Top Cuvée
Brodie Meah helped open Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in Melbourne, then came back and opened a small bistro on Blackstock Road with the brothers behind the Three Sheets bars.
Why go
Dan Miller runs the kitchen, arriving from Naughty Piglets and 1251 after training at The Harwood Arms, and the cooking reads exactly like that lineage: braised pig cheeks with smoked celeriac and hazelnut pesto, beef fillet cut with smoked eel, terrines and croquettes. The wine is the other half. The list was built with Tutto Wines and Cave de Pyrene, two importers who deal in low-intervention French and Italian growers, and the Venning brothers put wine-based cocktails on it (Hot Dinners). During lockdown the operation pivoted into Shop Cuvée, a delivery and retail arm that was kept and now carries the group's whole web presence.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the beef fillet and smoked eel tartare with horseradish and dill oil, which the chef described to Hot Dinners as
an umami taste bomb,
and the house croquettes to start.2 - Avoid: treating it as a restaurant booking. The Infatuation:
As a restaurant Top Cuvée can feel slightly hit or miss, but as a bar it's far more consistent.
3
What locals & experts say
- Time Out (3/5, Yolanda Zappaterra, December 2019):
warm and cosy, with a friendly, easy-going vibe,
andthe short but well-planned menu was even better,
at about £100 for two.1 - The Infatuation (7.6, Jake Missing, June 2019):
This is a drinking and eating place, not vice versa.
3 - Harden's:
A new neighbourhood bistro for Highbury from the team behind Three Sheets Dalston; the open kitchen serves up small plates and platters of charcuterie and cheese.
4 - Local rec: a local sent Jeff here. REAL.
Good to know
- Timing: closed Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday to Friday it opens at 6pm for dinner only, Saturday runs noon to 11pm and Sunday noon to 9pm, per Harden's. The venue publishes no hours of its own, so confirm before a long trip.
- Booking: through SevenRooms.
- Price: bottles started around £30 and glasses around £6 in 2019, with a set lunch listed at £16 for two courses. Treat all of those as dated figures.
- Dietary: no gluten-free, celiac or vegan statement is published by the venue.
- Location: 177b Blackstock Road, closest to Finsbury Park station, which is why Time Out files it under that neighborhood.
Craft signals (wine: named importers, and a card that follows them)
Two signals, both more useful than the word natural. The list was built with Tutto Wines and Cave de Pyrene, two importers who deal specifically in low-intervention French and Italian growers, and naming them tells a drinker what will actually be in the glass. The bistro card is short and seasonal by design so it can follow the list rather than the other way round, which is also why The Infatuation reads the room as a bar first. Grower and importer relationships are the craft here; the cadence is the season.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Local rec" REAL.
Verdict
could-visit — This is solid, on your way. A short bistro card off a low-intervention list built with Tutto and Cave de Pyrene, from people who came out of Dinner by Heston and the Three Sheets bars, is a good Highbury evening. The published record stops in 2019 and the strongest reviewer of the three rated the bar above the kitchen, so it earns a stop rather than a journey.