Amici

We found a real gem of a place to eat last night.

Amici is on Holloway Road, about 15 minutes walk from our place. After the festival yesterday we went for coffee with a friend and ended up staying there until 7pm; by the time we got home we were really, really flipping hungry. Garry wanted pizza and we were perfectly fine with the idea of just getting a takeaway...but then we found this place.

 It serves pasta, meat and fish dishes and pizza, as well as specials. I was sorely tempted by the special of the trout with orange butter, thrice cooked chips and butternut squash, and the beef ravioli with a butter and balsamic dressing, but in the end I had to have a Mexican pizza.

And Garry had a pizza with pancetta, spinach and goat's cheese. Both were, quite frankly, amazingly good, and served with a bottle of olive oil that was flavoured with chilli and goodness knows what else. Completely delicious.

I was so full I didn't want dessert, but then they brought these over...

That's a brownie pie with vanilla ice-cream at the top and a creme brulée on the bottom. Amazing.

It's not particularly expensive, the atmosphere is nice, the staff are friendly and it's just delicious. Probably my favourite place we've eaten so far.

Le Croissant D'Or

We’re only staying in this room/house for the next four months. As we didn’t know the area we decided that it would be best to get a short let so that we could get to know North London a bit better first and decide where the best place to live was. With this end in mind, we popped into a letting agents yesterday and asked to speak to someone about flats to rent.

They said that someone would contact us in ten minutes, and although that never happened (gits) we did pop into a café next door and find a bit of a gem of a place to eat.

It's not haute cuisine, but as a local café it's pretty nice. The cakes on offer are, quite frankly, amazing and I wish I'd taken photos of them to show you. They do have a rather lovely selection of smoothies, though...

As it was lunchtime, we both went for largeish meals to keep us going.

Garry's burger and chips

My full breakfast; this also came with tea

It was just over £10 for a smoothie, our two meals and the pot of tea that came with my breakfast. That's fairly good value and the café is only ten minutes walk from our house. Garry is completely in love with the place and I can see us going back quite frequently whilst we live here.