15 reasons to go to Kentish Town Road, NW1 & NW5
Karl Marx and Tom Hiddleston liked it so much they chose to call it home; Mary Shelley described it as an ‘odious swamp’. Yes, Kentish Town splits opinion. But its high street – relatively unchanged despite an influx of young professionals, as well as hordes of French families who’ve come for the local francophone schools – is well worth a visit. Posh and down-to-earth versions of shops cohabit nicely: the Mediterranean food hall is still thriving, despite a health food supermarket moving in a couple of doors down, and though a couple of familiar chain cafés and restaurants have arrived, Londoners from far and wide still love the local BYOB spots.
Stretching down from Kentish Town to Camden Road tube, the street crosses a whole range of classic London streetscapes: pretty mews, a canal, some grimy railway tracks and a pocket park. It’s lined with Victorian redbrick gems and the odd ghost sign to reward those looking upwards. It even has a disused tube station – South Kentish Town, immortalised in a John Betjeman story about a man trapped inside – and a late Victorian church that’s now a Grade II-listed Greek Orthodox cathedral. The charity shops here are full of high-end treasures, too. It may look like a typical, run-down London high street, but that’s not the half of it.
Eat this
A post shared by Anastasia Ivanova 🇬🇧🇷🇺 (@anastasiaova) on Feb 9, 2016 at 3:29pm PST
A nightly changing three-course meal at intimate BYOB Anima e Cuore. It doesn’t look like much, but t