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Londonderry

Europe

United Kingdom

Nestled in the vibrant heart of Archway, London, St John's Tavern stands as a quintessential gastropub that masterfully combines historic charm with contemporary culinary excellence. With its inviting atmosphere and a reputation for high-quality food, this establishment is a must-visit for food lovers, locals, and travelers seeking an authentic British pub experience infused with modern flair. From its warm, welcoming ambiance to its carefully curated menu, St John's Tavern offers a delightful escape into London's dynamic culinary scene.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/st-johns-tavern-london

https://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/st-johns-tavern

https://maps.google.com/?q=91+Junction+Road,+Archway,+London,+N19+5QU

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1st time to England and went to St John's and food, service and ambience were fantastic. Please visit them if you're here or coming here.

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While the bar is beautiful and the restaurant room even nicer, we just ordered burgers and I will say they were probably the worst ever nasty ass overpriced sour meat we shouldnt have paid for them burgera for £18 each? WTAF.  We are talking Archway.  We thought they would be amazing.  But no.  Processed cheese and wimpy buns.  Shame.

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Great food.  Ordered the veg. Paella and venison stew. We'll maintained and clean, comfortable dining.  Attentive service.  A convenient stop for lunch after a morning walk through Highgate cemetery.

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"Gosh, why are there so many beautiful men in this place?", my friend said, when we were sitting down at the bar to drink some wine. And yes, I think she's right: St. John's Tavern is a bright beacon in a still-mostly edgy Archway...here's where the "pretty" society comes to see and be seen. 

St. John's Tavern is both a place where you can gather with your friends for a beer and a place for good dining. The pub area features a really long bar and plenty of tables of various sizes. (And even free wifi!) Adjacent to the bar is the dining hall and this room actually deserves the room hall with its high ceiling and generally large volume. 

I've come here several times already, both for lunch and dinner, but also for a beer/wine with friends. Their food is of high quality and the term gastro-pub describes this place very well. (I really like the homemade bread that they serve.) The menu is written on a big chalk board above the fireplace and on the walls you can find some very interesting artwork. 

I do need to say, however, that I'm always a little bit disappointed with the service here at St John's Tavern. It's not that the staff is unfriendly or dismissive, but I have a feeling that oftentimes they are more concerned with being hip and stylish, rather than friendly and customer-oriented. I yet have to make a real connection with a waiter.

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St Johns forms one of the Trinity of special pubs in the Tufnell Park area and has one of the best bar snack selections I have come across. At night the lighting and seating makes St Johns feel very warm and cosy, especially on a winters night. The pub area is separated from the dining area although you can still eat in the pub area as long as you don't mind the noise.

The restaurant area in St Johns is fabulous. You are surrounded by some beautiful pastel paintings that gives the high ceilings and room a feel of being in a gallery. The pub if anything is a feast on your eyes. The pub is very family friendly with couples with very young children amongst the regular visitors.

Food in restaurant can be inconsistent with respect to your visit. Unfortunately the chef forgot a key ingredient in my wife's dish and we were surprised by an ingredient that was not mentioned on the menu. The rock oysters were a dissapointed having very little flesh. However the artichoke tart with blue cheese was delicious. My fish and chips was excellent as was my apple crumble. The spotted Dick was not to my liking due to its heavy orange taste. Saying that, this was the first time I ate it.

Service in St Johns is very good. The staff were happy to correct their mistake with the main and I complement them for this. However it would be good if there was some quality control in the kitchen so this does not happen in the future.

Meals around Tufnell Park are not a cheap eat. There are some establishments that are known for cheap eats but St Johns like other pubs of the trinity is not one of them. 

I would recommend a visit to St Johns on any night. It is one of my favourite pubs having previously lived in the area.

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St John's Tavern is a High Barnet-branch favourite that, along with The Junction Tavern down the road, has both the food and pedigree to legitimately call itself a gastropub.  (Not that it does, of course.  Gastropubs, sort of like hipsters, have the property that the most authentic examples are the least likely to use the label on themselves, and the least genuine are most likely to loudly embrace it.)

Dinner and Sunday lunch are served in a dining hall that's decorated with competent charcoal and pastel portraits next to photographs of the pub and surrounding area, and it has a very distinguished cracked-and-repainted vaulted ceiling.  So if you can, try to make a reservation in the dining room.  Table 17 in the corner has a good view of the punters, and there are also big brown leather booths for parties: furniture hybrids of American diner crossed with Gentlemen's club (as in Garrick or Lansdowne, not Stringfellows.)

You can also show up and eat in the bar, but it's very hard to get a table there during the 7pm to 9pm after-office-hours crush.  I don't think they take reservations for the bar area.

Whenever I have visitors they are brought, as a matter of course on their first visit to London, to St John's Tavern.  Especially so if they are from the US and have made clever comments demonstrating their prejudice against British cooking.  The food is indeed robust and practical, and it definitely follows the meat plus vegetable plus additional vegetable pattern, but is also heaped with modern style and flavour (their influences are on display in a small library of cookbooks at the back of the dining room.) It couldn't be further from a the sort of gravy soaked Dickensian chop house I'm sure most outsiders imagine les rosbifs Brits frequent.  Pork chops, sausages and steak are on the menu, but so is olive tapernade, polenta and salsa verde.

