Picture of Queen's Head And Artichoke, NW1 4EA

Queen's Head And Artichoke, NW1 4EA

Pub near Regents Park, serving tapas all day plus gastropub food at lunchtimes and evenings.

The decor is shabby-chic standard-gastro photo. Tables are laid for service downstairs, and there's also a couch area to the left of the front entrance. Behind the island bar is a small, thin beer garden with some couches as well as tables with cover. There are also tables outside on the street, on both sides of the pub.

Kake visited on a Monday afternoon in April 2009. It was empty when I arrived a little after 4pm, but when I left an hour later there were a couple of dozen people in despite it being right at the start of the week. Music was playing — reggae, Pink Floyd, instrumental jazz — though not too loud.

Beers available were Adnam's Bitter (£1.40/half) and Marston Pedigree. They have a range of standard and premium lagers, including Lowenbrau (£1.60/half), though the main focus is on the fairly lengthy wine list (two sides of a laminated A4 page).

They do gastropub-type food photo of menu as of April 2009 at lunchtimes and evenings (and there's a restaurant upstairs if you don't want to eat in the pub part), plus tapas all day photo of tapas menu. Food is served 12:30pm-3:30pm and 6:30pm-10:30pm Monday to Friday, and 12:30pm-10pm Saturday and Sunday.

In April 2009, Kake tried the paprika pork belly skewers (£4) photo; these were fine, fairly moist, and tasty enough, with a reasonable tahini sauce on the side. The staff had no problem with me ordering just a single item, which suggests this might be a good stop for a tapas crawl.

In June 2009, Ewan tried the mixed tapas plate (£8.50 for vegetarian only, £12.50 including cured meats) photo. It was a reasonable selection, served with some rather nice toasted flatbread, and included a decent hummous and a rather less interesting baba ganoush (lacking the full smoky aubergine flavour of a really good baba ganoush), a couple of stuffed vine leaves, grilled courgettes, marinated wild mushrooms, cannellini bean salad, and some lettuce leaves. In all, it was a large and reasonable selection for the price.

Kake's verdict: I'd come back. The Food And Drink In London review linked below recommends their soupe de poisson, and I do hope it's on the menu next time I come here. I also note that their website advertises a cocktail menu including amaretto sour, which I'm keen to try as I've never had one in a bar as good as the ones I make myself.

See also:

Last visited by Ewan, 29 June 2009. Opening hours and food times taken from Time Out website, June 2009.
OS X co-ord: 528852 OS Y co-ord: 182404 (Latitude: 51.525859 Longitude: -0.143982)
Last edited 2023-09-05 13:43:58 (version 8; diff). List all versions.