Finsbury Park station sees close to 10 million passengers a year, most of them racing through to somewhere else. Arsenal matches, Victoria Line connections, the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow; this Victorian terminus has too often been about getting people places rather than coaxing them to tap out and explore.
Which makes the current restaurant scene all the more surprising. Within ten minutes’ walk of the station, you’ll find one of only a clutch of Uyghur restaurants in the entire UK, a gastropub where getting a table is a tough old business, and a Kurdish bakery selling three naan for a pound-fifty.
Actually, perhaps that isn’t so surprising. The mix reflects the area’s particularly diverse demographics. Turkish and Kurdish families have been here since the 1970s, joined more recently by Syrian refugees and young chefs who’ve worked out that the rent’s cheaper than Hackney and the customers less exhausting than Shoreditch.
We’ve spent the last few months eating our way around Finsbury Park, to bring you this selection of some great places to eat within walking distance of the station. Here are the best restaurants near Finsbury Park.
Dotori, Stroud Green Road
Ideal for when you want brilliant Korean-Japanese fusion and you came carrying cash…
Dotori operates like a restaurant from 1995: cash only, no bookings, closes when the food runs out. In the age of OpenTable and contactless everything, this should be annoying. Instead, the tiny space next to Finsbury Park station fills every night with people who’ve learned to play by its rules.
The bibimbap comes in a stone pot hot enough to cause actual injury, the bottom layer of rice developing that crucial crust while you mix everything together with one of those thin metal spoons that burns your fingers. Their bulgogi beef has the sweet-savoury thing down cold, while the Korean fried chicken could make you reconsider your position on every other deep-fried item you’ve ever eaten in your life.
Downstairs there’s basement seating that feels accidentally discovered rather than designed, the kind of space where you drink Hite beer from the bottle and share tables with strangers because there’s nowhere else to sit. Down here or up there, the sushi is better than it has any right to be in a place that also serves kimchi jjigae, each piece cut with the kind of precision that suggests someone trained somewhere serious before ending up in this little corner of Finsbury Park.
Just remember the cash thing. There’s a Tesco with an ATM across the road, and yes, the person behind you in the queue made the same mistake. The lack of a card machine isn’t quirky inefficiency; it’s a business decision that keeps prices low and taxmen confused. At £30-40 per person for enough food to also have a really good takeaway lunch the next day, neither you nor they will complain.
Website: dotori.co.uk
Address: 3 Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, London N4 2DQ
Read: Where to eat the best fried chicken in London
The Plimsoll, St Thomas’s Road
Ideal for a cheeseburger that ruins all other cheeseburgers, and so much more besides…
Ed McIlroy and Jamie Allan from Four Legs took over this corner pub with what seemed like a simple plan: serve good food without any nonsense. They delivered on (and continue to deliver on) that plan with precision.
The Dexter cheeseburger is the headliner, and at £13 has since become the kind of thing people cross London for; a construction of aged beef and melted Comté that maintains structural integrity despite your best efforts to destroy it. Various national restaurant critics have waxed lyrical about this burger for good reason; it’s fantastic.
But focusing on the burger misses what makes The Plimsoll special. The menu changes based on what McIlroy fancies cooking and what’s good in the daily deliveries. That might mean dover sole Grenobloise one week, pigeon bhuna the next. There’s a confidence here that comes from chefs who’ve stopped trying to prove anything – the plaudits and full tables encouraging them forward, unconstrained by place and time. The wine list stays reasonable enough, with several bottles in the £30 region, but this is a pub, so it’s pints all the way for us.
The problem (if you like to gatekeep, we suppose) is that everyone knows about it now. Tables turn every 90 minutes, and getting a reservation requires forward planning and, even then, a fair amount of waiting. That said, the bar takes walk-ins, which means you might get lucky if you’re willing to eat at 5:30pm on a Tuesday. The food’s good enough to justify the compromise.
The Victorian pub bones remain intact, which is to say it looks like a pub, sounds like a pub, and smells faintly of centuries of spilled beer and more recent burger fat that’s dripped onto the floor. They haven’t tried to turn it into something it’s not, which in the current climate of proliferating, standardised gastropubs counts as radical.
Website: @the.plimsoll
Address: 52 St Thomas’s Rd, Finsbury Park, London N4 2QQ
Read: The best gastropubs in London
Palmyra’s Kitchen, Wells Terrace
Ideal for discovering the distinct flavours and techniques of Syrian cuisine…
The family who run Palmyra’s Kitchen fled Syria with their recipes, their memories, and the clothes they could carry. Now they serve some of the best Levantine food in the country from this stone-walled space opposite the Picturehouse Cinema.