Also of note: there is always a very good selection of seafood.  Cornish rock oysters are a staple, as are the fish and chips -- haddock or coley, rather than cod -- and this was the first restaurant where I had a pea puree, which is more exciting an event than it sounds.  Another classic is the mussels with chilli and chorizo, which makes a good light supper on its own if you have it with a side of the house sourdough and two pints of bitter.  In both the restaurant and bar you can also get cockles, fresh anchovies, whitebait, and other snacks.

Menus are on chalkboards on the walls -- an single enormous one in the dining room -- and are written in a pretty chalk hand.  At the back, over the kitchen, is a provenance board listing the kitchen's suppliers and another board listing the pudding menu.  You should leave room for a pudding.  I would recommend the caramel cheesecake with a glass of PX sherry.

Something that went hand-in-hand with the ascent of gastropubs was the giant scotch egg and St John's Tavern is a very good example if you're in the bar.  They also have delicious giant pork scratchings.  Don't be put off if your only experience of scratchings is of Mr Porky's meat industry by-products.

I've been eating and drinking here for over ten years now.  Getting home used to take ten minutes on a 134 bus.  Then I moved and it meant a cab ride to the other side of Hampstead Heath.  For a few years I could only get here by 747, and now it's a cab ride through two boroughs.  I hope to always keep coming back to this old friend.

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Had recent refurb. Main bar clean and nice. Lighting needs sorting out, too bright. Lots of kids running around. Selection of ales ok and well kept.

Food is excellent in restaurant at the back is very good. Not cheap but worth the extra. Nice 50s style room with golden ceiling.

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And yet ANOTHER first rate London gastropub!

(boy - London has a lot of these!)

Two diners - three courses plus drinks each - and only one whole mis-step in the lot.

The rest was pure and unadulterated heaven.

A fine run of beers and gins here - with some fine gin brands I have not seen elsewhere. Cider is run of the mill.

Starters were a borscht with horseradish - and horseradish is an inspired addition to beet soup. 

I personally cook a lot of beet soups in both carnivorous and vegetarian forms - and all my life I have relied on lemon juice, sour cream or vinegar to play off the beets.

Horseradish gives the soup a whole new dimension and this borscht was excellent. 

The other starter Grilled Squid with chorizo and salad was really grilled squid spacer whose function was to set off a very impressive British chorizo and the perfectrocket  salad to cut the chorizo. The squid had a char and looked pretty - but once the chorizo was in my mouth nothing else mattered about anything.

Mains were better still:

A knock your socks off gnocchi served in large squares straight up - so the impressive butter and fry taste on the gnocchi could be fully tasted. Also on the plate was a wonderful red pepper ragu (sweet not hot peppers) and a different rocket salad from the appetizer. Keeping the side dishes off the gnocchi was a clutch move and these were superlative gnocchi indeed. The sides made good contrasts.

The other main - a swordfish with a complex fennel sweet potato and greens side was also a winner. Swordfish is swordfish although this was a nice piece of merchandise. The vegetable melange was unusual and write-to-your-mother worthy.'

Desserts had one superstar and one fall through. The superstar was an apple and quince crumble. After you have combined apple with quince you will never want a plain apple pie again. The quince adds perfect tartness - it would be unbearable without the apple to balance it - and the tartness makes a brown sugar crumble seem irresistible. This dessert got inhaled.

The only miss of the night was a fig tart - that didn't taste much of fig or much of anything else. It was accompanied by a large mass of clotted cream.

Clotted cream is  Britain's answer to 

"if you are going to have your heart attack anyway - 

wouldn't a ton of sweet cream be the perfect way to do it?" 


A ton of clotted cream IS the perfect way to do it - 


but I would still have something tasty like raspberries underneath to play along.

The room is handsome : a large open space much like a Victorian art gallery. Dark tone, high ceilings, an open fire, and a ton of paintings and reproductions. 

It ain't the Tate Gallery but it ain't the 

"somebody burn these paintings and shoot the artist or we will all go blind" either. 

There is some nice stuff on that wall.

Overall, this is another fine destination when eating and drinking are what matter.

God, this is a great eating town!

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I had a great meal here. A liver dish that was done perfectly. But service overall was really poor. We had done dinner, plates taken away and asked for desert and coffee. Coffee shows up, desert a record 20 minutes later. This with five tables occupied in the whole place. Bartenders in the pub had really no clue. 15 people in the whole place, they couldn't keep track of who to serve next.

Sadly back to the restaurant for the topper. Salt and pepper open in small dishes on each table. I watch server and manager dump each tables servings (after people have had hands in them) back into a bucket to be used again. That and another dipping sauce (thankfully we did not need it) was recycled. Yuck.

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A return visit rather a disappointment.  Fish soup still excellent, but iron-hard croutons and very dull aioli.  Rump steak perfectly cooked, very good meat and a large portion, but lukewarm & unseasoned; sauce meagre & underflavoured,  and chips very poor,  limp & soggy.  Service rather surly & offhand though we ate very early and few other customers yet.
 Didn't bother with puds and probably won't return.

St John's Tavern in Archway, London – Top Gastropub & Family-Friendly Dining

Discover the vibrant atmosphere of St John's Tavern, a renowned gastropub nestled in the heart of London at 91 Junction Road, Archway. Celebrated for its eclectic menu and lively ambiance, this spot offers an unforgettable dining experience perfect for food lovers and social butterflies alike.

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Experience the vibrant atmosphere at St John's Tavern in London. Savor delicious bites and enjoy a lively UK pub vibe—perfect for your next outing. Book now!

St John's Tavern in Archway, London – Top Gastropub & Family-Friendly Dining

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