Where to go in Islington

57 places in Islington, each one on the Guide on merit.

Angel

• Candid Arts Trust

  Life drawing

  Untutored drop-in life drawing in a faded-grand warehouse in Angel. No booking, materials included.

• SANE Sake & Wine Bar

  Wine bar

  A sake-first wine bar tucked into Camden Passage. The team has fine-dining miles on the clock.

Archway

• St John's Tavern

  European

  The reason to get off at Archway. A cheerful front saloon for a pint and a big dining hall behind it for modern British plates with a Mediterranean lean.

• The Great Indian

  Asian

  A Victorian pub turned Indian gastropub from MasterChef India's Chef Jolly: unusual, cliché-free cooking and 48-hour dal.

Caledonian Road

• Half Cut Market

  European

  A wine bar in an unpromising spot that grew into a proper food destination.

Canonbury

• Compton Arms

  Pub

  A tiny Canonbury backstreet pub, Orwell's old local, with Rake in the kitchen - a residency good enough to have been added to the Michelin Guide.

• Estorick Collection

  Museum & gallery

  Britain's only museum of modern Italian art, Futurists and Morandi in a Georgian townhouse off Canonbury Square, with a garden café. A couple of quiet hours.

• The Pocket

  Pub

  A tiny Islington pub from the team behind Gospel Oak's Southampton Arms, opened in spring 2025. The walls are lined with 1970s ashtrays, there's a cast-iron fireplace, and a battered upright piano gets played three times a week. Independent breweries only, beer priced by strength, and a hot pie counter serving homemade sausage rolls stuffed with peppery pork.

Clerkenwell

• Aux Pains de Papy

  European

  A family-run boulangerie doing the kind of rural French baking you don't expect to find in central London.

• Bouchon Racine

  French bistro

  Chef Henry Harris runs a French bistro above a 300-year-old Farringdon pub. The menu changes often on chalkboards, with staples like jambon de noir de bigorre and rabbit wrapped in smoked bacon. Lanterns glow at night in the loft-like space.

• Brutto

  European

  Russell Norman's candlelit Florentine trattoria: red-check cloths, handwritten menus, bistecca, and a £5 negroni that's the talk of Clerkenwell. Noisy, dark, sexy.

• Colonna & Small's

  Specialty coffee

  One of the most serious coffee names in the country, finally within London reach. Order the filter and let them guide you.

• Ebi Wines

  Wine bar

  A low-key Clerkenwell wine bar and bottle shop from Raku Oda, a Master of Wine student who was assistant head sommelier at the three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck. The list roams from Wiltshire and Wales to Italy and Austria, poured in a small Rosebery Avenue room that takes walk-ins only.

• Fidelio

  European

  A Clerkenwell café that transforms into an intimate classical music venue after dark. By day it serves coffee, brunch and lunch. On Monday and Tuesday evenings it hosts chamber performances with dinner or drinks.

• Luca

  European

  A Clerkenwell Italian opened by The Clove Club's owners, ten years in, with a covered garden room that could pass for a Roman palazzo. The move is the front bar: a Negroni, the parmesan fries and the sausage ragù rigatoni.

• Migrateful

  Cookery class

  Cookery classes taught by refugee and migrant chefs sharing family recipes, from Algerian tagine to Filipino adobo. Award-winning, deeply personal, as much storytelling as cooking.

• Scotti's Snack Bar

  European

  A 1967 Italian caff on Clerkenwell Green with no written menu. You ask, the owner tells you what is on, and the chicken escalope ciabatta is what cabbies and chefs come for.

• Sessions Arts Club

  European

  A dilapidated-boudoir dining room in a restored 18th-century courthouse: arched windows, candlelight, salvaged furniture and Florence Knight's cooking. Like stepping onto a period film set.

Exmouth Market

• 51 Cave à Manger

  Wine bar

  An Exmouth Market wine bar where the bottles are serious and the bar stools and heated pavement seats are kept free for walk-ins.

• Around

  Cocktail bar

  A family-run Exmouth Market bar with a hidden garden and seasonal cocktails.

• Morchella

  European

  Exmouth Market's grand old banking hall, now a dining room.

• Passione Vino Exmouth Market

  Wine bar

  No wine list, just Luca telling you what to drink. Trust him and order the oxtail sandwich.

• Vesper

  European

  Jackson Boxer's candle-lit corner bistro on Exmouth Market, drawing near-unanimous critic buzz on opening. Confident cooking from one of London's most interesting chefs.

Farringdon

• Josette

  European

  A proper French bistro from the Paulette team, named after their grandmothers. The cooking is confident and unfussy, the wine list is serious and the room runs on chanson and candlelight.

• Prufrock Coffee

  Coffee shop

  Prufrock serves coffee from Square Mile alongside guest roasters from Europe and beyond, and the coffee menu keeps changing. The kitchen cooks breakfast and lunch from scratch, including a Prufrock benny with Red Brick espresso hollandaise. Its Barista Training Centre runs SCA courses.

• Quality Wines

  Wine bar / small plates

  A small Farringdon wine bar around a central marble table; finish on the pig-fat cannoli.

• Space Talk

  Listening bar

  A hi-fi listening bar on St John Street with a sunken DJ booth and a no-phones rule. The speakers were fabricated by Lewis Kemmenoe and the room was longlisted at the Dezeen Awards. It runs a vinyl-only label sold at the bar and nowhere else.

