Spaghetti House

NOT the chain, before anyone asks...

When we were in Tufnell Park earlier today, we saw a place called The Spaghetti House. We'd seen it online whilst researching the area and thought it was interesting. It's a bring-your-own-booze place that's run by one guy, and if he's ill or on holiday or just can't be arsed to open, it doesn't open. It's supposed to be quirky, tasty, good value home cooking. Sounds brilliant to me.

It's right outside Tufnell Park station and looks from the outside like a greasy spoon. From the inside, it looks like this.

The walls are covered in weird and wonderful stuff. The tables fit the greasy-spoon idea, but it's done nicely — there are little vases with flowers or plants on the tables, and jugs bursting with flowers on the counters.

And the food?

Bruschetta! This photo doesn't show how huge it was, and there were two of these and a pile of tomatoes.

We shared our bruschetta starter, and had a main course each.

Garry's tagliatelli carbonara

My amazing, amazing lasagne

We were so full we didn't want anything else, but the menu is huge and there are specials too.

You can even get takeaway spaghetti.

This isn't the best restaurant I've ever been to or the nicest food I've ever tasted, but it's gorgeous comfort food and perfect for a rainy day like today. For our enormous shared bruschetta, two huge main courses, an orange juice and a diet coke it was £21.50. That's really good value for money and it was lovely.

Where to find it