Vagabond N7

Vagabon N7, 105 Holloway Rd, London N7 8LT
On match days, Holloway Road is awash in a sea of red as near-on 60,000 football fans descend to fill up the eateries and bars that line the route to the Emirates Stadium, converging as quickly as they depart when it’s time for kickoff. So, undoubtedly it was a surprise to find a modicum of tranquility in amongst the seething masses of sports fanatics who claim the area as their own like locusts might a corn field. 
That’s not to say Vagabond N7 was completely deserted, far from it, but the pre-game banter and alcohol infused chanting found elsewhere throughout Islington was strangely absent in favour of quiet chit-chat and the gentle clacking of laptop keys. It was almost as if everyone in there was entirely oblivious to the goings on outside. I was almost ashamed to walk in with my football colours, as though this place was the last temple of non-partisan, football-free discussion and I had tainted it with my shirt. Not that anyone seemed phased by it.


Another stripped back affair with reclaimed furniture, as so many specialist coffee shops are these days, it is painfully hip with tables suspended from ceilings by chain and local, edgy art adding a talking points to the scene. The long interior manages to find cubby holes for all that opens up into a hall at the back that has the air of a converted barn. Turn left and you’ll find an outdoor patio to lounge in all too fleeting sunshine of North London, set back far enough from the fumes of Holloway Road to make you forget that you’re in the ‘shopping centre of the world’ as the famed local MP once put it. Carry on forward though, and here you’ll see the roasting room where all sorts of sweet and proud coffee delights are primed ready to swing their way across the capital and swim the veins of Londoners. Kettles, drippers, brewers and all sorts of arrayed accoutrements line the back section where magic is performed in the coffee cauldrons where they deal in direct trade beans that can be bought by the bag.


I settle in, snatching up a copy of Caffeine magazine and whiling away the time in a lazy haze of chocolate and honeycomb tones rather than the frantic rush of pre-match pie and pint. This seems so much more civilised.