The room at The Midland Grand is as impressive as ever.
What can you tell us about The Midland Grand?
This is the main restaurant at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel and it's the third iteration of that space in modern times. Marcus Wareing ran The Gilbert Scott here when the hotel first opened. After a big revamp, Patrick Powell then took it over as The Midland Grand Dining Room and now it has become Victor Garvey at The Midland Grand. This new restaurant sees the chef behind Michelin-starred SOLA in Soho take the dining room in a new haute cuisine direction.
Where is it?
If you've been to any of the previous incarnations, it's still in the same place. The restaurant is either accessible from its own entrance just off the south side of Euston Road or you can get to it through the hotel. Your nearest station is, of course, King's Cross (or St Pancras if you're on the train).
Inside, the room remains pretty much as it was before. It underwent a massive renovation in 2023 and became one of London's most beautiful dining rooms. It remains largely the same, even though the food has completely changed.
Where should we go for a drink first?
The most obvious answer to this is The Gothic Bar, right beside The Midland Grand and itself one of the most beautiful bars in London.
The Gothic bar, which also has its own terrace outside.
This is still run by Jack Porter (who took over the bar at the same time the previous incarnation of the restaurant launched). The cocktails here have always been top-notch and with the launch of the new restaurant, the list has changed too. So if you've been in before, it's still worth a revisit.
The cocktails are around the £20 mark with a few exceptions, one being one of the cocktails that has carried on from its previous iteration - the excellent Gothic Martini (£30). That's pre-batched every night and served in its own little bottle, so you end up getting a martini and half out of it. The bar food in here will change in the near future too, with Victor Garvey putting in place a new bar snacks menu.
In the restaurant, where's the best place to sit?
If you can, one of the circular half-booth tables are the ones to go for. There are also two large tables down the back that can be put together making them handy for a large group of 8-10 people. If you're looking for something private, there's a rather beautiful private space between the bar and restaurant (which seats 16) and just beside the kitchen downstairs, there's an equally impressive chef's table for eight people.
And what's on the menu?
Given that the room is more or less identical to before, some comparisons are inevitable with the restaurant's last incarnation. Then, it started as a fine-dining French restaurant before moving into more brasserie territory. This time, things are very much back in fine-dining mode. There is a choice between a la carte and the tasting menu, but we'd say that (for the first visit at least) the tasting menu is the one to go for. That's £129 for seven courses.
If you've been to SOLA in Soho, you'll see the chef's signature approach in some of the dishes here. There's a huge amount of attention to detail on a menu that has a French fine dining approach but brings in some influences from further afield (seen in the sashimi dish below). It's very much in haute cuisine mode too so, on the tasting menu at least, portions are relatively small but incredibly intricate.
There's also a fair bit of table theatre (and plenty of staff in charge, to make sure it all goes smoothly) with lots of sauce pouring and finishing at the table. In that manner, it brings to mind a slightly more laid-back version of The Ritz, another restaurant that combines table theatre with a hugely impressive room. It was early days when we visited and perhaps the tableside theatre could be amped up even more. A little bit of flambeeing would be very welcome, although we do wonder if the Grade II aspects of the room will let them do that.
As to what we actually had - here's a taster:
From the Le Jardin Mediterranee snack selection, this is a delicate tart of cervennes onions, olive praline and miso
Also from the snacks, this "pepper" is actually smoked mackerel paté, glazed in pointed pepper jelly, with piquillo poivrade and confit Yukon gold potato. Such a huge effort for a tiny snack but well worth it.
La Sériole - king yellowtail sashimi, avocado, leek, shimeji - a dish where you can see some of Garvey's SOLA experience shining through.
Le Torteau - rock crab, sweet pea, seaweed vinaigrette
Le Homard - Native lobster, poached in butter and then grilled, osmanthus, sand carrot. There's also a little seafood boudin sausage made with the knuckle meat of lobster and scallops.
L'Agneau - lamb rack, kalamata, sugar snaps, morel - one of those dishes where the meat absolutely sung with flavour.
The dessert is worth highlighting particularly. Called L'Opera, it's essentially a deconstructed version of a Parisian Opera cake, and is hugely impressive:
L'Opera - Geisha "Elida" coffee diplomate, 80% Tuma yellow chocolate cremeux, marcona almond bavarois. That ringed shape on top is actually the molecule phenylethylamine, something present in chocolate almond and coffee and used to unite a dessert featuring all three.
With the exception of the snacks, all of the above are available on the a la carte menu, along with a few extra options like French morel ravioli with sauce “guerard” and galis asparagus. That's two courses for £54 and three for £75.
What about drink?
There's a hefty 20-page wine list, broken down by region (and you can order cocktails from the bar menu if you fancy). Given we're very much in fine dining mode, the pricing of the wines mainly reflect that but the restaurant does have some relatively reasonable entry-level prices. Glasses start at £9, while there is a very affordable Spanish red (2023 Bobal, Pago de Tharsys, Utiel Requena) available at £37 and a 2023 Muscadet de Sevre et Maine at £42. That's really not bad at all for this style of restaurant and a stark difference to some Mayfair restaurants in equally opulent setting.
We'd also like to single out the wine pairing here, which was notably well executed - just enough information not to overwhelm and there was something new and unique to accompany every course. So often we've had wine pairings only for the paired wine to dry up as the final dessert courses land - that wasn't the case here and it was all very well-paced. The standard pairing is £99 with a rare wine pairing available at £179.
Overall thoughts
Even before we dined, the buzz was starting to build on this new addition to King's Cross, with an exuberant review by Tim Hayward in The FT. On our visit, it's easy to see why this should prove to be a big success. The food is an evolution of the style of cuisine we've seen Garvey get a Michelin star for at SOLA, and the extra space here lets him really cut loose with more elaborate dishes that, most importantly, also taste fantastic. That's backed up by an extremely good front-of-house team whose work was impressively seamless for a relatively new menu. We can see another star in Garvey's horizon.
More about Victor Garvey at The Midland Grand
Where is it? St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, Euston Rd., London NW1 2AR
How much: The tasting menu is £129, a la carte two courses for £54 and three for £75.
How to book: Book online
Find out more: Visit the website or follow them on Instagram @midlandgrand.
Hot Dinners dined as guests of Victor Garvey at The Midland Grand. Prices correct at time of publication.
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