Moses reviews the borough’s ‘up-market’ cafes including Jolene, above

A TIKTOK star from Holloway is cultivating celebrity status after he went viral for his honest reviews of the borough’s most “up-market” cafés.

Almost a million people have watched 22-year-old Moses Combe’s reaction videos as he ventured to cafés such as Jolene and Gail’s for the very first time.

“That’s the £4.70 hot chocolate?” he says in a state of shock while staring at a small purple cup, adding: “Not quite Greggs.”

“I’m trying to be a man of the people. I know times are tough out there”, Mr Combe told the Tribune as we dragged him back to Jolene for an interview, the scene of one of his viral films.

Having spent seven years living off the Holloway Road, the young social media star said that he has seen the gentrification in real time.

“I feel like we lose a sense of community through gentrification,” Mr Combe added.

“Me, growing up in a lot of areas where it is so-called ‘deprived’, I’ve always had a good sense of community, a good backbone, the people I’ve been around, the shopkeepers, my neighbours.

“With my videos, I try and go for a more unserious, chill vibe. Just a guy in a café, but it also touches on a wider issue of how our areas are changing.”

Gail’s, which is commonly used as a marker of gentrification, moved into N19 last month, prompting one major question: “Is Archway getting posh?”

“They’re trying,” said Mr Combe. “I don’t know if it’s fully posh yet, but obviously there’s going to be a lot more people from outside London moving into Archway. It’s in close proximity to Highgate and places like that. I do understand, but it’s still like the ends.”

His message and humour is clearly resonating with people, so much so that the attention has become almost “stalker-ish”.

Mr Combe said he has even recently taken to wearing a face covering to avoid some of the unwanted attention. “I had some kids coming up to me, they were fans, but they started showing me pictures of them putting my face in AI, and getting me to do random things”, he said.

“Someone had a picture of me on a leash. It does get a bit of an invasion of privacy.”

The weird sort of attention is mostly in the minority, however, with many adoring fans simply approaching to say they like the videos.

In the hour the Tribune spent with Mr Combe, a bus driver excitedly pointed and waved at him, and a man came over to say he loved the Jolene video, which then prompts a woman with a baby in her lap to lean over and say: “I’m a little bit starstruck.”

Mr Combe said: “At first I was doing a lot of videos in this area, and people were saying ‘yo, you’re putting Islington on the map’.

“I feel like there’s a lot of people in this area that do respect my videos, and that fills me with a lot of joy.”

But for all his gallivanting in cafés selling £11 sandwiches carefully wrapped in brown paper, it’s the places that have long been part of Islington’s high streets that Mr Combe likes the most.

What’s his one recommendation? Dubai Shwarma in Seven Sisters Road, which burnt down last year but is now “back open and better than ever”.

“I came back on the train from Liverpool, came back to Holloway, came back to the ends thinking let me just get a quick Shwarma, go there, see the whole thing’s charred out,” said Mr Combe. “I was devastated.”

He recommends the Chicken shwarma wrapped in naan bread.