Fruit is used deftly in savoury dishes to glorious effect: pomegranate molasses in the muhammara, dates stuffed into kibbeh, dried apricots turning up in lamb stews. It all leads to a light, bright eating experience that’s just so satisfying. The chicken shawarma is a particular joy; the meat comes charred at the edges but stays uniform and juicy within (an impressive feat considering Syrian shawarma tends to only use white meat), wrapped in structurally sound flatbread that doesn’t fall apart after two bites, despite it being saturated with pleasingly astringent toum.
The mezze showcases the kitchen’s deft touch most aptly. Each dish tastes distinct rather than like variations on tahini and olive oil. The baba ganoush has actual smoke flavour rather than just liquid smoke sadness. The fattoush uses sumac like it means it, not just as colourful garnish. It’s all incredibly fulfilling stuff.
The family who run the place possess that particular brand of Middle Eastern hospitality that makes you feel simultaneously like royalty and their favourite nephew. They’ll remember your order after three visits, ask about your mother after five, and by visit ten you’ll find yourself invited to their daughter’s graduation (it was a wonderful day, by the way). This is neighbourhood dining at its finest.
Open daily from noon to 2am, with outdoor seating that works eight months of the year if you’re layered up and optimistic, Palmyra’s inclusivity and warm welcome has made us loyal regulars.
Website: palmyraskitchen.com
Address: 5-7 Wells Terrace, Finsbury Park, London N4 3JU
Dilara, Blackstock Road
Ideal for eating Uyghur cuisine at one of London’s very few regional spots…
Uyghur food sits somewhere between Chinese and Central Asian, which is to say it’s like nothing else you’ve eaten. Dilara, run by Abdul and Rose Axmu who fled Xinjiang, is one of just a handful of restaurants in London serving it.
The hand-pulled noodles get made to order, each strand stretched with a confident dexterity that creates just the right texture – firm, pliable, but tender, too. They come in a lagman soup that uses cumin, coriander seed and caraway, but tastes wholly distinct. The big plate chicken lives up to its name, enough food for a couple who have come hungry, the sauce building heat gradually rather than attacking immediately.
The lamb skewers show what makes Uyghur cooking special. Dry-rubbed with cumin and chilli before meeting charcoal, they develop a crust that concentrates the flavour into something almost mineral, and a little funky too. Order more than you think you need; everyone does eventually anyway.
The restaurant packs tables like orderly Tetris blocks, acoustics ebb and flow with unpredictably, and you’ll leave smelling of the grill. None of this matters. In fact, it’s all part of the fun. Hot Dinners called it a place of pilgrimage, which sounds excessive until you’ve eaten here.
Opens daily 11:30am to 10pm. Closed Tuesdays.
Website: dilarauyghurrestaurant.co.uk
Address: 27 Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, London N4 2JF
Giacco’s, Blackstock Road
Ideal for family-selected Italian specialties…
Giacco’s owner Leo named his 20-seat wine bar after his grandfather, gets weekly shipments from his mother in Florence, and deploys generations-old family recipes on an almost-illegible chalkboard menu. If that sounds too cute, too contrived, the food will convince you otherwise.
The cheese and charcuterie boards feature imported items selected by Leo’s family in Italy, mortadella with the fat content of butter, pecorino with serious funk, ‘nduja that undulates with chilli heat just right…
…but it’s in the fresh pasta dishes, all scrawled on that daily changing chalkboard, that Giacco’s excels. Here you might find a tuna Genovese-style with tagliatelle, plump little parcels of ricotta, sage and Amalfi lemon, and thick cut pappardelle with confit duck ragu and crispy onions. It’s gorgeous stuff; roughly hewn, homestyle cooking that makes all of those marbled ‘pasta bars’ in Central feel a bit bland and silly.
The wine list focuses on small batch Italian producers with broadly biodynamic leanings, with some French bottles thrown in for variety. There’s plenty available by the glass, and with a plate of that pasta and a slice of homemade tart (an almond and plum number the last time we visited), you can enjoy an eminently satisfying meal for under £50. Cheers to that!
Tuesday to Sunday, hours vary with Leo’s mood and the weather.
