The deep south style barbecued food craze that has been all the rage downtown for the last year or so has made its way to north London in the form of Rub.

This Stroud Green cafe has been intriguing locals over the past few weeks as it goes through a soft opening.

But now the sporadic opening times have been ironed out, the a booze licence has arrived and some funky art installations on the way means Rub is ready to rock.

As you’d expect the menu is dominated by burgers, hot dogs and the like. A big draw is the slow cooked section, which they reckon is long to prepare but quick to serve.

Annoyingly they’d run out of pulled pork on my recent visit, so we went for a pulled lamb shoulder with the jerk rub. A slightly unusual combination of flavours, it was nonetheless a big, tender and very satisfying plateful with a pile of seasoned rice.

The rack of ribs weren’t quite immaculate – some of the meat required a bit separating from the bone, but they came nicely chargrilled and with a sweet tangy barbecue sauce.

And although we didn’t get to try one, the burgers looked immense – a huge stack of meat that gave me a twinge of food envy.

All the trimmings hit the spot – creamy homemade slaw, piquant barbecue beans and so on. And we finished off with a decadent vanilla toffee shake.

In true US fashion, the portions are big and the prices reasonable – Rub is a good addition to Stroud Green’s culinary landscape.