Stoke Newington

Village-like atmosphere with nice looking cafés and restaurants, churches and parks. This is one of the best places for atmospheric pubs and small restaurants. It also has a lot of organic shops, wine merchants and small speciality shops. It's become one of my favourite areas in London. Especially in the dark autumn and winter nights the Church Street looks quite magical. True Victorian London experience!


Parks:

• Clissold Park is a nice but quite typical park. It's got sports grounds, little pond and some animals, such as goats and deer. There is an old house in the middle that serves as some sort of café nowadays.
• Abney Park Cemetery is one of the seven magnificent 18th century cemeteries around London. Not many famous people are buried here, but it's a nice tranquil area with a nice gothic chapel.
• Woodberry Wetlands is a nature area with two large lakes and some wildlife. Great place for a walk.

Eating:

•  There are a lot of nice places to eat in Stoke Newington. Coach & Horses is a nice pub that serves good Thai food and hosts quizzes at least in weekends. Good for either eating or drinking or both. The decorations are a mixture of saloon esthetics and old commercials.
• Rasa is an amazing restaurant serving all vegetarian South Indian food. Most of the Indian food served in London is North Indian, so this is a nice change. I suggest getting their feast, which includes large variety of different dishes. For meat eaters, there is another restaurant with the same name just across the road that serves also meat dishes. 
• Yum Yum is a gorgeous-looking Thai restaurant. Their food is excellent and not too expensive. The atmosphere is very classy in a relaxed kind of way!
• Roti Stop serves authentic Trinidad food. Rotis and doubles are delicious and in addition to meat ones, they also have several fish ones and veggie ones. For those not familiar with
  
  Trinidad food, they make soft and fluffy pita bread-like doubles and wrap-like rotis, that are filled with different sorts of spicy curries with cucumber or pepper sauce and your choice of filling! The place is really small and not very pleasant for sitting down, so I suggest you take your food take away.
• Fuji is a great little Japanese restaurant. The prices are very affordable and sushi, katsu curries, tempuras and ramen taste great! 
• Il Bacio is one of the greatest Italian restaurants in London. The place is cozy with classic paintings on the walls. Even the smell is just right for an Italian place with amazing cuisine. Pizzas, pastas and mains. The prices aren't too bad either. 

Shopping:

• There are numerous good wine shops around Stoke Newington. One of them is Borough wines that sells, in addition to wine, a variety of London microbrewery beers.
• Stoke Newington Bookshop is a fantastic independent bookshop with quite a good selection of quality novels. They also have a bargain bookshop a couple of doors down, where you can buy cheap classics etc.

Drinking:

• Stoke Newington has a number of atmospheric small pubs. It's one of the best areas to go out if you want to just talk to your mates and don't want all that loud music and tourists around. The Rose and Crown is an old pub with stone floors, large windows and delicious beers. They got some pretty good looking food as well. There's also a live fire place for those cold winter evenings.
• The Jolly Butchers is a fantastic pub for great beers. Wide range of microbrewery delicacies from I.P.A.s to porters and stouts. The clientele is very hipstery. 
  
• The Prince is a beautiful old-fashion neighbourhood pub with excellent selection of local microbrewery beers and gastro-pub food. There's also a small outside area. 

Markets:

• Hackney Flea Market is a fairly small flea market selling vintage clothing, vinyl records, toys, hand crafts and local bakery goods. Nice place to make some finds. 

 Cafés:

• Fat Cat Café is a great little café with excellent coffee, tasty salads and sandwiches and mouthwatering cakes. They even have American style pancakes. 
• The Haberdashery is an amazing cafe that serves delicious brunch and lunch along with amazing coffees. The tiled walls are full of decorations and even the music is quite good. 
  

 Areas around Stoke Newington: Stamford Hill, Clapton, Highbury, Shacklewell, Finsbury Park