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Villiers Terrace

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Cuisine: Gastropub
A meal for two with wine, about £60

120 Park Road, N8 8JP

Nearest Tube: Finsbury Park

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Phone: 020 8245 6827

 

 

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Lunch out at Villiers Terrace

 

Fill that gap: Villiers Terrace is a welcome new venue in an area starved of restaurants

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It’s strange how strictly metropolitan good food still remains in this city. Look at the map of Greater London in any restaurant guide. There’s a thick cluster of recommendations in the centre, naturally, both north and south of the river, all the way from Hammersmith to Docklands. Then there’s a western offshoot into the curry houses of Southall and some provision too for the genteel residents of Twickenham and Richmond. But outside this central zone, there’s absolutely nothing meriting even half-hearted recommendation within the circumference of the M25.

Crouch End (nearest Tube: Finsbury Park, miles away) clings to the very verge of still being London, instead of a suburb. To me, it is immortalised in one of the earliest and funniest stories by Will Self, The North London Book of the Dead.

Some months after his mother has died of cancer and apparently been cremated, the narrator of the story suddenly sees her again, traipsing around Crouch End. “I live here now,” she says. “It’s OK, it’s a drag not being able to get the Tube, but the buses are fairly regular. There are quite a few good shops in the parade and someone’s just opened up a real deli. Want some halva?”

When he demands an explanation, Mother merely says: “When you die you move to another part of London, that’s all there is to it.” But she always hated Crouch End, he retorts. “It could be worse, some dead people live in Wanstead,” she replies.

So I always keep an eye out for Mother when I go to Crouch End. One Sunday morning last year, we walked up the disused railway line from Finsbury Park (“London’s longest local nature reserve,” it boasts, carefully) and then looked for somewhere for lunch. Not a happy experience. It was not that there were no restaurants. There were lots. Just not any that appealed. We may even have ended up in a Prezzo, never a dreamy outcome.

Now Crouch End has a new gastropub, Villiers Terrace, formerly the Princess Alexandra. The place has been thoroughly made over with a loggy bar, a big new wooden fireplace, mirrors, chandeliers, candelabra and some wacky wallpapers and paints. There’s a big and busy kitchen, with Richard Teague, formerly at the Market restaurant in Camden, as head chef.

The menu is gastropub mainstream, 2009-style: asparagus, oysters, wood-pigeon salad, among the starters; fish pie, pan-fried skate, and Gloucester Old Spot slow-roast pork belly among the mains. Prices are modest (£5-£7 for starters, £10.50-£14 for mains).

Braised pigs’ cheeks with chorizo (£6) was a nice little portion of porky pleasure, with good soft texture, not over-spiced, served in a ramekin with toasted bread on the side. Cornish crab linguine, shallots, tomato and tarragon (£7) was an adaptation of the River Café reliable, linguine al granchio, one of the best ways of bulking out crab and also a great vehicle for aromatic olive oil. Here, the pasta was excellent and the sauce enjoyable enough, if not very strongly crabby. Tarragon seemed a less suitable herb than plain old parsley and there was, to my taste, an over-assertive element of fennel in the mix, too.

From the mains, Aberdeen angus onglet steak (£14) was fine, cooked as requested. If the slightly rubbery meat was no match for the steaks from specialists like Gaucho or Goodmans, that could hardly be expected at this price. There was nothing wrong with the hand-cut chips or little pitcher of béarnaise either.

However, slow-cooked rabbit with pappardelle (£12.50) was not enjoyable, being massively over-herbed with a combination of fennel again and, apparently, tarragon again, giving an acrid, medicinal taste, and a metallic aftertaste, too. A pity. The rabbit itself, had it been left unmolested, would have been tasty. It reminded me of the time I had chicken stew in a pub in Cambridge, the first week it had begun attempting to serve food. Enormous quantities of dried sage made it inedible. When I complained, the cook protested that she had only put one packet in.

The cheese selection (£8) delivered an excessive five cheeses, none too special, rather than the three really good ones you would get in a more confident — read, urban — place. There is an inviting wine list, though, opening at £14.50 a bottle, with some good choices — a Marcillac, a Chinon, a lovely basic claret, soft and fruity Château Deville 2002, well worth £21. And an all-day two-course lunch menu is currently on offer for just £10.

Villiers Terrace is trying hard, if not yet getting it all right. Service is assiduous and it’s pleasantly busy with a much more mixed clientele than you’d ever find in gastropubs in Islington or Highgate. Mother should be so lucky.

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

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