The best restaurants in Islington

Highbury’s star Italian has made the restaurant biz look like child’s play since day one by combining irresistible food with spot-on service and affordable prices. Trullo is home to some of London’s best pasta (the pappardelle with slow-cooked beef-shin ragù is a silky delight) and there’s some brilliant stuff from the charcoal grill, plus a selection of wicked fruit tarts to finish. A comprehensive all-Italian wine list helps to emphasise the restaurant’s true calibre.

Farang serves some of the most tastebud-smashing Thai food that north London has seen in years. Possibly ever. They’re an ingenious lot. To make the beef curry, they marinate a huge hunk of beef cheek, then slow-cook it for six hours in the old pizza oven. What’s not to love about that? The wobbly, spoon-soft meat then simmers in a rich, aromatic base, all coconut and spice. End result? Depth, intensity and alternating waves of heat, salt and sweet.

Under the inky skin and camo print of FKABAM’s tattooed ruler Lee Tiernan throbs the brain and heart of an elite chef. Tiernan and his team want every ingredient to count and every mouthful to mean something. And almost every time they succeed. The restaurant’s devoted fanbase know the drill: one tasting menu, four courses for two people. The dishes change every few weeks, but the lack of choice is alluring, not limiting. If it’s on the menu, it’s been perfected. On our last visit we got unimprovable ox heart with tomato on flatbread and lamb with coconut laksa. 

The Compton Arms is one of London’s most reliable foodie pubs. Current kitchen residents are Rake, with an excellent menu haunted spectre of St John. Think salsify and scotch broth, or bawdy devilled duck hearts on St George’s toast, which seem straight from the Fergus Henderson playbook. But rather than ostentatious ‘I-dare-you-to-eat-that’ whole beast butchery, Rake’s approach to meat is more earthy and pagan. Try also deep fried cockles on skewers, browned oysters rarebit and ray wing tenders; sweet, juicy and crunchy buttresses of fish, served on a medieval-looking crumpet.

Sibling owners Jordan and Chyna opened the vegan Jam Delish off the back of a number of successful pop-ups. For this permanent iteration, the kitchen is headed up by Bajan-Jamaican chef Nathan Collymore, an alumnus of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen. The menu is a relatively unadorned amble through West Indian classics like jerk 'chicken', 'goat' curry, 'saltfish' tostones, 'beef' patties and so on, all made with plant-based versions of meat. Collymore is doing seriously alchemical things with seitan, tempeh, jackfruit and soy.

The Nook, built on the white-tiled bones of Highbury’s much-missed Linden Stores bar, and run by a winsome husband-and-wife team. Eating here is like hanging out at a really talented mate’s house. The food is Mediterranean and Turkish-inspired, but touched by the grace of god. Enjoy the likes of locally famous crispy courgette dolma bites with wild garlic and lemon yoghurt and pickled naga chilli houmous, topped with crunchy chickpeas. And it would be remiss to not mention the burrata, crowned with a lattice of almond-studded samphire. Everything zings and everything snaps. 

Sambal Shiok is a Malaysian laksa bar that will have you legging it back for more. Addictive heat is the name of chef Mandy Yin's game, and her signature bowls of broth – complete with rice noodles and bouncy tofu puffs – are nothing less than divine. Order the gado gado salad on the side, and don't forget a serving of Malaysian fried chicken. 

When it comes to Tofu Vegan, the clue’s in the name. The menu is entirely plant-based: it’s mock meat, tofu, and beancurd galore. But the fact it’s all vegan (and by extension, theoretically less damaging to the environment) isn’t the best part. The best part is that it’s genuinely delicious Chinese cuisine. It’s a wild bombshell of spicy, sweet, sour, and savoury – the kind of food that will shock your tastebuds and test your tongue with unusual textures. Get the wontons. 

Lupa promises ‘Roman comfort food’ and delivers. Up in Highbury, theirs is a ballsy offering of big, bold food, heavy with hearty guanciale in a tiny trattoria in an old shoemenders. In the kitchen is the extremely capable Naz Hassan, cooking up deep fried courgette flower, carbonara is the same gleaming yellow as Xmas advocaat, and cacio e pepe that hums with the heavy duty heat of freshly cracked black pepper. 

Westerns Laundry is another sexy small-plates restaurant. Tunes are groovy. The open kitchen spans the rear. The tables at its centre are communal. You can, of course, sit at the counter. The mod-ish European-ish food is superb, from an unctuous slice of glazed lamb belly with a faint echo of heat, to a humble, peasanty dish of butter beans cooked in a mellow, herb-flecked tomato sauce.

