Sable D’or Patisserie at Crouchend

“Cool for kids and buggies: Cool in your code, Crouch End
Damian Barr ventures into Crouch End and finds it family-friendly perfection

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ZOMBIES walk the streets of Crouch End. In quiet Edwardi-an cul-de-sacs the living dead lurk, waiting to feast on your flesh. Or at least that’s what they did in the movie Shaun of the Dead, filmed on those semi-suburban streets by one celebrity resident, Simon Pegg.

Pegg has put N8 on the map. Look beyond the reanimated corpses and slapstick horror and you’ll see that Crouch End is actually quite pretty. It’s tucked away in a valley between Highgate, Hornsey and Muswell Hill and seems to have more than its fair share of trees. If it’s an actual park you want, walk over to Alexandra Palace (it has no Tube). Just as Streat-ham has become St Reatham, so Crouch End has become Crouchand. Those who call it Crouchand hope that the Tube never arrives at all. For them it’s all bikes and buses. And buggies.


It’s not zombies you have to watch out for here. It’s buggies. At the start and end of the school day a convoy of yummy mummies crowd the pavements with giant three-wheelers. Walking along Broadway, the main street, is like reenacting the chariot scene from Ben-Hur. A buggy congestion charge would make a fortune.”