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Kim Cheung selling sushi at Archway Saturday market |
Is this the new home of urban chic?
Despite the roundabout and ugly tower, there is much beauty to be found in Archway, writes Don Ryan
THE Archway, N19, is on the surface a transport hub, where traffic going to and from the City meets its West End counterpart. Vehicles slowly circumvent the massive roundabout and inch along the area’s ancient road network.
Few travellers will be tempted to park and sample the delights of a neighbourhood whose most prominent pieces of architecture are a dilapidated 1960s glass and steel girder monstrosity and the even uglier Archway Tower – a concrete nightmare that has spawned a practically derelict shopping centre.
But the arrival of the 500 Italian restaurant among all the desolation has created a buzz that has been heard well beyond Archway. The national press has sent a posse of reviewers to this “barren backwater”.
The restaurant is situated in Holloway Road, just south of the roundabout, and is named after a little car, the Fiat Cinquecento (Italian for 500). The owners are very hands on: Mario Magli does the cooking while his pal Giorgio Pili ensures everything is hunky dory front of house.
Both have served their catering apprentices at establishments owned by Antonio Carluccio and Jamie Oliver.
You could spend up to £60 a head here, if you chose the most expensive items on the menu and had lots of wine with each course. But why bother? The restaurant specialises in simple top class Italian food, served in an extremely pleasant environment, at a fraction of West End prices.
Three deep fried pasta parcels filled with provola cheese and mint or a plate of buffalo mozzarella with tomato and basil cost £2.40 and £2.20 respectively.
Potato dumplings with Italian sausage ragu, curly pasta with minced beef or even pasta parcels filled with mixed seafood are £8 a dish. Finish with a scoop of ice cream at £1.60 (the dearest dessert is £3.50), all washed down with a small glass of wine at £2.05 and some tap water, then add a coffee for £2. That’s a first class, three course meal with drinks for around £15.
But 500 is not the only quality food establishment that manages to survive in this harsh urban environment.
Dotted around are several independent bakeries each with its own culinary influences: Turkish Yildiz is a few doors away from long-established English bakery Stagnells. Both are in Junction Road near Archway Station. Within a few hundred yards of the roundabout in Holloway Road is the trendy Emporium Bakery; a bit further down is the French-influenced Boulangerie-Patisserie.
Right on the roundabout itself but tucked away from the traffic on a slip road in a calm enclave of shops is the café La Voute (French for arch), a clean, well-run establishment serving above average quality pan-European-style food – including filled ciabattas and excellent mezes. No alcohol is served but a glass of bottled water is £1, while tap water is free.
For anyone interested in good honest food, Archway – particularly on a Saturday – is a delight. The Farmers’-style street market continues to ward of the recession demon and can offer freshly made sushi rolls at three for £1, alongside fair-trade pastas and rice. There’s a world of food on show, including numerous Caribbean dishes, Galettes, (giant, savoury or sweet-filled French pancakes), suckling pig, and a Polish speciality, pork loin with dried plums. There is of course tons of organic vegetables supplied by the legendary Farmer Ted of Lincolnshire.
And there’s more: last Saturday and for the next few weeks at least, a colony of artists is exhibiting in various buildings in the vicinity of the roundabout. I chatted with Jill Tegan Doherty, a young artist who is gaining recognition with her outrageous and often disturbing Surrealist-influenced paintings.
Her work is driven by childhood memories of the bones and bits of stuffed animals her father – a professor of rheumatology – left lying around the family home and her experience with the ailment sleep paralysis, a condition that causes the mind to wake up before the body and is often accompanied by extremely vivid and sometimes terrifying hallucinations. “The condition used to scare me but I’ve learned to live with it now,” she said.
And still there’s more, a music festival financed by a grant from Islington Council and donations from local businesses kicks off on July 18.
Archway, a barren backwater? What rubbish... it’s the chicest place in town! |
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