Plum and Spilt Milk - Railway dining heritage on the right track - June 2013

 So you've heard about the big name chef, who made his name working under Ramsay, opening up in the refurbished grandeur of a once iconic King's Cross hotel. The yesteryear venue name, the appropriately quixotic decor, the confidently egalitarian food and the bar, well, at least a couple of steps up from the Weatherspoons you'd normally find in a location like this. You've heard about it? Which one, because now there's two of the buggers...
Next door in the Great Northern Hotel and hot(ish) on the heels of Marcus Wareing's grand St Pancreas dining hall The Gilbert Scott comes Mark Sargeant's Plum and Spilt Milk (an indecipherably odd name unless you're a train spotter - P&SM the oddity obviously, Mark is still fairly common). The name refers to the site's railway heritage, evoked through colour and artfully referenced design rather than by slavish recreation of a buffet car thankfully.

And it is a truly, truly scrumptious design. As understatedly elegant as any of the grand dining rooms of the city. A ceiling mounted forest of light dapples elegant cream (or spilt milk) banquettes and warm golds provide a link to classily Deco black lacquered table tops. The little touches are the best. A darling milk bottle top mosaic lines the lofty period staircase up from the decadently deco bar and wall mounted sets of sockets provide handy USB and continental plug charging points over each table. Just don't leave your mobile on the handy shelf above the seating in your rush to get to the platform. 

The staff handbook also looks like it's taken a leaf out of the Caprice Holdings service bible - sassy, clued up and personable, you get the feeling that they'd remind you of your departure time if you didn't manage to rouse yourself after a tussle with the carnivore's dream that is the short, sweet menu.
 

 
Starters are trad, light(ish) and often fishy. My thickly and thrillingly creamy smoked haddock soufflé glistened richly under a blanket of cheese sauce in an individual Staub pot bed, a little poached quail's egg perched on top like a candied fruit on a posh chocolate. It certainly gives the Dean Street Town House's version a run for its money. Other than that little piscine pearl, there was potted shrimp, dill cured salmon and delightfully moreish, gravy soaked lamb sweetbreads that we couldn't help but share among the table. 

It's not exactly ground breaking cuisine, but I don't get the sense that this restaurant is meant to be that. It isn't a light and casual snack before travelling. This is a big meal before you hunker down into your first class seat on the way to Brussels for that meeting.

Mains are similarly (and for me agreeably) old-school macho. They've got 3 or 4 hefty meat focussed options, a 'house' pie, and a couple of club lounge style fish dishes as well as a 'grill section'. For the real food nerds, the latter are cooked in (under? over??) a razzy new Inka Grill - a competitor to the Josper Grills that have been springing up in meat heavy kitchens over the last few years

 

Loin of pork was enormous. A genuinely shocking hunk of pig. tasty, but heavy going towards the end and being long and slow cooked to avoid the drying out that could have occurred with a piece this size it was a little bit too one dimensional and, dare I say it, a little bland. Another couple of those Staub dishes filled with fine beans, darling slivers of heritage carrot and a fair spicy apple chutney saw it through though.It was hard however to avoid the food envy watching one fellow diner demolish a soft plate of silken deboned Jacob's Ladder Ribs with accompanying turnip mash and the other plough through a peerless fish pie of buttery richness.

Puddings were in the same gentleman's club vein, though thankfully not served in the same Staub pots (they must have an amazing deal with the company that provides them). While a shared Tarte Tatin defeated two at the table, I ploughed on manfully through my chocolate fondant with malted milk creme, succumbing to the food coma only on leaving the restaurant. If you find it difficult to doze off on trains, here's your answer.

Despite costing a deal less to dine there, on this showing it's certainly no poor cousin to The Gilbert Scott next door. Sure it's simpler, but in this context that's unequivocally a 'good thing'. So we've now got a brace of ex-Ramsay chefs cooking up a storm in newly reinvigorated N1. Come on Angela Hartnett, how's about a hat trick?

