Lina Stores Italian Restaurant & Deli King's Cross — Restaurant in London

Went on a Thu evening. Nice decor. The place was quite full and lively. Generally noisy, a bit too much to have a proper conversation, at least for my ears.

The service by Leila was very good. The food was delivered quickly.

We ordered gnudi as a starter... this was a bit of a letdown. 3 small dumplings for £9.5 (before serv charge). While I'm italian, I've had never tried Gnudi before, so I can't say anything about their authenticity... the taste was OK but very garlicy and tomato-y, it reminded me of the stereotypical fake italian food, like Domino's, Olive Garden etc. Traditionally, their main ingredients are supposed to be spinach and ricotta, and I couldn't feel either one, although in the menu this one had "herbs" instead of spinach.

We then ordered 2 pasta dishes, one for each. The portions were small, and unacceptably so for the ones costing £15-17 - you'd expect a proper main dish for that money. I suggest you bring a microscope and a shot of Ozempic.

We had pici and pappardelle with ragu'. They were both al dente and very good in taste, that was the highlight of the evening. Just a note: the "Ragù di Salsiccia di Agnello" was a "white" one, without tomato, which wasn't specified in the menu. To me that's an oversight: ragu' is assumed to be with tomato unless specified.

The dessert was Tiramisu'. It was passable, 6/10. It had a bit of an industrial taste, because it's most likely an industrial product, rather than local production. They claim to make it with Marsala wine, but I couldn't taste it at all.

We only drank tap water and we really appreciated that it was already present at the table (rare in London!).

Unfortunately, in addition to the 12.5% service charge (which is annoying on its own), there was also a "voluntary £1 charge per table for filtered water" to "support efforts of WaterAid", a charity. I hate automatic charges, even if they are for charity, so I got it removed (the waitress happily obliged). That is also not mentioned in their online menu. Please, never ever ever ever do that to your customers. All voluntary charges should be OPT-IN, and relying on your customers to feel too embarassed to ask for such charges to be removed is plain evil and makes me want to never come back to such an establishment. There are many ways to support charities; automatic charges at restaurants are totally...

Extremely disappointing. The food was unacceptably bland. I think they must have run out of salt on the day we visited, because nothing was seasoned at all.

Massive shame because I could tell that the ingredients them selves were decent quality, but they were not prepared well, and for the price, it was a big fail.

The tomato pasta sauce genuinely tasted identical to the sauce in a can of spaghetti hoops. Massive case of style over substance because the restaurant is absolutely gorgeous, and the plates of food look lovely, but the flavour was lacking hugely.

The service was sadly also extremely lacking, there were 3-4 cooks in the kitchen, putting out food very quickly, but maybe too quickly… the starters and mains all arrived at the same time so it was impossible to eat before some of it had gone cold, not to mention the table was completely over crowded with plates making it cluttered and generally an uncomfortable eating experience.

There seemed to only be 1 or 2 people taking orders from tables in the entire restaurant. So it was almost impossible to even order a drink or another dish. The waits between server attention at the table were almost laughable, and were extremely frustrating. The staff seemed to be deliberately avoiding eye contact with us almost the entire meal. I must have made eye contact with staff at least 10 times during the evening which was ignored because they were just runners and not servers. But staff should be able to at least come over and pass a message onto the serving staff.

I have eaten at the soho location several times and it was worlds above my experience at king cross, food and service. (I highly recommend the soho location)

What a huge huge shame. Eating out is one of my favourite things to do, and I don’t mind paying a premium for it when it delivers, but in this case, I would have been happier with a fast food meal in a park.

Great for Instagram photos, but not for actually...

Lina is a byword for traditional, homely Italian food. After nearly eighty years serving Londoners, it's cantina style restaurant in King's Cross is an addition - to its delicatessen business - that continues to tease and thrill the palate of its patrons. The portion sizes are modest, but what they lack in volume, they more than make up for in their seemingly simple, but highly subtle flavours; leaving you wanting to come back for more. We started with the Rosemary Focaccia, the Lemon-gratin Fried Artichokes, and a rare find: Lamb Salami. For our mains, we thoroughly enjoyed two of the staples of Lina's quite short, but highly varied pasta menu - the 30 Yolk Taglioni with Black Truffle shavings, and the Spicy Spaghetti alla Chitarra with Mussels and Squid. Lina is busy. Understandably so. However, the part of homely that it needs to dispense with is its front of house service. Here the reception is often left unattended; and no-one seems mindful of how terrible it looks. We eat here regularly. This was our fifth visit, since September. And on this visit, the lack of attentiveness was worse than usual. Having made a reservation, we were left hovering on our arrival by the absent Maitre D. Only to find when she did reappear, that she was chatting to and trying to accommodate someone, who was attempting with great determination to jump the queue. When I pointed out to her that I held her responsible for this, she seemed quite nonplussed by it all. What saved the day was the expert intervention of the Restaurant Manager, Tosi. He managed with great charm and no little grace to diffuse the situation. Tosi continued to look after us with total commitment throughout our visit. He sets the bar high and we can only hope that on our next visit, we will see more of the principles he represents. RECOMMENDED with...