The Plimsoll
The kitchen does not properly open on matchdays, which tells you that Jamie Allan and Ed McIlroy took over a Finsbury Park boozer and decided to leave it a boozer.
Why go
Four Legs spent two years cooking a residency in Islington, ended it on 31 July 2021, and took over the Auld Triangle on the corner of St Thomas's and Plimsoll Roads, which is where the name came from (Time Out). They part-funded it on Kickstarter and said at launch that staff would be on London Living Wage as a floor (The Infatuation). What they did not do is turn the pub into a restaurant. The ceiling is still peeling, the Guinness is still on, locals still drink at a bar that is permanently packed, and the menu behind it is rewritten continuously. Jake Missing scored it 8.5 in 2025 and called the Dexter cheeseburger the standard in London.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Dexter cheeseburger, which is meat, cheese, sauce and gherkins and no lettuce. A deep-fried oyster on supermarket baguette with tartare. Whatever escabeche is running. Clams or mussels with bread for the liquid. Chipolatas with their own ketchup.
- Avoid: the weekend and matchdays if you want to eat, since the kitchen is not properly open then. Arriving vegetarian, because a waiter's own summary was "we're quite a carnivorous restaurant". The whole fish, which can run a touch over.
What locals & experts say
- George Williams, head chef at The Fat Badger, asked by TOPJAW in May 2026 where the good burgers are:
The best burger factory is the Plimsoll.
4 - Jake Missing for The Infatuation, scoring 8.5 in March 2025:
The famous dexter cheeseburger continues to be an outstanding piece of beefy, buttery, craftsmanship. It's all meat, cheese, sauce, and gherkins; no lettuce.
On the cadence:The menu here is forever-changing.
1 - Isabelle Aron for Time Out, four stars out of five in the pub's first months:
What is obviously different is the shiny new kitchen you see when you walk in the door. I'm not even sure if the pub did food before, but if it did, I can guarantee that what's on the menu now is in a totally different league.
3
Good to know
- Where: 52 St Thomas's Road, N4 2QW, a few minutes from Finsbury Park station, on the corner that gave the pub its name.
- Kitchen hours: a weekday operation. It is not properly open at weekends or on matchdays, and midweek tables go fast.
- Booking: worth it for dinner. The bar area is walk-in and always full.
- Diet: carnivorous, in the floor staff's own words. Vegetarians and vegans will struggle.
- History: the site was The Auld Triangle. The team came from a two-year Four Legs residency at the Compton Arms in Islington, which ended in July 2021.
- Hygiene: FSA rating 2, inspected 22 November 2024. The three components are Hygiene 5, Structural 15 and Confidence in Management 5, where lower is better, so the mark is driven by the state of the building rather than by food handling. Disclosed here in full, and it does not move the ranking. The inspection is about twenty months old.5
Verdict
must-visit — The kitchen shuts for matchdays. That one fact tells you what Jamie Allan and Ed McIlroy decided to build when they left their Compton Arms residency and took over the Auld Triangle in 2021: a pub that still belongs to the people who drank in it, with a kitchen behind the bar cooking at a level nobody expected. The ceiling is still peeling. Locals still come for a Guinness. And the menu is forever-changing, which is the craft axis here and the reason the 2021 and 2025 dish lists have nothing in common. Jake Missing scored it 8.5 in March 2025 and called the Dexter cheeseburger the standard in London; George Williams, head chef at The Fat Badger, told TOPJAW in May 2026 that the best burger factory is the Plimsoll. Order the burger, then order a deep-fried oyster on a supermarket baguette, which is the sentence that explains the whole place. Book midweek, because the kitchen is a weekday operation and there are scrums for tables.