 

Caravan King's Cross - A stylish success - Mar 2013

Could there be anywhere with a whiter heat than King's Cross at the moment? Particularly for foodies. The rotating (if expensive) genius of a Kerb food market lunch, former 24 hour garage turned hip hangout Shrimpy's and an outpost of Exmouth Market's excellent Caravan. Not to mention the fabulous and fashionable Gilbert Scott, the wonderfully bizarre Karpo, modish gastro grub from recently renovated The Fellow and tapas from Camino? I exaggerate (of course), it still has some way to go before achieving Borough Market status (and is still host to the Faulty Towers of restaurants, Bistro De La Gare, home of the most hiliariously bad meal I ate in 2012). But compared to the flyblown wasteland of five years ago, there's a lot to celebrate.

Recently I've managed a solid trio of visits. A fabulous brunch and a pretty great lunch at Caravan King's Cross and a very, very decent lunch at neighbour Shrimpy's (not all on the same day I hasten to add...)

The quality of the food at Caravan is not at all unexpected given the heritage, but here it comes with added art students and without the queue you'll have at their other place in Exmouth Market.

The menu has a laid back Western Mediterranean vibe with influences and style borrowed from wherever makes tasty. It's effectively much lower priced Ottolenghis with decent coffee and no pretension.

That brunch was a silky aubergine stew with a modicum of smoke and sesame, gently cradling a brace of poached eggs, texture provided by chewy fresh sourdough and a delightfully gamey choritzo style sausage. A little bit of what I needed for the hangover that massively ailed me.

Returning for lunch a few weeks later, I dived into a few of their small plates with my guest. The plates range from £3 to £6 and three would easily do two for a light lunch, five if you're having lunch with me and one or two max if you're studying at St Martins next door. They're not called skinny jeans for nothing.

Tempura tofu was fresh and pillowy light. A crispy air coated marshmallow, flavour added with a hearty sesame and mushroom sauce. Spiced cornbread, fresh from the oven, added a chunk of flavour and a wumph of weight no sane art studentista would go near. Thankfully I was there to take the temptation away. Similarly, lemongrass pork was a significant endeavour for the money, sat on a turnip cake slightly overwhelmed by the tamarind infused juices, it was a pleasant piece of pig. The last two were similarly satisfying; a freshly and lightly fried Malay vegetable samosa and a refreshing broad bean and sweet potato flatbread salad topped with a sharp yoghurt. There's a range of good looking stone baked pizzas too and coffee roasted on the premises (of course…)
 
It's a lovely spot, saved from any arty pretentiousness by great staff and a real mixed crowd courtesy of the nearby station. A deservedly populist hit.

   

When you wish a pie would satisfy - The Bree Louise - Dec 2012

As far as quality boozers serving food in the vicinity of Euston, there's not much competition. So wailing on a real ale pub serving fresh, home made food (probably for miles) feels a little harsh, like doing a Simon Cowell routine after a kid's carol service. But, in the interests of integrity...

The Bree Louise sits on one of those windblown residential side streets that exist adjacent to every hub train station in the Western world, where the patina of train grime is smeared across the windows like a derisory smear of margarine on a First Great Western ham sandwich. 

Despite the unwelcoming approach and the initial, unstructured look, the overly bright, overly heated single room isn't the sort of itinerants' boozer of last resort, filled with dealers, hooligans and the odd poor sod who missed the 5:15 to Leighton Buzzard. It's actually much better (or worse) than that. The Bree Louise is one of those 'proper' pubs. The kind of pubs where men have beards, toilet facilities are 'functional' and it's acceptable to order a half of NoseSplitter or Noggin's Best before comparing fisherman's knit or World of Warcraft anecdotes with your closest (male) friends. For the Bree Louise is a CAMRA pub...

Now don't get me wrong, I love a real ale as much as the next man, but there's something about the nerdier than thou that can emanate from the REAL ale drinker that winds me up. It's the same sort of aggressive apologist behaviour that attaches itself to train spotters, obscure indie music fans and Evertonians. A 'get the digs in now, but we know we're right', folded arms attitude that occasionally makes for a very closed shop. 

