My favourite London caffs part 3: North and South
The one with the map
Hello and welcome to Wooden City, a newsletter about London. If you haven’t come here via @caffs_not_cafes, I'm a writer called Isaac Rangaswami and this is my new Substack.
This is the final instalment of my three-part caffs guide, focusing on north and south London.
Part one introduces the guide and covers central London. Part two is all about east and west London. At the bottom of this article is a link to my first ever London-wide caffs map, covering all 50 spots.
North London
Dory’s Cafe
Dory’s has everything you could want and more: sepia-toned photos, superannuated chairs and outsized portions of that special brand of Italo-Cockney hospitality that the Pelliccis have made so famous. This is no coincidence: Dorina Cardosi, who was behind the counter here for half a century, was a Pellicci too before she married her husband Tony. Her son and daughter run the place today, and are cousins with E Pellicci’s current management.
But Dory’s is also very much its own thing. A miniscule open kitchen is the soul of the place, churning out the kinds of colossal plates only people who assemble roofs and scaffolding frames for a living could possibly need to consume. Dory’s is to escalope and bolognese what the New York red sauce joint is to the chicken parm, but it’s their ham, egg and chips that is really superlative. Most of all, this is a community centre in its truest sense: full of Barnet gossip and people asking after each other’s mums and dads.
3 St Albans Rd, Barnet EN5 4LN
Cafe Anglais
Like the Wetherspoons down the road, Cafe Anglais is one of your best bets if you’re in NW9 and want to sit down for a while somewhere cheap. The crazy thing is that this place opened in 1936, though that’s not so easy to tell these days. Cafe Anglais has been mid-refurb for ages, but it wears its incompleteness well: chipboard panels and exposed girders blending in with its fixed brown seats. The fry-ups are made with care and the uniformed service is prompt and professional. Four beautifully curvilinear Thonet no.18 chairs guard the entrance, a hallmark of early European cafe culture and perhaps the caff’s only remnant of a much earlier history.
1-2 Sheaveshill Parade, Sheaveshill Avenue, London NW9 6RS
Mario's Cafe
Mario Saggese taught me that a fried breakfast needn’t be a gigantic pile of food. Beans, mushrooms, black pudding – these are all great things, but sometimes they just weigh you down. Egg, bacon, sausage and tomato are really all you need. Try Mario’s fry-up and you’ll see what I mean, because he cooks everything like he’s having you round his house.
While his grandad opened a place here in 1958, Mario chooses to say the business opened in 1989, when he took over and made it his own. The place encapsulates easy-going nineties cool – less Britpop, more jazzy and Gilles Peterson-like. The art on the walls reflects Mario’s other creative interests, tying the room together in the same way as his mismatched mid-century chairs. It’s the kind of place you’d be compelled to write a song about, as St Ettiene did in 1991. Truly one of London’s best caffs.
6 Kelly St, London NW1 8PH