Season Kitchen

The walk to Season Kitchen, past the wig shops and halal butchers of litter-strewn Stroud Green Road, is part of the dining experience. Once you hit the chalk-drawn menu outside Season Kitchen - written on the pavement - you know you've arrived.

As the name suggests, this neighbourhood restaurant is big on seasonality. On our visit, the British-leaning menu was playing with comforting winter ingredients such as cauliflower, jerusalem artichoke and bone marrow. The restaurant's stylish grey interior adds a cosy setting to these flavours of the colder seasons.

A starter of smoked salmon - prepared in the Hansen & Lydersen smokehouse in Stoke Newington - came accompanied by sweet and crumbly-textured soda bread, baked earlier in-house. The warm beetroot salad with sorrel and oozing duck egg was simple yet good.

Main courses, such as creamy risotto or roast chicken, are proper winter warmers. The polenta with wild mushroom ragù and smoked mozzarella was a pleasing vegetarian dish, although the tomato sauce slightly overpowered the subtle taste of the funghi.

If you're planning a date here, you might want to consider carefully before ordering the whole roast wood pigeon. As the accompanying finger bowl implies, the bird requires a lot of dissection work, but tasted agreeably gamey.

The brief dessert menu includes a sumptuous rosemary and chocolate pot. This comes served in an espresso cup - yet curiously, Season Kitchen doesn't have an espresso machine. Instead, you can order Guatemalan filter coffee, specially blended for a little eatery that brings some warmth to this patch of north London.