Telephone: 020 7700 7161
Address: 16-18 Highbury Corner, London N5
Lunch for two, including service, £18.
Dorothy Parker had the round table at the Algonquin in New York. Jean-Paul Sartre had his berth at Les Deux Magots in Paris. And Tony Parsons, our own wit and philosopher of the male ego? Tony has a booth at an Italian caff called the Trevi, hard by Highbury Corner in north London, the better to fuel up for his kung-fu lessons after a hard day's graft at the literary coalface. From the outside, the Trevi looks like - as Churchill almost said of Atlee - a modest place with much to be modest about. Likewise, its location is hardly something to arouse the ardour of estate agents, sitting, as it does, on one of the least-lovely stretches of the Holloway Road (though, granted, identifying such a thing is a little like trying to identify the least-lovely stretch of the late Arthur Mullard; one is hideously spoilt for choice).
But then flimsy attributes such as prettiness and aspect are for those soft tossers who tiptoe past the boutiques and bistros of Islington's Upper Street, just a stone's throw away across Highbury Corner. No, up here they are made of much sterner stuff. They look for authenticity and value, for credibility and consistency, and on all these counts the Trevi scores highly. It is a Highbury Corner landmark with a herd of regulars who will happily queue out the door for the chance to down substantial platefuls of the Trevi's food, which could best be described as Italian trattoria meets (high-class) school dinners.
'Come 1.30pm, you've got less chance of getting a table here than you have at the Ivy,' Tony says as we slip into a booth in the simple dining room that leads off the sandwich bar area. The walls are sunflower yellow and delicately half-timbered, the floors tiled in that utilitarian way of sports changing rooms. It is a room in which to eat. Happily it is midday and, though it is already three-quarters full, there is space. Later, it will fill up with solicitors from the inner-city law firm up the road. The guy from the gay opticians across the road is usually here most lunchtimes, too.
And there's Tony, of course. 'I probably come here three, four times a week,' he says. 'Sometimes for breakfast, sometimes for tea. I come in for lunch at least once a week - particularly if I have some hard work to do.' Like those kung-fu lessons on a Thursday evening. He started coming 15 years ago when he used to drive over from Stoke Newington. Now he lives just round the corner and he's become almost part of the furniture. Up on a shelf behind the sandwich bar they have two copies of Tony's bestselling novel Man and Boy , one in Italian and one in English. It represents the neat dichotomy of the place. 'Up front all the talk is of West Ham and Arsenal,' Tony says. 'In the kitchens everybody speaks Italian and it's Juventus and Inter Milan.'
Likewise with the food. Regulars don't bother looking at the menu, preferring instead to pick lunch off the changing list of daily specials on the blackboard. But I am not a regular, so I'll look at the menu, if only for its refreshing simplicity. In a restaurant world obsessed with the listing of every ingredient, there is something almost indecently refreshing about a list that says: prawn cocktail, minestrone, spaghetti bolognese, lasagne. I tried the latter on my previous visit here and a grand meaty dishful it was: crispy and chewy on top, lush and sticky beneath. A lasagne from the olden days - and all for £4.50.
In the end, we choose off the blackboard. Tony has the gnocchi pomodoro, a rustling plateful of plump dumplings in a rich tomato sauce at £4.40. I go for the risotto alla marinara at £4.50. It, too, is a grand serving, the soft rice thick with mussels, prawns and extraordinarily tender rings of calamari. It's the kind of straight-up, robust Italian food we would eulogise for its peasant earthiness if eaten at a roadside inn amid the olive groves of Tuscany. The fact that the view is less olive groves than the splutter and grunt of number 19 buses should not make the food any less admirable.
Each day there is always what Tony refers to as the school-dinner option. Today, the main course is steak pie and veg which, he says, they do very well. Down the bottom right-hand corner of the blackboard is the matching pudding. Today, it's apple crumble with custard at £1.80 a shot, which we just had to have: the crumble was crisp and sugary, the fruit soft, the custard just as smooth and sweet as you remember it. You can get wine by the glass, though some people bring in their own bottles. Robert Biagioni, current owner and son of the man who first started here 40 years ago, says he doesn't really mind, though he'd prefer it if people drank his wine.
The total bill, including a couple of fine cappuccinos, a Coke and a mineral water comes to £16.70, which Tony insists on paying. 'It's the Trevi,' he says. 'I'll do it.' We're on his patch today, so it's his shout. Fair enough: both I, and The Observer 's accounts department, salute him. At the Trevi, there's really not much point arguing over the bill.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk.
