The Salisbury, Harringay

This pub is the jewel in the crown of Harringay Village.

The landlord should be knighted for services to humanity for taking what was a haven for rogues and cutthroats, boarding it up for a year and restoring this magnificent beer palace to its one hundred-year-old former glory.

The setting is awe-inspiring, a muscular, six-story Victorian edifice imperiously surveying Green Lanes. The cavernous interior, adorned with classical busts and stuffed gamebirds, is so large it actually comprises four distinct zones, from the intimate booths in the South corridor, through the cheerful, smoky Green Lanes-facing front to the old billiards room in the back, now a rather self-conscious stab at a gastropub kitchen.

The beers are good (make that knighthood a Baronetcy for resisting stocking Stella, Fosters or any other big brewery filth) and who cares about the food - for pity's sake go and eat at Bingol across the road, you're in the Shish capital of Western Europe.

And of course it's expensive, that's how they stop the scum coming in. If you want cheap beer and a fractured skull, go drink in Wood Green.

21 Jan 2006 17:16