellent. The bread arrives warm. The staff have the efficient warmth of people who are good at what they do and know it. Nobody described the wine as funky. The wine was described as “house red” and cost six pounds a glass and was perfectly acceptable. I have eaten there twice since the audit. I will eat there again. This is what North London restaurant excellence looks like: not seventeen quid for an amuse bouche but fifteen quid for a full meal that you will think about on subsequent Tuesdays.

The Rest

A ramen place in Holloway that was good but had a ninety-minute queue on Saturday evening which is a commitment I am no longer able to make to noodles. A pizza restaurant that was fine. A “modern European” place that charged forty-two pounds for a main course and did not adequately explain what was modern about the European, unless “modern” means “small.” More North London food coverage at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat’s lifestyle section. I ate well. I spent too much. This is North London. The audit continues.

More laughs at The Daily Mash and NewsThump.

What This All Adds Up To

North London in 2026 is a city within a city within a crisis, and living in it requires a specific combination of resilience, dark humour, and the ability to find joy in things that are technically fine — an on-time train, a good sandwich, a flat viewing that went moderately well. I have lived here long enough to know that the standard of “fine” adjusts continuously downward in response to baseline conditions, and that the joy is genuine despite being calibrated to a low benchmark. The rental market is breaking people’s financial plans. The buses are philosophical. The coffee is excellent and expensive and I will continue to drink it with the slight guilt of someone who has thought carefully about their principles and then ordered the oat milk flat white anyway. More from North London next week, assuming I survive the commute. More from across London at Bohiney Magazine. More irreverence, always, at The London Prat.

Personal Note

These observations are, of course, entirely personal, entirely North London in their register, and entirely the product of a person who has lived here long enough to know that the complaining is a form of love. You don’t complain about places you don’t care about. You don’t notice the coffee being both excellent and too expensive unless you are buying it regularly, which means you have chosen to live in the place where it costs this much, and that choice is a statement about values whether you frame it that way or not. I love North London in the way that you love things that are imperfect and expensive and occasionally very beautiful, and I am grateful for the platform at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat that lets me write about it every week. The next piece will be about the Overground. It will run late. The piece, not the train. Actually, possibly both. And I will return to it next week with fresh material and slightly lower expectations for public transport, which is the correct preparation for covering a city that is always both better and worse than you left it. Thank you, as always, for reading. More at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, where the coverage is comprehensive, the satire is affectionate, and the coffee metaphors are probably excessive but I am not stopping. The restaurants will still be there next week, the natural wine will still cost eighteen pounds a glass, and the Turkish place on Seven Sisters Road will still be the best meal I have eaten in a month. Some things in North London are reliable. This is one of them.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/north-london-restaurant-audit-lowri-griffiths/