If you’re searching for a luxurious place to have dinner in London, a train station may not be the first place you'd look.
But King’s Cross/St Pancras is quickly becoming a destination in its own right, rather than just a place where tired commuters stare at departure boards before heading home.
Earlier this year I tried the food at Booking Office 1869, at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, where there is also a roof terrace with gin garden.
And right next door to that is St Pancras Brasserie by Searcys, which is most easily accessed via the entrance to St Pancras station next to the hotel.
As well as the brasserie there is a champagne bar actually on the station concourse, where you can sit yards from Eurostar trains about to head off to Europe and take in Tracey Emin’s I Want my Time With You artwork.
I did just this last December and the fact we were heading to Paris, coupled with the opulent décor of the champagne bar, made it feel a long way from the hectic King’s Cross departure area just a few hundred yards away.
With that in mind I was keen to try the food on offer at St Pancras Brasserie – and I’m pleased to report that it didn’t disappoint.
The vintage glamour of the champagne bar continues in the brasserie, with 1920s-inspired furnishing and lighting, and lots of gold accents.
We were taken to our own private booth, where we could sit in comfort while watching the comings and goings of the station concourse out the window.
The luxurious surroundings are echoed in the menu, which is heavy on seafood, with caviar, oysters and octopus all making an appearance, as well as classic burgers, fish and chips, and steak.
As a cheese fanatic there was only one real option I would go for as a starter and that was the Parmigiano Reggiano soufflé.
This arrived on a bed of onion chutney, before the waiter theatrically poured on black truffle, a cheese sauce and extra grated parmigiano (just in case the dish wasn’t cheesy enough already).
It was wonderfully indulgent and rich, the cheesiness really coming through in the light souffle, but offset by the nuttiness of the truffle and the sweet chutney.
For the main course I chose the surf and turf. A beef steak devoured with peppercorn sauce, and then half a lobster, accompanied by garlic butter.
My fear with shellfish is spending more time trying to extricate the meat from the shell that eating it, which can make a meal rather tedious. But that was not the case here, the tender flesh easily pulled away from the shell and was full of flavour.
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A word of advice – go easy on the garlic butter.
My wife went for a similarly indulgent linguine with crab, cockles and mussels, which had a thick, creamy sauce to go with it.
With barely any room left in our stomachs, we soldiered on to dessert – a light lemon tart for me and the hazelnut and chocolate delice for my wife, who enjoyed it so much she declared herself dinner winner. However in my mind I had already won that honour with the soufflé.
We left finding movement not inconsiderably harder than when we arrived – just as well we were only a short walk from our train home.
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