Though less famous than its neighbour down the road, Kentish Town has been part of this corner of north London far longer. A settlement since 1208, it predates Camden by almost six centuries, yet it was the younger sibling that got the canal, the lock and the near thirty million tourists a year.
Rewind a little for narrative’s sake; while Camden filled up with railways, warehouses and factories through the mid-1800s, Karl Marx was a mile north on Grafton Terrace, writing the book that argued the whole system was rotten. Seventy years on, George Orwell drafted much of Keep the Aspidistra Flying while living in the neighbourhood, documenting one man’s war against the grip of money on everything long before Camden Market was charging twenty million pounds for a chocolate-covered Yorkshire burrito.
Both men came to these unshowy streets to take aim at what money does to a place. Camden, in the end, took the packet and became a destination. Kentish Town stayed itself, and perhaps this is why it’s recently grown a food scene that has left its neighbour’s in the dust.
A stretch, sure, but we needed something to say and couldn’t quite find it. Perhaps we should’ve moved to a bedsit in Kentish Town with a notepad. But we’re hungry, so let’s move on. Here are the best restaurants in Kentish Town.
Belly
Ideal for modern Filipino cooking with a French bistro accent…
Perhaps no one has done more to push Filipino food towards its ‘next big thing’ status in London than Omar Shah. For the last decade he has refracted the country’s cuisine through whatever method suits the medium, from ice cream at Mamasons and sandos at Cafe Mama & Sons all the way to ramen at Ramo.
Belly is his most recent and ambitious opening; a proper sit-down restaurant this time, where classic Filipino dishes are dressed up in a French bistro sensibility and seasoned with loads of wood smoke. It’s an intoxicating mix, and the early verdicts were emphatic: Time Out named it the best new London restaurant of 2025, and Michelin recognition followed soon after.
On a packed Sunday evening, the steak tartare was an early highlight, cut with mint, coriander and patis, the fish sauce doing the savoury work Worcestershire sauce normally would. A couple of handsome scallops, burnished in their shells and served over reduced coconut cream, were gorgeous too, but it’s the larger plates where Belly shines brightest, probably because this is where the grill really takes over.
A half chicken smoked over oak and assembled on a hybrid sauce of tinola, the gingery Filipino broth, and beurre blanc was outrageously good. So was a thick wedge of dry-aged monkfish, smoked tinapa-style and served over a sauce américaine spiked with strawberry XO. We tried to order rice to pay the necessary respect to the sauces, but were steered towards the beef-fat fries, instead. We relented, not at all reluctantly.
And then, dessert. Both viral sensations, and both rare occasions when the actual dishes don’t collapse under the weight of that virality. First, an avocado ice cream gilded with caviar and olive oil that was heady and salty and a little bit exhilarating, and then a frozen custard profiterole in a fish-sauce caramel that the Michelin inspectors rightly singled out.
Alongside, skin-contact Maturana Blanca, all honeysuckle and a nuttiness the staff had flagged as a favourite. It worked perfectly. We left at ten with the restaurant still rammed and walk-ins being turned away. A full house on a Sunday night in London is rare enough; one still filling at closing even more so.
Website: bellylondon.com
Address: 157 Kentish Town Rd, London NW1 8PD
The Parakeet
Ideal for carefully sourced produce cooked over fire in the most convivial of settings…
On the same strip as Belly but a little closer to Kentish Town station, the buzz generated around the Parakeet since its opening during the tail end of the COVID has been significant, and judging by the punters spilling out onto the streets on a recent visit, it seems the fire is still very much burning here.
The head chef is Ben Allen, who earned his (dry-aged) chops at Brat. The menu here follows a similarly singular vision, of cooking carefully sourced produce over fire. In fact, the sous chef at the Parakeet is also formerly of Brat, ensuring the coals are smouldering just right, the smokiness imparted in the dishes here is alluring rather than acrid, and there’s a faint sense of the incestual to proceedings.
First though, a couple of pints at the bar, as The Parakeet remains proudly, resolutely a pub, with locals dropping in for a crisp, frothy pint of N1 from the Hammerton Brewery, without ever having to tuck into a plate of tomato and green strawberry if they don’t wish to.
You should, though, alongside a blistered and burnished tranche of brill, here served with salty-sweet guanciale and tiny brown shrimp. Let’s hear it, too, for the grilled prawns with brown butter, with brains left on for squeezing directly into your mouth from a great height, like you’re the most extra guest at the bacchanal.
There’s a great, compact biodynamic wine list here too, with several available by the carafe, which is always a pleasure to see. And drink. Get stuck into the Verdicchio Di Gino, which is nutty and expressive, and the perfect foil for that brill. A carafe is £17, which isn’t bad value in a place with obvious red book ambitions.
Just don’t bring your dog here…
Anyway, enough of all that – you can read our full review of Parakeet if you’re keen to learn more.
