The Parakeet Pub

The people behind the Jazz Café and The Blues Kitchen bought an 1860s Kentish Town freehouse, and rather than making it a music room they built a custom fire grill into the back of it and hired two cooks out of Brat.

Why go

The split is the point. The front stays a pub, with a bar for people who only want a drink and two four-seat booths that are the best seats in it. The back is a semi-open fire kitchen behind backlit stained glass, run by head chef Ben Allen with Ed Jennings as sous, both off Brat (Hot Dinners). The menu runs snacks, then small plates, then large sharing plates cooked over the grill, with the produce coming through a regenerative farm relationship with Flourish in Cambridge (Top 50 Gastropubs). It entered the Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs at number 36 in January 2024, having opened the year before. Sunday lunch is a proper roast.

Order this / avoid

• Order: something big off the fire, a whole fish or a hunk of ox cheek, because that is what the grill was built for. Spider crab croquettes and smoked mutton sausage to start. Oysters with fermented kohlrabi if they are on. Braised leeks and mushrooms in that pecorino sauce.
• Avoid: walking in for the dining room on a busy night, when the host sends people to the bar. Building a meal entirely out of small plates. Expecting even pacing, since Time Out waited twenty minutes between two of theirs.

What locals & experts say

• India Lawrence, Time Out London, four stars out of five: "The eats here shouldn't be taken lightly, this is rich, interesting food, elegantly presented." She also wrote that she "wouldn't be surprised if The Parakeet becomes one of London's foodie big hitters", and she flagged a twenty minute gap between small plates. ref
• Gavin Hanly, Hot Dinners, on the format: "The building is split into two very distinct sections, the pub for drinking and the dining room for... dining. This is pretty much how any proper gastropub should be, although it's not as common as we'd like." ref
• Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs 2024, reported by Time Out's Leonie Cooper: "a new entry for Kentish Town's The Parakeet, which only opened last year, at number 36." That is Cooper relaying a ranking, not her own verdict. ref
• The Times called the food "beyond outstanding", but that line reaches us only through the Top 50 Gastropubs venue page, with no critic named and no date. Recorded, not counted as a review.

Good to know

• Where: 256 Kentish Town Road NW5 2AA. Kentish Town station is two minutes away, Kentish Town West about ten.
• Was: The Oxford Tavern, an 1860s freehouse, until the 2023 refit.
• Who runs it: The Columbo Group, Steve Ball and Riz Shaikh, who also run Camden's Jazz Café and The Blues Kitchen across London and Manchester.
• Booking: essential for the dining room. The bar takes walk-ins and is a real bar.
• Private room: seats 30 for dinner, holds 80 for drinks, with ceiling windows.
• Sunday: a traditional roast.
• Hygiene: rating 5, inspected 11 March 2025, Camden ref.
• Currency of this entry: every published source reached dates from 2023 or January 2024, and the venue's own site gave up nothing. Check who is cooking before you build a big night around it.

Jeff's take (his words)

Nothing from Jeff. The saved-places export carries this row with an empty Note column, so jeff_note stays empty.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Worth rearranging an evening for, and the reason is the back half of the building. The Columbo Group, who run the Jazz Cafe and The Blues Kitchen, bought an 1860s Kentish Town freehouse and instead of turning it into another music room they put in a custom fire grill, a semi-open kitchen and two cooks off Brat, Ben Allen as head chef and Ed Jennings as sous. That is a group discharging the burden of proof by spending on the kitchen, and it shows: whole fish and big cuts over live fire, oysters with fermented kohlrabi, leeks under a hard-salted pecorino sauce, and a produce line running back to a named regenerative farm in Cambridge. Time Out gave four stars and called the food rich, interesting and elegantly presented, and the Estrella Damm list took it in at number 36 in its first year open. What keeps it off the top rung is thinner evidence than the room deserves: one scored review, both critics writing in spring 2023, and a Times line that only reaches us second-hand through an award body. The same review clocked a twenty minute hole between small plates. The front half is still a pub with booths and people drinking in it, which is the part most gastropubs get wrong.