London Crystal Palace Restaurant Guide

This “lovely food-led pub” – a carefully modernised beauty from 1854 on Crystal Palace’s thriving ‘Triangle’ – showcases chef David Yorkiston’s “really great cooking – way, way above typical gastroboozer fare”. “Controversially, it has banned kids under 10” but not everyone objects (“we think the atmosphere is all the better for it, even if it means we can’t go there as often as we’d like)”.

“Reliably excellent pizza” – “better than the other high street chains” – is what you’ll find at this growing Clapton-based operation, now with 12 sites from Balham and Crystal Palace in the south to Tufnell Park (which, as of summer 2024, is the latest to open). They’re perhaps “not smart as places to eat”, but that hardly matters – and the “toppings are interesting without being off-puttingly un-pizza-ish”.