Website: theparakeetpub.com
Address: 256 Kentish Town Rd, London NW5 2AA
Half Cut Market
Ideal for natural wine bar dining with charcoal-grilled cooking credentials…
There must be something about Kentish Town that draws ex-Brat chefs into its boozier kitchens, because here you’ll find another…
Although let’s be honest, actually finding Half Cut Market requires a little effort. You’ll have to venture into that curious stretch of York Way between Kentish Town and Caledonian Road that nobody’s quite worked out how to name. The founders may have solved this by dubbing it the “York Way Riviera”, which points not only to the location but also to the pleasingly tongue-in-cheek posture that Half Cut does rather well.
What began in 2021 as a bottle shop and deli from four hospitality veterans – Danny Eilenberg, Edwin Methu, Paul Rosser and Holly Willcocks – has evolved into a fully fledged restaurant that manages the rare trick of being a wine bar, shop and serious eating destination all at once. Willcocks, who also handles the wine programme at Mountain in Soho, curates a list of around 80 natural bottles that The Times recognised when naming Half Cut one of the 45 best wine bars in the UK.
The kitchen is run by Jack Newton, formerly of Dublin’s Hen’s Teeth, with Half Cut’s regulars also recalling Aidan Richardson’s earlier ex-Brat tenure here. The Brat influence shows in the cooking methods employed. Much of the menu gets treated to time over a Japanese Konro grill. Most dishes sit comfortably under £25, with many under a tenner.
The menu changes regularly based on what’s available from their suppliers – regeneratively farmed meat from the Ethical Butcher, day boat fish from Fin & Flounder, regeneratively grown flour from Wildfarmed and fruit and veg from Natoora. As is obligatory in a place like this, slicks of Cantabrian anchovies appear as a drinking snack, but here they’re paired with kumquat and persimmon, a marriage we haven’t seen elsewhere and one that certainly works.
That sets the tone for some more interesting substantial plates, including a slow-grilled chicken with jerk sauce, a pork, plum and spring onion skewer, and a grilled butterflied mackerel with roast pepper and smoked carrot sauce. The cheese and potato flatbread seems to hit every single table, arriving blistered from the grill and puffing out steam when punctured. It has enough richness to warrant sharing (or not, depending on your willpower). Further sides of fried garlic and honey potatoes or badger flame beetroot salad are worth ordering even when you think you’re full.
Desserts are grown-up and boozy, with a toffee apple eclair that the menu helpfully suggests pairing with Avallen Calvados apple brandy. The wine list deserves your full attention, with glasses starting from £7. Cocktails hover around a tenner – the Half Cut Martini brings gin, vodka, vermouth and Perello olive brine together in the right proportions.
The space itself isn’t quite a wine bar, in aesthetic terms. More a teenager who can’t decide if they’re sulking or up for a party; neons, a bouncing ’90s playlist, dim lighting, that kind of thing. The west-facing pavement terrace catches the evening sun during the warmer months. It’s open Tuesday through Saturday evenings, with the shop element operating during those hours for takeaway bottles.
Website: halfcut.world
Address: 396 York Wy, London N7 9LW
Gökyüzü Kentish Town
Ideal for keenly priced Turkish feasting…
Gökyüzü, almost directly opposite Kentish Town station (and the Parakeet, then), continues the acclaimed legacy of the Gökyüzü chain (now six London locations strong, including one in Green Lanes Harringay which Grace Dent reviewed fondly in the Guardian) with another knockout offering in Kentish Town.
Run by the Yavuz family, Gökyüzü is a product of a familiar story; a family moves to the UK and finds the food of their homeland not represented as they’d like. Cue the deployment of a grandparent’s secret recipes, a mix of local producers and spices flown in from the motherland, and an authentic restaurant is born.
As you walk in, there’s a charcoal grill being tended to on your right and a fridge with various kebabs and vegetable skewers on display, emphasising the freshness of the product. The menu is a tribute to the diverse culinary heritage of Turkey, with specialities ranging from succulent, charred kebabs, served generously with a big smear of house hummus, to meze, aromatic pide and freshly baked lahmacun. Order the latter – super thin, crisp but pliable – squeeze on a little lemon, add some pickles and parsley, and roll one up. Repeat the process; it’s damn good.
Move on to the restaurant’s signature platter, featuring both lamb and chicken shish, ribs, wings, chops and doners. It’s served with rice and bulgur wheat, and arrives as an imposing pile, the meat blackened in just the right places but tender within. Designed for two to three people, it could easily feed six. At £67, it’s an absolute steal. Order an Efes Draft or two to go with, and be confused that it arrives in a bottle. No matter, the honeyed maltiness of the beer is just the right match for that kiss of the charcoal that runs through everything on the plate.
A complimentary salad to start and Turkish tea to finish shows off the excellent hospitality which the restaurant group (and country) are famed for. That the Kentish Town branch scooped best Middle Eastern restaurant in the region at the 2025 Deliveroo Restaurant Awards only confirms what locals have known for years.