Thankfully, as well as 'Award Winning' ales, ciders and perrys (and a couple of lagers), they also serve a range of 'Award Winning' pies (and obviously feature as an 'Award Winning' pub in a guide book somewhere, given the number of confused tourists wandering through…) 

Less thankfully, with the exception of an off-piste haggis effort, the pies we had were fairly sloppily constructed, with that deeply unappealing pub habit of slopping an inch or so of pre-prepared casserole into the bottom of an earthenware bowl before covering it with a frozen puff pastry shell and reheating to order. The cider sauce was far too thin, if well enough flavoured, but there were just four small sad beige chunks of pork floating around in it, several inches below the carapace, like turds trapped under a swimming pool cover. 

I suppose for £8 a pop, it's difficult to complain too vociferously about the food, but it didn't do it for me at all. The pub is recommended if you genuinely have missed the 5:15 to Leighton Buzzard and can't face the Weatherspoons*, or need to regale chums with your latest live roleplaying anecdotes over a pint of Old Badger, less so for anything else.

* Let me make this absolutely clear. The Bree Louise is a HUGE improvement over the Weatherspo'Neill-style sticky floored hellholes you normally find near stations. It's just that isn't saying much...

Michelin quality bar snacks at the Gilbert Scott - July 2012

They've settled down at St Pancras station, all of the builders have moved next door to repair years of damage to the original monstrous carbuncle King's Cross.

Railway restaurants are one of those things we don't seem to be able to get right in this country. They're too often poorly operated by franchises with low to no service standards, just an excuse to rip off occasional visitors. travel in rural France if you ever want to see how these sites could work.

Hearing that Marcus Waring would 'consult' on the menu at the grand St Pancras hotel made me wonder if this wasn't just another, higher end franchise, intent on extracting too much money for substandard fare.

I'd avoided the main restaurant until now, and on the basis of what little I sampled that could have been an error. Arriving mistakenly an hour before my train, I still didn't have time to sample the main menu, but I did have time to sample an excellent selection of bar snacks and a cheeky Chinin Blanc.

The room alone is worth an entry fee (or at least a drink), fully restored to its grandeur. Anchored with an art deco bar, the high painted ceilings carry away the drunken yammering of the herd of estate agents celebrating a deal next to me. Their Veuve-fuelled party lasted until one bold boy 'jokingly' pinched the breast of his female co-worker. The resultant slap couldn't have happened to a nicer man.

Posh pork scratchings are appearing on a number of menus at the moment, and these are the best I've sampled outside Claude Bosi's bucolic Wimbledon gastropub, the Fox and Grapes. Puffed up like chicharon, these bite-sized porcine pillows are subtle and almost refined. Dipped into a tureen of homemade apple sauce, I could eat them all day.

Salt cod croquettes are bigger than I'd expected. Not a patch on Jose, but robust and filling. Excellent bread, fennel seed loaf a highlight, and a decent pull of that ice cold aromatic white brought the total with service in at just under £20. Admittedly more than the traditional railway station sandwich, but worth the extra expense as a treat.

      

Bistro De La Gare - Fawlty Towers in King's Cross - June 2012

I must caveat this review by blaming the Author for everything. An urbane man of taste and distinction, tasked with the small matter of finding a destination for a festive gathering that might show the football (without being full of football fans) and would allow us to eat, drink and gossip, on a Friday night, in North central London, as a group of 8... To be fair to him, I don't think he ever realised quite how bad a choice he was making, and was almost certainly led astray by others dictating decisions.

Anywhere this close to newly fashionable King's X, with only two tables taken on a Friday night, should ring alarm bells. From the get go it was clear we were in for a comedy, if not gustatory, treat. If John Cleese as Basil Fawlty and Gordon Ramsay were clustered in the kitchen with a video camera rubbing their knees and plotting some form of post-divorce double act money-spinner they couldn't have done a better job.

The venue is cosy, kitschy and stuck in the 80's. The bad 80's. The middle class 80's. When normal people with normal jobs had started to eat out semi-regularly but my God you ate what you were given and didn't ask questions.

And questions were verboten hier. A deliberately Teutonic phrase for a casual French bistro. And the two questions seemingly most verboten were "why has my main course arrived 40 minutes after everyone else's?" and "could my food be cooked until not raw?".

