Weekly Review: Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand

Rebooted St. Pancras spot scores with one London's best chefs.

Quick hit: Sola chef turns his attention to French, and early signs are very positive.

Details: Booking essential. King’s Cross. ££££.
Restaurant website. More on Instagram.
Find it on Google Maps. Renaissance Hotel, Euston Rd., NW1 2AR.

St. Pancras Station is one of London’s gems. Restored to provide a permanent London terminal for the high speed rail line that runs through Kent to the channel tunnel and onwards to France and Belgium, its Victorian charms offer the perfect welcome to visitors. (And a reminder that the HS2 project, while fraught, will inevitably deliver big benefits if allowed to be done properly.)

The restoration that made St. Pancras the destination for the Eurostar also gave us the Renaissance Hotel, similarly restored to its original Neo-Gothic grandeur. And when the hotel first opened, its dining room was given over to Marcus Wareing, then at the height of his powers and running his eponymous two-star restaurant across town in the Berkley Hotel. The new place was called The Gilbert Scott, and the aspirations of the restaurant were as clear from the decor and the food as they were from the name.

We lived nearby at the time, and I remember our first visit vividly. It really was like stepping back in time. The room didn’t need a lot of dressing. There were original 19th century fixtures. Grand windows. Impossibly high ceilings which boasted original, now-restored paintings. The restaurant and bar were both set in the 1920s. The menu featured throw-back British and continental classics, done at Wareing’s high standard. The cocktails were Jay Gatsby good.

But it all came too early. The redevelopment of King’s Cross hadn’t even started. The neighbourhood was still rough. The restaurant did well — and we visited often — but I suspect it never did much better than break even. It was a proper destination restaurant dropped down in a place that people didn’t really want to go.

The Gilbert Scott closed a few years ago, and a new concept was born: The Midland Grand under Chef Patrick Powell. The interior was transformed with softer furnishings. Greenery appeared. The bar moved from 1920s glamour to ‘Gothic’ edginess. Everything got darker. It was more movie set than proper vibe. The menu was just okay. The service was hotel quality. Given our affection for the space, we tried it once. There was no second visit.

Now the Midland Grand is trying again. And there are reasons for optimism.

Victor Garvey has arrived.

One of London’s top chefs, he has built the fantastic Sola in Soho, often with his own bare hands, and driven it to one Michelin star. (I think a second will come next year.) Garvey has introduced Londoners to the vast potential of California-cuisine.

At the Midland Grand, Garvey is branching out and thinking bigger.

The space at Sola is tiny, even after a recent renovation. The Midland Grand is huge.

Garvey told me when we visited that he is excited about the space and having room for more creativity and innovation. Space to experiment and express ideas that wouldn’t work in Sola.

For the new Midland Grand, Garvey promises a “grand yet intimate celebration of French haute cuisine.”

And he delivers.

We visited three nights after the restaurant re-opened. I don’t normally visit that soon, but I was eager, and happened to be arriving into St. Pancras on the Eurostar at 6:00 p.m. It was the perfect excuse.

Opening snacks included “tomato sorbet” with “gazpacho consommé.” The sorbet was the very essence of tomato flavour. Wonderfully refined and punchy. The consommé was perfectly clear and wonderfully crisp, and an acidic hit that tempted me to order a jug of it. (And, for the record, would make a great cocktail mixer.) There was also an onion bite, balanced with miso, that was more like an umami bomb. It was wonderful, and a real discovery, But the best was a bite of pepper filed with mackerel mousseline. Sweet with intense fishy flavour. More please.

Starters was an artful oyster dish and a sashimi from yellowtail. Both were fantastic. The oyster was an artistic presentation in the form of a rich oyster custard.

Artistic oyster custard.

For my main, it was duck breast. A French classic. But Garvey had somehow contrived to fill the cavity between skin and meat with boudin noir — blood sausage — which was cooked until not-quite-crispy. The perfect moist texture next to the meat. The sauce was from Calvados, and the whole thing was utterly wonderful.

Even better was my wife’s lobster. Of course the lobster was perfectly cooked. The sauce was outstanding. But the highlight was the small bite of “seafood boudin” made from other parts of the lobster, prawn, and fresh scallop. I would happily have eaten an entire bowl of that sausage. It represented a confident victory of sausage-making.

Lobster with seafood boudin. Excellent.

Desserts were of the same standard. One fruit, the other chocolate. Both were tasty and well made.

The wine list is also excellent, though I suspect mostly a hold-over from the previous iteration of the Midland Grand at this stage. Return meals will reveal whether it evolves to reflect Garvey’s focus and quality.

Because we visited so early after launch, the menu was limited, and Garvey told us that more dishes would come into the offering in the coming weeks. There are both a la carte and tasting menu options. Given that they had been open only three nights, the food was executed at a standard that was almost impossible to believe.

If I have one small niggle about the Midland Grand, it’s the decor. The vibe was weird. There were ferns on the walls and dark-stained wooden furniture — I think teak? All of this in and around the 19th century fixtures and restored ceiling. It feels mostly Singapore or Malaysia but with weird multiple personality disorder. Nevertheless, it’s comfortable. Parts are gorgeous. You won’t mind eating there.

Singapore or London? Hard to tell, and not quite right. Photo from the restaurant via Instagram.

And it’s an excellent venue for a professional lunch or dinner. Literally seconds from the Eurostar terminal, it’s a great place to meet a colleague coming in from or setting off to Europe (or Kent).

Garvey’s new Midland Grand is a success, and I look forward to visiting a lot more in the years to come to see how he continues to evolve.

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