It’s a brave man who opens a new restaurant these days, and an even braver one who makes it part of a new arts centre. Kings Place in King’s Cross boasts a brilliant British brasserie in Rotunda and it deserves every plaudit that’s going.

The Venue
Kings Place features concerts, galleries and places to eat and drink all under one roof near King’s Cross. Rotunda, the bar and restaurant, is aided by the position of the centre, right by the Battlebridge Basin section of the Regent’s Canal. It has enviable views overlooking the basin and indeed you can even sit outside, look at the moorings and watch any narrowboats that might be passing by. It couldn’t be in a nicer position.

The Atmosphere
The restaurant itself is a semi-circular shape, with a long bar, with bright, metallic surfaces, although there is a remarkable lack of extraneous noise. That may be on account of its proximity to the water, which always has a calming influence, as life on the canal goes at a relaxed pace of no more than four miles per hour.

The Food
There is an a la carte menu plus a special pre-concert menu at £16.95 for two courses, served from 5pm to 7.30pm. There are daily specials (£12.20) such as beef and ale casserole with horseradish dumplings, fish pie, a hog roast and more. All barbecue dishes (available on Fridays) are served with a choice of salads, whilst on Sunday traditional roasts are available. English sources are used wherever possible and all the beef and lamb is reared and grass fed in Northumberland where it is hung and matured.

Starters (£5.95-£9.50) include a chilled leek and potato soup with mushrooms a la Greque, a warm leek and blue cheese tart, smoked salmon, a country pork terrine, smoked back bacon with avocado and vine tomato salad, and Eggs Benedict. This last is a free range poached egg on a bed of spinach, salmon or ham. The traditional ham makes a good accompaniment to this very satisfying starter which is smothered in a smooth and deliciously creamy Hollandaise sauce. For an extra £1 it can also be a main course.

Good and hearty fare comprises the main courses (£12.50 – about £20) including Cornish haddock, chips and mushy peas, pork and leek sausages, pea and broad bean risotto and the homemade beef burger with melted cheese and chips. The seared mullet fillet on polenta with red onion, tomato and olives is a really good and well-flavoured fish dish; crisp on the outside, the mullet has a perfectly cooked and beautifully white, chunky inside. Fine on its own, it is even better with an accompaniment of English cauliflower cheese which sets it off brilliantly. The traditional roast lamb is a very good plateful, including roast potatoes, peas, broad beans, runner beans and a big, really well-done Yorkshire pudding. Although the meat is tender and flavourful, it also seems a little dry, possibly by having to stand it on a hot plate for a while. The jug of red wine jus helps to moisten it.

Desserts (£5.95) include mixed summer berries, warm chocolate fondant and the most palatable peanut butter parfait with caramelised banana and chocolate sauce. Over the top? No way. This is an ambrosial confection worth every sweet, cholesterol-fired mouthful. There’s also a very creamy burnt cream (or, outside of Cambridgeshire, creme brulee) served with a side order of Yorkshire rhubarb. British to the core, that’s Rotunda.

The Drink
The wine list at Rotunda is quite spectacular. Prices range from fairly modest (about £15) to as high as £320 per bottle. Because many visitors to Kings Place will be eating either before or after a concert, without time to finish a whole bottle of wine, many wines are available by the glass, from £3.90 for a glass of La Guepe Merlot, 2007, to £7.95 for a glass of Tasmanian Pinot Grigio 2008. A larger glass is £11.30, a half litre is £22.65 and the full bottle is £34. The 2007 Merlot is a very good and robust wine which comes out at £15.50 a bottle.

But there are so many more French wines to choose from among the Sauvignons, Chenins, Semillons, Viogniers, Chardonnays, Burgundies and Champagnes in the whites, and from the Merlot, Cabernet, Shiraz, Pinot Noir, Beaujolais, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rhone and Languedoc red wines, plus others from Italy, Germany, Spain and Argentina, that reading the exhaustive list is, well, exhausting. It is however welcome to have such a great choice.

The Last Word
The Rotunda is a useful addition to an area not blessed with many good restaurants and a boon to visitors to Kings Place looking for refreshments either before or after a concert. As a stand-alone restaurant in its own right, it is to be recommended and, while they are there, visiting diners will no doubt take an interest in the arts centre itself. The whole complex is a definite asset to King’s Cross which is steadily pulling itself up by the bootstraps to become a destination area of the future.

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