Website: giaccos.bar
Address: 176 Blackstock Rd, London N5 1HA
Baban’s Naan, Blackstock Road
Ideal for understanding that good bread doesn’t need to cost more than bus fare…
Three naan for £1.50. We could stop there and Baban’s Naan would be worthy of a place in our rundown of where to eat near Finsbury Park station. Because in a country where coffee costs £4.50, this Kurdish bakery’s freshly baked naan, coming from the tandoor with blackened bubbles and char marks, feels like it’s free.
But to chunter on only about value would do a disservice to the quality of the cooking here. Everything gets made fresh, which means waiting just a little. Queues inevitably snake out the door at lunch. The Kurdish kebab wrap at £5 is an absolute steal, generous with grilled lamb and vegetables, yet digestible. There’s a falafel version too that’s equally good.
You can choose your naan from an impressive range – everything from sesame, garlic, and zaatar to cheese and barley varieties. Their peshwari naan is perhaps the best in town, a pillowy delight with a generous filling of coconut, almonds, mango pulp, and rose water that strikes the perfect balance between sweet and fragrant.
Those two are the most accoutrement-heavy and expensive (relatively speaking, of course) offerings – the rest is ‘just’ naan. Plain, flavoured with zaatar, sesame, chilli or garlic. The simplicity is refreshing, the flavours fresh and to-the-point, the value undeniable.
The crowd includes local workers who’ve done the maths, students stretching loans, and food obsessives making special trips, the latter encouraged, perhaps, by a glowing review in the Independent during COVID times. Everyone waits without complaint, understanding they’re about to eat better than people paying five times as much.
Open seven days a week, 10am to 8pm. Miss it and you’re stuck with supermarket sandwiches, contemplating where your life went wrong.
Instagram: @babans.naan
Address: 51a Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, London N4 2JW
Petek, Stroud Green Road
Ideal for Turkish hospitality without the three-hour flight…
Now in its third decade, Petek has been feeding Finsbury Park meat grilled over charcoal with the kind of consistency and great value that builds devotees. Count us among them…
The mixed shish is the highlight here, with lamb, chicken and kofte on a bed of rice that’s absorbed enough meat juice to be indecent, its own saffron-scented perfume standing up to that mixed meat run-off and creating something wholly new.
The lunch deal brings two courses for £18.50, the kind of pricing that makes you check the date on the menu. They’re playing the long game: lunch leads to dinner, dinner leads to weekly visits, weekly visits lead to loyalty. Everybody wins.
Little touches matter here. Warm pita with olives appears without asking. They’ll swap rice for bulgur if you ask. Turkish Delight comes with the bill, because you haven’t already eaten enough. And the seasoning is always spot on, whether you’re on the Adana lamb beyti or the falafel and helim wrap.
The family running it make each table feel like the only one that matters, even when the place fills with Arsenal fans in various states of emotion, the proposition the same whether you’re Saka or a Sunday league substitute.
Open noon to 11pm daily, with the kind of reliability that’s increasingly rare.
Website: petekrestaurant.co.uk
Address: 96 Stroud Green Rd, Finsbury Park, London N4 3EN
Frank’s Canteen, Highbury Park
Ideal for breakfast, bargain lunches and BYO dinners…
Frank’s Canteen occupies a somewhat liminal space between café and restaurant without existing in an identity crisis. Eggs Benedict (on a Dusty Knuckle muffin, no less) for breakfast, duck confit for dinner, both executed with equal conviction.
The prix fixe lunch at £21 including wine, Monday to Friday, makes you wonder what the catch is. The catch is the dining room’s small enough to hear every word of neighbouring conversations, though that’s a potential new friendship rather than a problem.
Wednesday evenings bring BYO with no corkage, basically free money in London terms, and there’s happy hours between 4 and 6pm, which means half price drinks and snacks (the mutton croquettes are superb). They also do a happy hours sub – recently stuffed with beef cheek croquette, apple jam, roquito and gouda cheese sauce – that’s big enough to share, so come with someone who appreciates a good sandwich and get them to cut it in half. The cooking has the flavours turned up loud enough to matter, which means nothing tastes like you could’ve just made it at home. It’s all pitched so perfectly.
Opening at 7:30am suggests optimism about human nature, but the shakshuka has enough fire to wake anyone. In the evening, steamed halibut, cockles and courgette is picture perfect, fine-dining worthy, and gives more than enough reason to linger. You know what? We might stick around for dessert…
Website: frankscanteen.com
Address: 86 Highbury Park, London N5 2XE
We’re heading a stop south next, to fill ourselves up further in Islington. Care to join us?
