One of the final parts in the grand regeneration project which has transformed Kings Cross over the past 15 years is about to open. The Grade II listed Great Northern Hotel has had some £40m lavished on it and is expected to open for business at the end of April.
Hot Dinners popped down last week for a tour around the hotel in the company of owner Jeremy Robson and Restaurants Director Scott Sapot while they prepared themselves for opening.
“I can’t imagine a better location for a hotel,” says Robson. “We’re 18 metres from Eurostar and this is the busiest rail transport hub in Europe. 135 million people a year use it. And we’re an integral part of King’s Cross - the dome you see through the window, the Western Concourse, was designed to fit the hotel."
The hotel, which hasn’t traded for twelve years - but which had been in business for the previous 150 years - now has 91 rooms. On the food and drink front there’s GNH Bar on the ground floor, Plum + Spilt Milk restaurant on the first floor (the name refers to the colour of the livery for the London and North Western Railway) and Kiosk takeaway food by the hotel’s door out to the station concourse.
Kiosk will serve up reubens and hot salt beef, pulled pork and carvery turkey in hugely stacked sandwiches.
For GNH Bar, Robson admits his ambition is “to create a destination, which could maybe become the most glamorous bar at a mainline station in Europe." As Restaurant Director Scott Sapot goes on to say; “The bar will be open 6.30 in the morning for breakfast – and then straight through to 1am with bar snacks. And we mean real bar food – you should be able to eat it with your fingers.”
We got a sneak peek at that bar menu which should feature mini sliders – including Longhorn beef with Keen’s cheddar and beefsteak tomato ketchup - courgette fritters and quails egg scotch eggs made with middle white pork and panko crusted. There are also mini crab cakes and lamb sausage wrap in flatbread with sauerkraut and harissa mayonnaise.
Upstairs, the main restaurant Plum + Spilt Milk is a beautiful looking dining room – with huge windows overlooking the Western Concourse, across to St Pancras and out on King’s Cross Square. “It’s the only area of the building where we’ve had big intervention into the original structure, “ Robson told us. “We’ve taken out walls and levelled floors."
The head chef Ray Patterson has put together a comfortable menu of regional classics. Steaks will include a choice of cuts from Prince Charles’s Scottish estate and will be cooked on an Inka Grill. Starters range from potted shrimp (£6) and haddock soufflé (£7) to veal sweetbreads at £7.50. Pie of the day will be £12 and most of the main courses will be around the £13-£16 mark with the exception of the steaks.
Plum + Spilt Milk will open with the official opening of the hotel, on 26th April and GNH Bar will officially open on 2nd May 2013.
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