Few pieces of ostensibly mundane catering equipment can stir emotion like the counter in a fish and chip shop. You will know the kind of thing. A gleaming stretch of metal and glass that is instantly redolent of lamp-lit Pukka Pies beneath the warmer, the unseen roil and sputter of deep-fat fryers, a jar of pickled eggs first opened some time around the Suez Crisis, and the anticipatory agony of a Friday night queue, inching forward through a cloud of onion vinegar scent. If half the pleasure of a proper chippy tea is a kind of gastronomic edging, then the counter is the first irresistible act of foreplay.
At Tollington’s in Finsbury Park — a Spanish-accented overhaul of a derelict chippy from Four Legs chef Ed McIlroy — this fast-disappearing vestige of British dining culture has been reinvented as something new entirely. Preserved and buffed to a mirrored shine, it is the dividing border between a hectic open kitchen and an unruly dining room; the thing that dishevelled young Londoners lean against with their brutally cold £2.30 cañas of Estrella, and a display case for fresh tomatoes, melons, bronzed puffs of devilled crab fritters and a stacked armoury of slender baguettes. Now and again, McIlroy will clamber on top of it, Coyote Ugly-style, to retrieve an industrial-sized bottle of olive oil from an elevated storage shelf.
As an emblematic collision of old and new, of Iberian and British, it tells you everything you need to know about the rowdy, cross-cultural brilliance of this little place. At a time when lots of restaurants are dealing in stylistic karaoke, Tollington’s is a wholly original, radically inexpensive and thrillingly crafted remix. A Chas and Dave knees-up with added castanets, if you will. It is both a justified candidate for opening of the year and a reminder of what a confident, singular and beguilingly weird restaurant city we have. The hype is mighty. But, my word, so is the cooking.
Having said all that, it’s the kind of gritty, thrumming space you may need to acclimatise to. I arrived to find a party spilling lawlessly out onto the sunlit pavement. Beyond gorgeously restored signage, ceiling fans twirled, kitsch folk art swarmed the nicotine-yellow walls, electro whumped from the stereo and waist-aproned staff (who, as at sibling pub The Plimsoll, all look like they have their own noise-rock bands) patrolled a space thick with clamorous bodies, perched over plates of scarlet prawns. “It feels a bit like they’ve Topjawed a fish and chip shop,” said my pal Chris. “But I’m sort of into it.”
It feels a bit like they’ve Topjawed a fish and chip shop
Our first dishes helped. Thick-cut slices of baguette — one set with quince and ripe, blue-veined Beauvale cheese; another packing a smooshed layer of tomato pulp and piquant nubbins of fried chistorra sausage — were two, concentrated bites of purest pintxo-bar pleasure. Raw bream slices, accented by a swatch of thin-sliced peach, continued the theme of restrained lusciousness. Roasted scallop, meanwhile, wanted for size but made up for it with a slurpable pool of melted butter and a fragrant carpet of microplaned summer truffle. Later, there was a plancha-fired, spoonably succulent whole pollock pil pil, and those deep-fried boulders of choux-encased, oozing devilled crab, which are like Nuno Mendes’s crab doughnuts reborn for a less prissy age.
This is very much the approach that McIlroy and his Four Legs cohort Jamie Allan perfected at the Plimsoll and, before that, the Compton Arms: adventurous, classically coded cooking, plated without fuss, possessed of a punkish, trashy streak (think pigeon bhuna and a riff on lasagne and chips) and Trojan Horsed by an outwardly casual environment.
However, perhaps the most memorable dish is a wildly crowd-pleasing one. Beef dripping in London chippies is a rarity these days but here it is put to spectacular use for chips bravas: fat, hand-cut potatoes, cooked to a perfect, sweet-edged and tallowy gold crisp, and slopped in a messy Rojigualda of housemade aioli and punchy, warm salsa brava. With apologies to justifiably aggrieved vegetarians, they really may be the best chips in London.
We finished, jacketed in the buzz of another cherry cola-ish glass of draught vermouth, with a wibbling block of the indulgent flan that is the only real pudding. The bill, despite totalling enough food and drink to fell a pair of Catalan trawlermen, barely breached £150. McIlroy and his team have given north London an eye-catching, wholly unlikely culture clash; an electrically vibey, Spanglish instant classic. But, more than that, what they have also imported is the continental belief that eating and drinking well, rather than being an expensive luxury, is an inalienable right. Those glowing display cabinets have a new lease of life. And Tollington’s is the best sort of counter culture.Tollington’s. 172 Tollington Park, N4 3AJ. Meal for two plus drinks about £100. Open Wednesday to Friday from 6pm-11pm, Saturday from noon-11pm and Sunday noon-6pm; @tollingtons.fishbar
