East Finchley (East Finchley)

Member Name: Brooke3

Product:	East Finchley
Date:	23/06/09 (120 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice restaurants, good transport

Disadvantages: No good supermarkets

When I first moved to London everything seemed so big and intimidating. I had been offered a job in Camden and without really thinking about it arranged to view various flats in Camden Town and other places close by. As soon as I arrived it became apparent that there was no way that I could live anywhere as busy as Camden Town. Which put me in a difficult position. I had two days to find somewhere to live (or face a very long commute into work) and nowhere seemed suitable.

There were two things that attracted me to East Finchley, it was relatively quiet and it was easy to get to Camden Town. Being in such a rush to find somewhere to live I think I'm very lucky to have found somewhere that suited me so perfectly for my first year in London.

I have found transport in East Finchley to be excellent. The Northern Line runs to East Finchley tube station and I have found it to be one of the more reliable underground lines. In the almost two years that I've been living in London I can still count on one hand how many times delays on the Northern Line have made me late to work. During the recent tube strikes, and the not so recent heavy snow, the Northern Line continued to run and I was able to attend work when other people were stranded in various parts of London.
I've also found the buses to be quite good. Services are reliable and you never have to wait very long for a bus.

One of the things that I liked best about East Finchley was the number of cafe's and restaurants that were close by. I absolutely hate cooking, I would much rather eat out as often as possible than even consider switching on the cooker and making myself something to eat. East Finchley has a good combination of cheap cafe's and more expensive restaurants.

My favourite cafe was the New Local Cafe. It was cheap (very important when you eat out as often as I do) and the choice of food was really good. You can get your typical cafe food like cooked breakfasts, pies and burgers and all for a very reasonable price. Of course the quality of the food is not up to the standard of a restaurant but when you're paying £3 for a burger, chips and a drink you don't expect it to be that great. The service was always really friendly and efficient.
I did have a few issues with this cafe. The first was that they would often run out of food halfway through the day. Sometimes I would go in after work and they wouldn't have any baguettes left for example. I also found that their salads were horrible, they never tasted very fresh.

There are some really lovely restaurants in East Finchley. My favourite were Nahling and Quality.

Nahling is a Thai Restaurant located on the High Street. I would often go in there when I was trying to work on my novel and getting too distracted at home and I found it was the perfect place to write, very comfortable and peaceful. It does get busy later on in the evening and although it is quite small inside it never seemed to get too noisy.
The staff are very polite and attentive but they don't keep interrupting after they've delivered your meal. The food is excellent and always delivered very quickly.

Quality is a Bangladeshi Restaurant. My best friend and I go in here quite frequently and I've always found the staff to be very friendly, polite and efficient. The food is always excellent and the restaurant is very comfortable.
I have written a review for this restaurants:
http://members.dooyoo.co.uk/ restaurants-cafes-national /quality-tandoori-restaurant-london/1230873 /

I think perhaps the thing that lets East Finchley down is its supermarkets. There is an Iceland and a Budgens but I never did my shopping in either because Budgens is too expensive and Iceland doesn't have a very good range of products. There is a Sainsbury's in North Finchley and a Tesco in Finchley Central that were quite easy to get to using public transport but I would have preferred to have more affordable supermarkets with a good range of products actually in East Finchley. East Finchley does make up for this slightly by having a number of small shops that sell fresh fruit and vegetables as well as a range of other food but I found that many of these small shops closed too early or opened too late for me to use them outside of working hours.

I did like that there were a couple of charity shops in East Finchley and that these weren't chain charity shops like Oxfam because it meant that the prices were a lot cheaper. But in terms of other shops there wasn't really anything worth writing about. There is a clothes shop, a stationary shop, a general store and a shoe shop but I never shopped in any of them, they just didn't really appeal to me.

One of the most convenient things about living in East Finchley is that everything you need is close by (or at least anything I needed was). There is a post office located on the High Street. It's quite small but generally there aren't any queues and they do sell a small selection of postage related items. There are a number of banks on the high street too, unfortunately I don't bank with any of them but I did use their cash machines. There are a number of chemists, doctors surgeries and dentists so registering with a doctor and finding somewhere to pick up prescriptions was not a problem for me at all. There are also a number of beauty salons and nail places in East Finchley. I would highly recommend Healthy Glow for a friendly service from really talented beauticians. The library was quite small but if the staff were really helpful and always willing to order in books from other libraries when necessary. I would have liked for the library to open later because it closed at five most days which made it difficult for me to use it.

Overall East Finchley was a really great area to live in and was perfectly suited to me. I would recommend it to anyone looking for somewhere that is relatively quiet and safe in London.

Summary: I liked living in East Finchley