Highbury Barn

Highbury Barn has been my local hang out for the last 2 ½ years. Historically, this small line of shops was an entertainment complex, hosting balls, concerts and dancing, even crown green bowling.
Today, Highbury Barn is something of a throw back to bygone times featuring a quality line up of small businesses which, collectively, provide you will with almost everything you need for a high quality weekly food shop. Indeed, the butcher (Godfreys), Fishmonger (Meek & Wild), Greengrocer (Mrs Lovell’s) and Cheesemonger (La Fromagerie) are amongst the best London has to offer.
All the businesses seem to be really community spirited and organise events throughout the year to bring locals together — whether it is to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee, Easter or just the British summer. Consequently is a pleasure to be one of their patrons. If you haven’t already visited, check this little slice of London out today!

Sunday afternoon, had organised a whole bunch of friends to meet for Sunday roast and booked a table at the Alwyne Castle, just down the road. Unfortunately when we turned up the kitchen had run out of food! Disaster. Soooo… asked the bar staff and with the help of the trusty iPhone, tracked down the Highbury Barn.
To be honest, I wouldn’t go there for the atmosphere — while the bar staff are very friendly and helpful and the clientele seem friendly enough, it’s a bit too post-​old-​man-​pub for me — lots of locals, but very bland décor and generally nothing engaging.
BUT! — loved the fact that I phoned up at 4pm on a Sunday, the staff were enormously helpful (and sympathetic to my plight — 20 hungry people without a table!) — and managed to pull together a few low tables with couches and chairs so we could eat. And food really was pretty good, and very reasonably priced. I had a delicious slow-​roasted lamb shank, with absolutely magnificent roast parsnips and carrots. The potatoes were slightly less-​impressive (a bit hard) and the broccoli was just broccoli, but overall the flavours were really decent and far better than I expected on first glance.
All round: great staff, great food, not my kind of pub but if you’re an Arsenal fan you could definitely do worse.

This is a large pub… the term ‘barn’ is somewhat appropriate. They do serve real ale, but there was just one ‘ok’ pint on for my visit.
I’d hate to be here when arsenal are on TV! There are parts of the pub where you can kinda get away from the TV showing sport, but by the bar and in the central angle of the pub it really dominates.
The fancyapint fellas have hit the nail on the head when they say it lacks character!

This is a decent size pub which offers reasonably priced drinks, comfy sofas, a big menu of traditional pub grub and there is a weekly pub quiz (which I always do rather badly on!).
This used to get really really busy on match days when Arsenal were still in Highbury– however since the move to Emirates it is not quite so bad (not sooo many fans sprawled out into the street) although I would still not describe it as family-​friendly. The football is shown in the pub and there are many tvs around the bar giving everyone good visibility. This is a traditional pub which has not quite made the transition to a younger audience– good if all you want is a chat over a pint/​glass of wine.