Website: gokyuzurestaurant.co.uk
Address: 339 Kentish Town Rd, London NW5 2TJ
Med Salleh
Ideal for Malaysian street food with the flavours of Kampar, Ipoh and Penang…
Med Salleh landed on Kentish Town Road in early 2026, the fourth London site from founders Med Pang and Koi Lee. The pair opened the original Med Salleh Kopitiam in Bayswater in 2022, then two Vietnamese offshoots, Med Salleh Viet, in Westbourne Grove and Earl’s Court. Kentish Town brings the Malaysian kopitiam back to the fore: the street food co-founder Med grew up eating in Kampar, with detours through the fine hawker cooking of Ipoh and Penang.
The thirty covers fill quickly, and the menu rewards ordering widely. The Kamparian claypot rice is the centrepiece, and the salted-fish version is well worth the small premium. In its orbit, the table fills out almost instinctively: skewers of satay chicken, roti canai for dragging through curry sauce, a Penang Nyonya acar to cut the richness, a plate of kangkung belacan, charred and blistered in the wok. We could go on…
The exception to all this sharing is the section the menu calls Med’s Childhood Favourite Noodles, one-bowl wonders you won’t want to share, even with someone you love deeply: Penang char kuey teow, curry laksa, an Ipoh hor fun of shredded chicken and prawn. Everything else, though, is best tackled family-style, by a table of three or four with no plans beyond lying down (hey, perhaps even together if you play your cards right) once it’s done.
The Bayswater original has won over critics including Tom Parker Bowles and Jay Rayner, and it was Giles Coren, a Kentish Town local, who reportedly talked the group into opening down the road from him. Two and a half reasons to avoid the place, sure, but they can’t always be in here, can they?
Website: medsalleh.co.uk
Address: 320 Kentish Town Rd, London NW5 2TH
Queen Of Sheba
Ideal for an Ethiopian feast eaten by hand, scooped up with injera…
Queen of Sheba has held its corner of Fortess Road since 2003, family-run, ingredients flown in from Ethiopia, more often than not with the owner himself walking you through the menu and the carvings on the walls. It shares the street with Lalibela, going since 1993 and also good, which makes this unassuming stretch north of Kentish Town station something of an Ethiopian heartland.
Come with at least one other person and order a mixed platter, which arrives as a wheel of stews on injera, the wide, faintly sour flatbread that doubles as plate and cutlery. There might be doro wat, the long-cooked chicken and egg stew that counts as the national dish, alongside gomen of spinach and crumbling curd, lentils stained yellow with turmeric, and collard greens cooked down with lamb, ginger and garlic. For the more committed there’s kitfo, beef worked through spiced butter, available totally raw or gently warmed through. None of it is toned down for the room; they just go lighter on the chilli unless you say otherwise. Though announcing “otherwise” apropos of nothing is going to confuse everyone, come to think of it.
Drink tej, the Ethiopian honey wine, or a bottle of St George from Addis, and leave time for the coffee, roasted and poured with full ceremony and strong enough to walk home on its own. It’s generous, well-priced cooking in a small, art-crammed room, and a reminder that the independent kitchens up here tend to outshine anything Camden musters down the hill.
Website: thequeenofsheba.co.uk
Address: 12 Fortess Rd, London NW5 2EU
The Southampton Arms
Ideal for a great pint and the best pork bap in north London…
Though fine dining restaurants masquerading as pubs is certainly a thing in this part of town, the Southampton Arms is proudly not a restaurant. It is an ale and cider house with no bookings, no coffee and no card machine, cash only, and we’ve included it anyway, because some things shouldn’t be left out on a technicality. The words painted across the front read ‘CIDER ALE MEAT’, which is about as straight a menu as you’ll find, and true too, as it turns out.
The pints are lovely, and the vibe the best in Kentish Town, but the food ain’t half bad either. Specifically, the hot roast pork baps, a soft roll loaded with roast pork, crackling and apple sauce, draws a queue and can take twenty minutes to put together, usually for around a fiver. Beyond it the food stays simple: pork pies, scotch eggs, sausage rolls, scratchings, a cheese and chutney bap for vegetarians, a British cheeseboard if you’re staying a while.
The drink is the other half of it, a rotating line-up of cask ales and ciders from small independent UK breweries, priced with a fairness that has become rare in London. There’s vinyl on the deck, live piano some nights, a fire in the colder months and a garden out the back. Few places in Kentish Town make a better case for losing an afternoon, bap in one hand, pint in the other.
Instagram: @southamptonnw5
Address: 139 Highgate Rd, London NW5 1LE
Yes, we realise we’ve been giving neighbour Camden’s food scene a kicking somewhat in this article, but there are actually some great places to eat in Camden, as it turns out.
