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The Big Review: Gilbert Scott, St Pancras

By on May 17, 2012 in Big Review, Drink, Food

The Gilbert Scott is the most glamorous dining room in NW1. Discuss. Other contenders? York & Albany, St Pancras Grand, Odette’s, Gilgamesh (if you like that kinda thing). Or perhaps even Meribel Brasserie. But, architecturally-speaking, there’s nothing to match the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel and its flagship. Scott was the lucky bugger who, in 1866, [...]

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The Big Review: Kentish Canteen

By on May 10, 2012 in Big Review, Drink, Food

Kentish Canteen is a place everyone seems to have an opinion on. It opened back in October 2010 to a fanfare from Giles Coren, Time Out, The Guardian and others, was rammed for a while, but like many an instant celebrity, the pressure began to show. Readers would tweet us about inconsistency and occasional service [...]

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The first pictures of the new Pizza East, Kentish Town

By on May 8, 2012 in Drink, Food

Update May 17 Hardens are reporting today that Soho House Group will be opening two restaurants on the site. The second, underneath Pizza East, will be called Chicken Shop. No further details as yet…so watch this space. But it sounds to us like they’ll be doing a galline take on the vogue for all things [...]

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The Big Review: Karpo, King’s Cross

By on May 4, 2012 in Big Review, Drink, Food

The exterior of Karpo looks incredible. Like a bag of Dolly Mixtures. Or box of felt tip pens. Inside, it whispers cafe in Frederichshain, or bar in Vesterbro: wooden benches, candlelit tables, a ‘living wall’ of plants, atrium, open kitchen. There’s a subterranean loungey-bar with books and cocktails, where we sipped a perfect Negroni. ‘In [...]

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Midweek Dinner: The Hill, Steele’s Village

By on May 2, 2012 in Drink, Food, Midweek Dinner

It doesn’t seem so long ago that the Load of Hay was a boarded up, gravely threatened pub location boasting little more than former glories and occasional squat parties. Yet its successful resurrection as The Hill is actually now near on a decade strong. From those early gastro-boozer beginnings, the latest incarnation of menu and [...]

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Best Sunday Lunch? The Junction Tavern

By on April 27, 2012 in Best Sunday Lunch, Drink, Food

Eight or nine years ago, Mrs Kentishtowner nearly bought a flat on Huddleston Road. One of those gothicky numbers up the slope, with pretty French doors onto a terrace overlooking the street. Just as she was about to exchange she was cruelly gazumped so, leafy Tufnell Park dream over, the poor woman fled to the [...]

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The Big Review: Almeida, Islington

By on April 26, 2012 in Big Review, Drink, Food

The Almeida, an attractive restaurant in a former warehouse just off Upper Street, has been around for so long it’s slipped off many a foodie radar. Perhaps it’s too closely associated with pre-theatre set menus for silver-haired Islington luvvies. However, we have just one claim to make: this was a sensational meal, one of the [...]

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The Big Review: The Oxford, Kentish Town Road

By on April 19, 2012 in Drink, Food

Mrs Kentishtowner has been thinking. ‘If human time is a succession of declining ages,’ she pondered, as we strolled up the Kentish Town Road, ‘then each age approximates less and less what the original life-force was all about.’ A siren flew past. ‘That’s it,’ she said, miming a throat cut. ‘Kaput. We’re living right at [...]

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Secret Camden: Prince Albert, Royal College Street

By on April 12, 2012 in Drink, Food, Secret Camden

My first job after university was in an office opposite the Prince Albert, fielding phone calls about our flagship artist, Peter Andre. Well, it was 1997. In my lunch hour I’d take shelter in the pie and mash shop and watch pensioners sink chips into ketchup, or hirsute musicians hold court over mugs of tea [...]

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Best Sunday Lunch? The Colonel Fawcett

By on March 23, 2012 in Best Sunday Lunch, Camden, Drink, Food

We’re not ones to blow our own trumpets, of course, but can we just say that we were mentioned in The Guardian today? Anyway, back to work. The Colonel Fawcett is an obvious second candidate on our quest for Best Sunday Lunch. After all, our original review is the second most-read feature on The Kentishtowner [...]

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