RAILS Restaurant & Little Bar — Restaurant in London

One of the up and coming areas, Kings Cross is bustling with more than busy train travelers as cool, hip, warehouse-inspired cafes and charming restaurants emerge. As it turns out the name 'Plum + Spilt Milk', derives not from two random food items off the shelf, but from the nickname given to the original LNWR dining car, painted in the railway's traditional lively colours. The other tables were mostly filled with office workers but despite being possibly the only three students in the relatively small restaurant, we did not feel the least bit out of place. It felt spacious given the size. Service was pretty good although we heard glass crashing incidents twice while dining, which prompted us to make a poor joke about the restaurant's name.

Beginning with appetizers, the Kentish tomato salad, goat's curd & oregano was basically a plate of tomato with goat's curd and oregano sprinkled on top, decorated with pretty zucchini flowers. Nothing all that special in terms of taste but presentation-wise it deserves some merit. The prawn cocktail was quite the quintessential fancy palette treat, fresh and juicy.

As for the mains, the Monkfish cheek & mussel curry with pilaf rice on the side was delicious but better yet was a Plum & Spilt Milk Classic - Steak Tartare with salad and paprika fries. The waiter kindly explained that it was in fact raw steak, as there had apparently been previous occasions when customers are shocked when the plate arrive. I suppose this is an example of the danger in ordering something when you don't fully comprehend every word on the menu (Eep!). There is never any harm in asking.

When it came time for dessert, I did not hesitate to go with the 'Plum & Spilt Milk', sugar-encrusted cake with sweet-sour plum and jam toppings, and a scoop of milk ice-cream on the side that complimented the taste. It took us a while to decide on the other but we finally settled on the Cold Valrhona chocolate fondant, supposedly one of the popular choices, pleasantly rich in its chocolate.

It worked out to be slightly over 70GBP for the two appetizers, two main courses and two desserts. Luckily, my flatmates had a 20% voucher and a cheque to redeem from opentable (you get it after accumulating a few thousand points), so it worked out to be barely above 30GBP. Not bad for an above average British meal for three.

Having read that the breakfast is a little pricey but good, i will probably be making my way back...

We went for Christmas dinner with my girlfriends. The setting itself is lovely and great for pictures if that's of interest. They have a good concierge so you can hand out coats. They don't seem to sit you before your allocated slot so don't arrive too early.

We had a new waitress which she mentioned, but it meant we could only order everything one at time it seemed. So drinks only first, then starters only, finally at some point we got to putting our mains in but it was all very slow.

I think the result of this was multiple serving staff and our mains not being put into the system in time and hence a long wait (1 hour) between our starter and our main. They did make it up to us by giving us a cocktail each on the house (5 guests)

I had the onion soup, but the first serving of it wasn't warm enough. They did rectify this quickly. Everyone else was happy with their starters.

The mains themselves when they came were lovely, but other than the steak frites nothing else comes with sides, so all sides are extra, which rapidly adds up. Also the group felt everything could have been seasoned just a little more. We had pork collar, steak frites, Gnocchi was given thumbs up, sword fish and Cordon bleu. The sides of red cabbage, chips and seasonal vegetables were nice.

So would I return is the question? I think I expect my money to get me more than it did that night so I would probably try another place. It might also be that I'm just out of touch with central London prices but I did feel it was a tad expensive for what I...

I first went with a friend for Saturday lunch. the chilli passion fruit cocktails were fab, the scallops are to die for, crab cakes are ok, we both had ribeye and it was absolutely fantastic. Wines are a bit pricey, but the sticky pistachio and olive oil cake was also very good. we liked the meal so much we ended up with a bottle of sauterne and stayed till the dinner crowd was rolling in. Then I went again for a saturday dinner 2 weeks later, having bragged about it to another friend of mine. This time the chilli passionfruit cocktail was less good. not enough heat and not crispy cold. The scallops are still tip top, but the creamed smoke haddock and prawn starter paled in comparison to the scallop. we ordered ribeye again coz i raved about it. This time it was just an expensive slab of underwhelming beef. It wasn't butchered properly and was difficult to cut. the waitress came by to ask if everything was ok, it told her the beef was tough to cut, to which she said thats what ribeye was like! the taste of the beef was still good, but i struggled to cut away the inedible bits so much that by the end the beef was stone cold on the plate. for £37.50 plate of 280gram beef, I would have thought quality control should be tighter. When the bus girl cleared the table she could see the bits left over on the plate and she alerted the manager, who graciously gave us dessert and coffee, but it was just disappointing that the main dish was not nearly as good as the...