Gastropub with a great back yard

The Engineer is now one of London's senior gastropubs, and eating places are spread throughout the building and garden.

Wherever you end up sitting, you'll get offered the same menu (which changes every two weeks) and you'll pay the same price.

The cooking is accomplished, with good strong combinations of flavours, and a cheerful, iconoclastic approach to what is fundamentally Mediterranean food.

The opening move is home-made bread and butter, the bread is warm from the oven, with a good crust, and the butter is beurre d'Isigny, and they will even refill the basket after you've scoffed the lot.

Starters are simple and good.

There's soup and that price includes the bread mentioned earlier.

There may be hommus with warm flatbreads and spicy lamb kofta, or something more exotic like tequila-cured salmon with blinis, horseradish cream and cucumber.

At lunchtime there are one or two simpler mains than in the evening: toad in the hole with mash and sugar snap peas; huevos rancheros with tortilla and black beans.

For dinner, expect dishes such as grilled swordfish with lemon-scented fennel and bloody Mary sauce; risotto cake with butternut squash and feta cheese; or red braised belly pork with steamed baby gem lettuce.

A side order of baker fries brings thick wedges of baked potato fried until crispy.

Desserts include banana Pavlova, or custard tart.

There is always a decent pint of beer to be had and the coffee is excellent.

The garden always gets mobbed in good weather - book early.

The Engineer
Gloucester Avenue, London, NW1 8JH