a study was done a while ago, by ‘educationalists’, that many londoners dread getting on the tube. personally, i’ll stop short of the word ‘dread’, but things have been getting pretty dire recently. even the central line, a pretty chilled out thoroughfare in the grand scheme of things, seems unpleasantly hectic recently. i try to spend as less time as possible on rails these days, so it was with a certain weariness – or wariness – that i ended up in king’s cross for dinner the other night.
here, you can stay in a railway themed hotel, the st. pancras renaissance, built into the old midland grand hotel outside the station. you can dine and drink in their bar, the booking office, built into the um, old booking office at the hotel. or, if you are looking for something a little more station-y, just skulk around st. pancras international, the poshest rail hub in the history of ever.
you’re hard pressed to find anything around here not connected or themed to the romance of steam travel, and though plum + spilt milk, in the great northern hotel, another railway-y (?) hotel is no exception, at least they limit their reminiscing to a logo resembling that classic name-sign thing you get in the stations of quaint little settlements, the places that have flower shows, village idiots and quiet little pubs.
there’s nothing quiet about the great northern hotel’s bar, which you have to negotiate in order to find plum + spilt milk, on the first floor. the bar was heaving, full of after-work drinkers and to be fair, it looked fun down there. we headed upstairs to the restaurant – not on the left and through the kitchen, as we thought – where things are a lot more calm.
i like plum + spilt milk. it’s a calming place to be, feeling and looking like a living room in a house in one of those little aforementioned villages. dim lights, high ceilings, and bloody great big armchairs which swallow you in like a nice hug, whilst you sip nuclear-strength cocktails in classic coupettes (the northern sour, with gin, triple sec, grapefruit and rhubarb was a little too citrusy and strange enough to turn me onto wine).
service was brisk, presumably because the place was a little quiet and the staff were bored. nevertheless, they were pleasant people (i especially liked the food runner, who was like the happiest person in the world). the staff are experts in the very british menu (except cheese, as we will come onto later) that shamelessly hops on the tramshed/hawksmoor bandwagon. is there any originality here? not really, no, but hey, i can still just about get excited about national cuisine, despite surviving all summer on it.
appetisers (there are slightly larger starters too) of parsnips, yorkshire puddings and potted pork were great to share, but somehow each had a little fault that made me yearn for the main course. the parsnips were gorgeous, served with a sage oil, but the yorkshire pudding was just a little bit um, not as good as elsewhere around town, and the accompanying garlic sauce was way too strong. the potted pork was not served with anything apart from pickled gherkin, so it was all a bit perplexing really. eating pork out of a jar whilst sipping a strong orange cocktail was not great.
by now, you can probably guess what is on offer for mains. no? sure? ok, well just to humour you, it’s chicken, steak, a section on the menu called ‘fishmonger’, blah blah blah. however, in two words, the whole menu redeemed itself. plum + spilt milk serves steak tartare, and this was one of the main reasons i wanted to come here. though not exclusive, this bizarrely awesome dish of raw steak, capers, spices, seasonings and, if you believe the doom-mongers, the additional ingredients of toxoplasma gondii and taenia saginata, is seldom-found in london. i last had it in new york, at blt prime, where i horrified mumsie with what she perceived as overpriced vampyrism.
we ordered a steak tartare each. my mate asked for it to be cooked (brilliant!) at which point the waitress, with amazing patience and not even the slightest wtf look, politely informed him that it was raw. ash was going to ask for it blue, anyway. served with fries, the only thing slightly unpleasant about plum + spilt milk’s steak tartare is the unsettling combination of hot and cold, but the steak itself is stonking, sending your brain crashing through flavours of meat, tomato, spices and an undefinable texture rounding off a wonderful notion of of “i’m eating raw meat, i’m a caveman”.
the only thing to consume after such a masculine main course is cheese. and port. plum + spilt milk have an exceptional wine list (a glass of tempranillo with my raw meat was, as goldilocks would say, jusssst right) and i know that this sounds a bit trampy, but there is plenty of fortified wine to choose from. sadly, though they know how to serve port – the glassware is shamazing – they don’t know how to serve cheese, as what they were was neither explained on the menu nor by the staff. i didn’t have the heart to ask.
i never like to write about restaurant in the sense of “i recommend this”, or “i give this place three out of five” or whatever, because what i like and what you like will be two very different things. and i like fanta mixed with coke, eurovision and things like gus the fox. but i need to tell you that despite what i have written here, i have to recommend plum + spilt milk. as i said earlier, it’s a nice place to be. the food is nice, the service is nice, the decor is nice. and as we left, back through a hotel bar full of drunk salarymen, into a rainy night in midweek london, nice is what you want, and nice is what you get. like one of those villages with a sign, i guess.
full the full review with more pics, please visit http://www.thefunkytruth.com/2013/10/27/im-a-caveman-in-a-comfy-chair/