Caravel is a restaurant on a boat, but don’t expect any ahoying. You’ll feel more like you’re at the kind of local bistro that might be used as the set of a classic London romcom. The food is a run of properly playful takes on modern European and classic British dishes: crunchy, fatty rostis topped with refreshing yoghurt and salty caviar; a surprisingly light duck croquette moulded into the shape of a rubber duckie; a deeply sweet tomato salad with roasted onions, asparagus served with a thick, creamy, hazelnutty sauce.

Shoulder to shoulder with Angel’s legendary Lexington pub, this dinky but delightful Chinese restaurant has become a favourite for in-the-know locals. Tried-and-tested UK-Chinese classics like sweet and sour dishes and cumin lamb are cooked and seasoned extremely well, meaning most of Lucky Skewers’ menu tastes unmistakably fresh and zippy. Casual food prepared by people that care about what they’re serving. The air-fried green beans with minced pork is the right combination of crispy and meaty. The gong bao chicken is on the old-school side (think sweet and fried) but - like everything else - cleverly seasoned and cooked really well. Compact, charming and highly addictive.

The décor at this longstanding all-you-can-eat Indian restaurant is worth the visit alone – the walls are covered with articles, posters, slogans and questionable karmic concepts, all geared toward the promotion of vegetarianism. Still, being surrounded by all this vaguely militant mumbo jumbo is a very low price to pay for one of London’s most interesting dining experiences. The food – a collection of vegetable curries, colourful salads, onion bhajis and paratha so light they could do with a tether – is good, and a bargain at £9.95 for as much as you can manage. It's also BYOB.

It may lack the intimacy of the East End original, but Islington’s Little Georgia is still a happy find for anyone craving some indigenous Eurasian cuisine. The colourful dining room is stuffed with vintage Georgian artefacts and plastered with vintage political posters, while Tiko Tuskadze’s menu deals in ethnic classics from her homeland – don’t miss the freshly baked khachapuri (traditional cheese bread) or family recipes such as tabaka (roast poussin with chicken livers and Georgian plum sauce). Unusual Georgian wines too.

Overlooking Islington Green, Afghan Kitchen is a long-serving local favourite that’s never needed to change its style. The two-floor premises are bright, tidy and compact, with lots of shared tables and a menu of equally straightforward home cooking – think proper breads, hearty, warming stews and filling rice dishes, with plenty for veggies as well as carnivores. It’s also pretty damn cheap for the area. 

Saltine owners' have presumably been to New York a lot, and they're studied the art to create one of London’s restaurant-iest restaurants. There's an artful, alabaster-y dining room, exposed brickwork, imperturbable atmosphere and seasonal, changeable menu. Think; deviled leeks, cheese tarts crowned with a carpet of caramelised onions and stuffed pork, served with an escarole and black olive splodge. 

Old enough and wise enough to deserve the title ‘Islington classic’, dapper family-run Frederick’s (born in 1969) just keeps on keeping on – driven along by loyal customers who greatly appreciate its lofty conservatory, striking contemporary artworks, pretty hidden garden and gently fashionable modern European food. Menus change with the seasons at this ritzy local treat. 

Nitpickers might say that the Brave doesn’t quite feel like a restaurant (it’s clearly a big pub) or a pub (there’s nowhere obvious to have a pint). But who needs their nits picked when the food is this consistent and rewarding? Cheesy gougeres are airy puffs of pastry, the soul of a Sainsbury’s cheese twist, channeled into a pebble-sized morsel. Salmon tartare with cod’s roe bites are resolutely un-fishy in flavour, encased within puff pastry that’s flakily redolent of pastels del nata. 

You’ll find duck with pancakes and familiar stir-fries on offer at this friendly Islington restaurant, although you’re better off stepping into the esoteric world of mouth-numbing mapo tofu, dry-fried pig’s intestines and other regional obscurities. A plate of salty deep-fried green beans with pork goes down well with a cold Tsing Tao beer, but for a real blast order the ‘spicy steam pot’ with all sorts of weird and wonderful additions. Can’t take the heat? Staff are happy to turn it down a tad.

Ignore the functional decor and go for the full-on regional burn at Yipin, where the vast menu highlights the earthy flavours of Hunan province alongside more familiar Cantonese dishes and lip-numbing peasant-style specialities from Sichuan. Bold, fiery riffs abound, whether you’re tackling a wonderfully sour plate of pickled runner beans with minced pork or a delectably fatty portion of twice-cooked pork belly. Just remember that this is an upscale Chinese in upscale Islington, so prices aren’t Chinatown-cheap.

Although it’s rooted in the traditions of Puglia’s ‘cucina povera’, this low-key family-run Islington Italian is also in tune with London’s trends when it comes to provenance and plant-based dishes. Check out the pappardelle topped with chunky wild boar ragù in negroamaro wine or the dark, nutty ‘grano arso’ pasta (made from ‘burnt grains’ and served with yellow tomatoes, black olives and broccoli purée). Tip: the best seats in the house are out on the pavement in summer.