Trust me, it's a long time since I've been somewhere that has deserved a slagging off like Bistro de la Gare, but my God did they strive to serve (or not in one case) one of the worst dining experiences I've experienced this year.

Of the main courses; one was allegedly pretty good (but then I defy you to screw up a Caesar Salad), two were acceptable, three were pisspoor and another, chicken based, meal failed due to being slightly bleedy in the middle... My pisspoor processed ham pizza, its semi-raw base reminiscent of bad paratha, was only cleared because it was shared two ways with the poor soul deemed unworthy of dinner. I did mention we were one main down didn't I? That's slightly unfair, it actually arrived as we stood up to leave and so they tried to charge us for it anyway...

It could have been worse I mused, watching the elderly woman next to us gamely give a stiff upper lipped response as she struggled on with not one, but two fawlty racclette machines in a row. At least I'm confident I've got a good few years of dining ahead of me. Gamely pushing a curly slice of cheese round a lukewarm hotplate, she must have felt like a pained participant at the last supper.

I'm not going to describe it further. Suffice that others suffered so that you don't have to.

Karpo - A split personality in King's Cross... Mar 2012

Places like this are a gift to write about, if not necessarily one to share... Karpo is truly a bizarre little (big) place. 

If one were crazy enough to open a restaurant in London then it's fair to say that King's Cross wouldn't be the obvious place for i unless you were intent on proving your craziness to all and sundry. Despite the money being pumped into the area, it's going to be a while before anybody in their right mind heads there for anything other than the train station.

That being said, if you are going to open a new resto, it's important to stand out from the crowd. And one way to stand out, when you're surrounded by a million and one single item places around serving only burgers or only fried chicken or only subs or only sarnies, is to make sure you serve absolutely eeeeverything...

After some excellent lemon soused pickled veg and moreish (if teetotal) bourbon pecan nuts we greedily attacked the menu. There's a lot I like the look of, but very little that readily goes together as a meal. From an overly diverse selection of hot and cold starters we travelled from Britain to Finland via the Deep South. With the exception of an over plasticised Lobster Mac 'n' cheese, the other plates worked well, if not necessarily together. Southern Fried Quail was finger lickin' excellent, the oft dry bird protected and gamey flavours enhanced by a spicy, crispy crumb. Scandinavian style eel on a dark nutty rye was a silkily simple morsel perfectly executed as was a firm and rich British classic of brawn on toast.

I'd tried to match the Southern theme with a main of 'Shrimp and Grits'. Pleasant enough, it just wasn't as I'd expected. Traditionally served as a slightly looser mixture, the corn grits were here more like a firm toasted polenta cake, topped with four or five big plump shrimps and doused in a rich salty gravy. Not actively unpleasant, but neither was it entirely satisfying. The polenta came hotter than the sun, an unwelcome plating error. Other mains veered from Asian influenced fish, via Moroccan chicken through to North European potato pancakes. As I say, none of us had a bad meal, there just wasn't a central concept to hang it off.

Like the food, there's definitely a deal of thought gone into the design of the place, though it tries to be as all encompassing as the menu. The interior designer must have had an awfully challenging time. You can imagine the conversation over the mood boards. "Ok, I'm not sure on the menu concept, it looks like you're trying to offer a little bit of everything, which is great, so we could take the design from any number of these five different styles, which do you prefer?". "All of them... Let's have all of them. At the same time..."

There's Lower East Side concrete chic into Scandi furniture and an eco/sustainable herb wall, a British member's bar downstairs next door to a Hard Rock styled section with plectrum tables and wall mounted guitars and that's without mentioning the black, red and gold blinged bathroom suitable for an oligarch. Enough already, just don't come here with a headache...

Quirks also exist at the similarly schizophrenic Bob Bob Ricard, but there the design pulls it together perfectly and while the menu moves around, there's plenty you can make a great meal from. 

Neither Karpo's menu or decor really seem to know what they're trying to achieve currently, and to be honest neither do we, which is a shame, as there's definitely talent in the open plan galley kitchen at the back, focused too widely on an extensive range of disparate dishes. It's a pleasant enough meal, made good by excellent company, but there isn't anything else that'll drag me back here and I couldn't begin to describe it well enough to send anyone else.