North Road, it transpires, is not remotely festive. The ambience is muted, the décor all colours from beige through to taupe. It's big on rabbit cooked in burning hay, logs, soil and wild mushrooms, dried loin, pickled green juniper, smoked quail's eggs. It's very light on LOLz.
I witnessed many diners gazing, forlorn and perplexed, at their plates. North Road has drawn comparisons with foodie-haven Noma in Denmark - one of those places in the MasterChef finals that the fledgling cooks get wibbly talking about as it's not just a restaurant, it's a 'foraging degustation event' where chef prides himself on not using real-world shops but swimming the bay pre-dawn in hessian underpants for old nettles to make his stock. It's un-clear where North Road forages, but the teal and the monkfish come with 'Peter's mushrooms'. Peter, in my mind's eye, is a disgruntled allotment owner in Muswell Hill, sat with a blunderbuss waiting for those pesky North Road looters to return.