June 2026
Boyd & Antoine · A Private Guide
One day. North London. A father from Australia, a son who grew up on these streets. This is his city. Let him show you.
Antoine grew up in Southgate — born there, raised on Conway Road, made his first journeys into the city from that circular Art Deco tube station at the end of the high street. Boyd is visiting from Australia. This day is about two people retracing one of their shared stories.
The route runs north from Finsbury Park. You'll drink somewhere decent before you even get on the Piccadilly line. You'll stand in front of a 1930s architectural masterpiece most Londoners have never noticed. You'll walk a street that doesn't appear in any guidebook, for the very good reason that it doesn't need to.
By evening you'll have eaten well — properly well — on one of London's most underrated food corridors. The pace is loose. The point is to notice things.
Finsbury Park N4
Don't just pass through Finsbury Park — use it. If you're timing this for a mid-morning start, The Faltering Fullback on Perth Road is where you want to be. It's a pub with one of London's best beer gardens: a rambling, rickety multi-level structure of wooden platforms and hanging plants that seems structurally impossible and completely perfect. It should not work. It works.
The Thai kitchen inside is worth noting — not for a full sit-down, but for a scotch egg or a bowl of something if you're hungry early. Real ales on tap, unhurried service, the kind of place that makes you forget you have somewhere to be. Which is fine, because Southgate is 15 minutes away whenever you're ready.
The park itself is large and genuinely good — boating lake, proper open grass, the kind of Victorian city park that London does better than anywhere. Walk through it on the way to the tube station. It's a decent warm-up for the day.
A pub garden that shouldn't exist but absolutely does. Get here early or lose your table to someone who planned ahead.
Piccadilly Line · Southgate
On the Piccadilly line heading north from Finsbury Park, sit on the left side of the carriage. The views through the above-ground sections — rooftops, back gardens, the gradual loosening of the city into suburb — are better on that side. It takes about 15 minutes. Watch it go past.
When you come out at Southgate, stop. Just stop and look at it. The station was designed by Charles Holden and built in 1933 — a perfect cylindrical drum in cream-and-brown brick, topped with a flat concrete canopy and a glowing cylindrical lantern above the entrance. It's Grade II* listed, which means the government considers it critically important architecture. Most people walk past it on their way somewhere else.
Give it ten minutes. Walk around the full drum. Look up at the canopy detail. Notice how the whole thing reads as a single unified object — no fussiness, just one clean idea executed without compromise. For a building that is, functionally, a staircase and a ticket hall, it is a remarkable thing to have made.
North London Residential · N14
There is nothing here that any travel guide would tell you to see. Which is exactly why you're here.
Antoine was born in Southgate. He grew up on Conway Road. He walked this pavement every day for the years that formed him — to school, to the park, to the corner shop, to the tube station. Boyd, this is what that looked like. This is the ordinary geography of your son's childhood.
Walk it slowly. Notice what's changed — the new builds, the refaced fronts, the shop that used to be something else. Notice what hasn't — the pavement width, the trees, the particular rhythm of a North London residential street that hasn't been altered by gentrification because it never needed to be. It was already good.
Don't try to narrate it too much. This section is for looking and remembering. Antoine leads. You follow. Some things don't need commentary.
Some places only mean something to the people who grew up in them. That's the entire point of being here.
Not the famous park. Not the park anyone from outside the area knows about. This is a proper local park — bandstand, café, wide open grass, the slow tempo of people walking dogs on a weekday morning. It has been here a long time and it shows in the best possible way.
The thing worth finding in Broomfield is the walled kitchen garden. It sits toward the back of the park, enclosed in old brick, and functions as both a productive garden and a piece of quiet civic beauty that most visitors to the area have no idea exists. Go through the gate. Spend some time in it. It is genuinely peaceful in the way that only places with no agenda can be.
The park café is fine for a coffee or a sit-down before you continue. Nothing exceptional, but good enough — and sitting on a bench in Broomfield with a coffee, watching the park do its thing, is a reasonable way to spend twenty minutes of a loose afternoon.
Green Lanes · Palmers Green
Green Lanes — specifically the Palmers Green stretch — is one of the most significant Turkish and Cypriot dining areas in the country. This is not a curated food market or a street food event. It's a genuine immigrant community food corridor that has been feeding people well for decades, and it remains stubbornly, admirably uncommercialised.
Three places matter here:
The meze here is the reason to come. Hummus, cacık, stuffed vine leaves, börek — all made properly, all priced honestly at around £12–15 a head for a full spread. Family restaurant energy, not performance. They prefer cash. Bring some.
The grill operation. If you want adana kebab cooked over charcoal, or lamb ribs that have been handled with actual skill, this is where you go. Ocakbaşı means fireside — the grill is in the room, open, and it smells exactly like it should.
Not a restaurant — a deli-bakery that has been here long enough to become an institution. Grab pastries, fresh-baked bread, olives in brine, feta by weight. Good for a mid-afternoon stop or for loading up provisions. Everything is better than it needs to be.
This corridor has been feeding North London properly for thirty years. It doesn't need to advertise. The food does the work.
Arnos Park · N11
Arnos Park sits between Southgate and Arnos Grove, and it contains one of the better small surprises in this part of London: a Victorian railway viaduct that runs through the park, its brick arches framing the river Pymme's Brook below. It's genuinely photogenic — all that dark nineteenth-century engineering set against park greenery.
The park itself is quiet. Fewer people come here than to Broomfield, which means it has a particular kind of stillness in the afternoon. Good for walking, good for sitting, good for photographs. If either of you has a phone worth using, this is where to use it.
It's an easy detour — not more than twenty minutes out of the day's route — and it rewards the small effort of finding it. That is precisely the kind of place worth building into a day like this.
Heading South · Finsbury Park
If Green Lanes hasn't already solved dinner — or if you arrived there for meze at 3pm and want something later — you have a clean choice.
Stay in Southgate: Gökyüzü for a proper charcoal grill dinner, or find a table somewhere on Green Lanes and work through the menu more slowly than you did earlier. The area stays good until late. There is no rush.
Go back south to Finsbury Park: If you haven't done The Faltering Fullback yet, do it now. Evening in that garden is different from lunchtime — the lights come on in the plant-covered structure, the ales are still cold, and you've got the whole day to sit with over a pint. It's a good place to end.
Piccadilly line direct: Finsbury Park → Southgate. ~15 min. No changes. Sit left side of carriage heading north.
Check opening time (midday weekdays, 11am weekends). Beer garden fills up fast on sunny days — arrive early or lose your spot.
Green Lanes restaurants — especially Selale — prefer or require cash. Take £40–60 for food. ATMs on Green Lanes itself.
Check seasonal hours — the café isn't always open. Worth calling ahead if you're planning to stop.
Just outside it, no admission needed. Morning light hits the drum facade well. Bring a phone camera.
Popular for dinner — can get busy from 7pm. Either arrive early (6–6:30pm) or be prepared to wait briefly for a table.
Closes reasonably early (typically 7–8pm). Hit it in the afternoon if you want to browse the deli properly.
This day doesn't need to be rushed. If you get absorbed somewhere — the park, the food strip — let it happen. The structure is a guide, not a schedule.
Boyd & Antoine · Southgate · June 2026