Trullo

Trullo opened on St Paul’s Road near Highbury Corner in 2010, and it has held its reputation remarkably steadily since, which is no small thing in a city where restaurant trends move fast. It was one of the early names, alongside places like Polpo, credited with reshaping how London thought about relaxed, seasonal Italian cooking.

The kitchen builds its menu around two things done consistently well: hand-rolled pasta, made fresh and rolled minutes before service, and a charcoal grill used for both fish and meat. The pasta changes with the seasons but rarely disappoints, and the grilled dishes benefit from that direct, slightly smoky char that a proper charcoal fire gives food that an oven cannot replicate. The menu shifts daily depending on what is good that morning, so specifics vary, but the underlying approach, simple, seasonal, confidently executed, has stayed consistent for well over a decade.

There are two dining rooms, an upstairs space at street level and a downstairs room in what was originally a wine cellar, each with a slightly different atmosphere but the same menu. It has genuine neighbourhood-restaurant warmth rather than feeling like a destination trying too hard, which is part of why critics including Giles Coren, Jay Rayner and Tracey MacLeod praised it so consistently from the early years onward.

Tables can be hard to get at peak times given how small the operation has stayed relative to its reputation, and groups are capped, up to eight in the evening, ten at lunch, which limits it for larger parties. It is also a proper trip for anyone not already near Islington or Highbury, this is not a spot you stumble into.

For seasonal Italian cooking done with genuine consistency rather than flash, it remains one of north London’s most dependable restaurants.

The team behind Trullo also runs Padella near Borough Market, another pasta-focused restaurant that has drawn its own long queues since opening, and the shared DNA between the two, confident, produce-led Italian cooking without excess, is easy to spot if you have eaten at both. Prices at Trullo sit comfortably in the mid-range for London Italian dining, mains mostly in the high teens to low twenties, which feels fair given the quality and the daily-changing kitchen behind it.