The Duke Organic

The bar will not stock a multinational brand. Every beer, wine, spirit and soft drink in the building is organic, biodynamic or Fairtrade.

Why go

Geetie Singh opened this pub in 1998 and had the whole thing certified organic by the Soil Association, the food and the bar together, which nobody in Britain had done before. Sejal Sukhadwala, reviewing it for Londonist, put the achievement in the right frame: "It was ground-breaking in its day, but what's even more surprising is that 17 years later, when our food and drink culture has changed so dramatically, it remains so: no other drinking establishment has followed suit" (ref). Eleven more years have passed and the pub still says it is the only one.

Singh, who grew up in a Midlands commune, married Riverford's Guy Watson in 2014, and the pub ran as a Riverford flagship from 2015 to 2018. The Culpeper Family bought it in October 2019 and runs it now alongside three other pubs and a farm in Deptford. Riverford still sends the vegetables and the dairy.

The kitchen buys from organic growers and cooks what turns up, which in 2015 meant a blackboard rewritten twice a day. That was under the previous owners and no one has documented the cadence since, so take it as the shape of the place rather than a promise about tonight.

One gap runs through this entry and it is worth saying early. Nobody with a byline has assessed the cooking since the current owners took over almost seven years ago. The last verdict on record is three stars out of five, and its complaint was that the kitchen "would benefit from a less restrained, more gutsy approach".

Order this / avoid

• Order: the Sunday roast, which runs from noon and stops when the kitchen does at five. Whatever the large plates are that week. A glass off the natural-led list. The cheese board, from small British producers.
• Avoid: Mondays, when it is shut. Sunday evening, because the kitchen closes at 5pm and the bar at 6. Assuming a vegetable-led plate is vegetarian, since a reviewer working through this menu found fish sauce and animal rennet in dishes that were not flagged. Expecting a cheap pint.

What locals & experts say

• Sejal Sukhadwala, Londonist, 30 January 2015 (3 out of 5): on the drinks policy, "Beers, wines, spirits and soft drinks are either organic, biodynamic or Fairtrade; no multinational brands are used." On the kitchen: "There's an a la carte blackboard menu, which changes twice a day depending on the availability of seasonal produce at the time." On the service: "We were wowed by the service. Staff were notably smart, friendly, knowledgeable and on-the-ball." ref
• The critical line, from the same review: a braised pumpkin was "a little too mild-mannered with barely-there chilli heat", the squash "unevenly cooked", and "Perhaps the kitchen here would benefit from a less restrained, more gutsy approach." ref
• The venue's own position, read 1 August 2026: "Certified by the Soil Association since 1998", serving "fresh seasonal ingredients sourced from organic farmers and growers alongside local beers and a considered, natural-led wine list". It also states it is a certified B Corporation, with no year given, which is why that is reported here as their claim rather than recorded as an award. ref
• The gap, stated: no bylined review has appeared in any source this database accepts since The Culpeper Family bought the pub in October 2019. Everything currently searchable about the food is on aggregator sites, which are banned here in both directions.

Good to know

• Where: 30 St Peter's Street, N1 8JT, a residential street off Upper Street, close to the Regent's Canal.
• Timing: closed Mondays. Kitchen Tuesday to Friday noon to 3pm and 5.30pm to 9.30pm, Saturday noon to 9.30pm, Sunday noon to 5pm. Bar Tuesday to Saturday until 11pm, Sunday until 6pm.
• Booking: through SevenRooms. Group drinks for eight to twenty and larger dinner bookings go by email.
• Sourcing: Soil Association certified since 1998, across the kitchen and the bar. Vegetables and dairy from Riverford, the rest from small growers and producers.
• Diet: vegetable-led cooking throughout, and a warning worth repeating: dishes are not flagged as vegetarian and have contained fish sauce and cheeses made with animal rennet. Ask.
• Names: the pub traded as The Duke of Cambridge until the rebrand and the hygiene register still files it that way. The record here was matched on the address rather than the name.
• Hygiene: FSA rating 5, Islington, inspected 9 January 2025, FHRSID 1204501. ref
• Sites: one. The Culpeper Family runs three other pubs and a farm in Deptford, which are separate businesses rather than branches. Several unrelated pubs called the Duke of Cambridge trade elsewhere in London.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. His saved-places export carries this row with an empty note. The master list's line about an organic pub save came from a later enrichment pass, not from him.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

could-visit — Go if you are in Islington and the sourcing is the reason, because on that axis nobody else in the country is doing this. Geetie Singh opened it in 1998 and got the whole pub certified organic by the Soil Association, food and bar together, and twenty-eight years later it still holds the certification and still says nobody else has taken it. The drinks policy is the sharpest expression of it: Londonist found that the beers, wines, spirits and soft drinks were all organic, biodynamic or Fairtrade, and that no multinational brands were stocked at all. The kitchen buys from organic growers and cooks what arrives. What this entry cannot tell you is whether the food is good right now, and that matters more than the story. The Culpeper Family bought the pub in October 2019 and no critic this database accepts has eaten here since. The last star rating is Sejal Sukhadwala's three out of five for Londonist in January 2015, under Riverford, and her complaint was that the cooking was too restrained: a braised pumpkin that was 'a little too mild-mannered', squash 'unevenly cooked', and the thought that the kitchen 'would benefit from a less restrained, more gutsy approach'. Eleven years is a long time to leave that standing. Worth a Sunday lunch on a walk around the Regent's Canal, and not yet worth building a night around.