I am just about old enough to remember when King’s Cross was a byword for sleaze and danger; when its name conjured a nightmarish netherworld of Seventies Scorsese-level depravity, boarded-up buildings, and lurching, pre-dawn rave casualties. To suggest that all of this has now been gentrified out of existence would be naive. But these days, north London’s erstwhile Sodom and Gomorrah is better associated with the kind of sanitised, culturally savvy glitz exemplified by Coal Drops Yard, immersive Hockney at The Lightroom, and The Standard rooftop. If anything is going to offend local notions of taste and propriety in 2023, then it is probably that hot pink McLaren permanently parked around the corner from St Pancras station.
It’s a story of steroidal redevelopment so well established that it feels almost quaint to mention it. But I thought of it again as I arrived at Midland Grand Dining Room, an all-new flagship restaurant within the neo-Gothic bulk of the Renaissance Hotel. True, from a certain angle, this replacement for Marcus Wareing’s The Gilbert Scott is merely a figurative rearranging of the luxe-brasserie furniture. Yet there is something in the filigreed detail of this venture — not just the French-inflected butter transfusions on Patrick Powell’s menu but the unabashed grandness of it — that feels like a marker in the context of this ongoing transformation.