• The Quality Chop House

  European

  An 1869 Grade II Victorian chop house: wooden booths, chequerboard floors, properly aged rib-eye and confit potatoes with their own cult following. Victorian and timeless at once.

Finsbury Park

• Claytime Pottery Place

  Pottery studio

  A proper community pottery studio, not a slick date-night gimmick. Bring a beginner and nobody minds.

• Tenmaru

  Asian

  Tenmaru builds its ramen on a chicken broth, and the lemon ramen comes with chicken chashu and a seasoned egg. The vegan bowls include a basil pesto ramen. Small plates run from gyoza to karaage.

• The Plimsoll

  European

  A Four Legs-team pub near Finsbury Park. The Dexter cheeseburger has a cult following. House bakery bread and natural wine.

Highbury

• Farang

  Asian

  High-energy regional Thai feasting in North London, a Bib Gourmand and loud in the right way: a buzzy room of serious food lovers, no tourist-Thai clichés.

• Giacco's

  Wine bar

  A little Blackstock Road wine bar with an ever-changing guest-chef menu. The kind of under-the-radar neighbourhood spot the best evenings are built on.

• Oui Madame

  European

  Salut's more modern sibling, candlelit and buzzing after dark. The kitchen has real ambition.

• Top Cuvée

  Natural wine bar

  A spacious Highbury natural-wine bar off Blackstock Road, daily-changing organic bottles and modern small plates. Come for the wine and the room.

Holloway

• Bar Gemišt

  Wine bar

  A Holloway coffee roaster by day that turns wine bar after dark, all central island bar and corner sofas. The drinks list takes risks, right down to a Sauerkraut Martini.

• One Eighty One

  Listening bar

  A record shop that turns into a listening bar after dark, opened on the Holloway Road in November 2025 on money raised through Kickstarter. Coffee is £2.50 before one, cocktails £10 after. The vinyl racks fold out into a second bar in the evening.

Islington

• 69 Colebrooke Row

  Cocktail bar

  Tony Conigliaro's 'bar with no name' in Islington, marked only by a lantern: a living-room-sized room turning out groundbreaking, seasonal cocktails. Book or hope for a stair seat.

• BookBar

  Bookshop-bar

  An Islington bookshop you can drink in, with wine, regulars and a good events run. Browse, sit, stay.

• Camden Passage

  Antiques market

  A cobbled Islington passage of antique dealers, vintage stalls and independent cafés and wine bars, with a proper flea market on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The quiet, un-touristy answer to the big-name markets. Not to be confused with Camden Market.

• Godet

  Wine & listening bar

  An old Essex Road pub reborn as a hi-fi wine bar, DJs most nights, Sylvain Bertozzi pouring. North London finally has a proper listening bar.

• Goodbye Horses

  Wine bar

  A candlelit wine bar with a wall of vinyl and small plates with real critical momentum. A Bib Gourmand that stays a proper bar.

• Katsute 100

  Asian

  Antique furniture, a back garden and matcha cake, which is the kind of quiet that Camden Passage does well.

• KCraft Studio London

  Candle-making studio

  Korean candle-making so hyper-realistic the results look edible. You leave with something too good to burn.

• Ogam

  Cocktail bar

  A dimly lit Korean tapas bar on Chapel Market run by an award-winning mixologist. Craft cocktails with Korean twists sit alongside fried chicken, dumplings and dolsot bibimbap in sizzling stone bowls. For anyone who wants proper drinks with their small plates.

• Pophams

  Bakery

  Long shared tables, so a solo afternoon costs nobody a two-top.

• Summer Dumpling

  Asian

  Hand-folded dumplings with a sense of humour, in a room the size of a sitting room. Tiny, so it fills fast.

• The Baring

  European

  Pub bones, restaurant cooking, a room that feels special without trying too hard.

• The Tamil Crown

  Asian

  The quieter sibling to The Tamil Prince, on a backstreet off Duncan Terrace. Guinness on tap, robata lamb chops, and an Indian Sunday roast that almost nobody has claimed yet.

• The Yellow Bittern

  European

  An eighteen-seat cash-only lunch room with Lenin on the wall and a communist bookshop below.

• Union Chapel

  Live music venue

  Gigs inside a working Grade I Gothic chapel in Islington: wooden pews, a vast stately hall, sound the architecture does for free. Named London's best live venue more than once.

Newington Green

• Bar Etna

  European

  Four Legs and Philadelphia's Joe Beddia (Bib Gourmand) do an East-Coast pizza and vino bar: four pizzas, four spritzes, a fiver negroni on tap.

• Cadet

  Wine bar & bistro

  A compact bistro and bottle shop opened by wine importers. The list is the reason to come; the kitchen adds daily-changing small plates.

• Canto 73

  European

  One sitting, seven courses, no choices, just a Newington Green room where ex-Michelin cooks plate whatever was good that week.

• Perilla

  European

  Understated, plaster-walled and candlelit, with a subversive streak in the kitchen. A neighbourhood staple that flexes from focused date to lively group dinner.

• The Golden Tooth

  European

  The Papi team take a Newington Green alehouse and make it sing, with punchy plates and good wine in a room that still works as a pub.

Old Street

• Monohon Ramen

  Asian

  Osaka-trained, single-minded, no reservations. The bowl you pick over every chain on the street, if you are willing to queue for it.