Reviewing my navel. Or is that naval?

I apologise in advance as I have forgotten the name of the restaurant and will have to cross-reference my notes with Mother's infallible memory.

The gastropub. A word that now holds more pretense than haute-cuisine in central London, and if you're anyone worth batting an arsehole for you will have been into at least one. The entrance here was unpretentious, just a door that blended seamlessly into the wall save for a small 'open' sign and a handle. The noise was what you would expect from a pub come early evening and it was nice to see that we had been seated down the quieter end, although music playing over the top of businessmen's roars made it impossible to hear people at the end of the table. Still, no problems as of yet.
Lighting was dim and got dimmer as table service lit candles although next time I would make a point of -not- reaching infront of a guest's face as they are talking to light said candles. However, the atmosphere felt relaxed and was maintained throughout the evening. We placed our orders, recieved our drinks and were swiftly given clean cutlery, condiments and jugs of water. The food arrived shortly afterwards. And I started to regret having such a large appetite.
Portion size was not the problem here. My steak was massive, marbled with fat and topped with parsely butter, cooked to a perfect rare. It was also incredibly tough to eat, given that I wasn't provided with a steak knife. I ended up hacking away at it with a butter knife which in turn damaged the texture of the meat, causing long pauses of serious mastication. It was in no way 'melt-in-the-mouth' yet was very well seasoned and leaked delicious steaky juices. The chips were nasty. They were floppy chunks of pre-frozen potato, season with... something. When this something met the parsely butter my mouth twinged - placing the steak over the chips definately didn't improve their constitution. I ate one and no more. The salad that came with the meal was large and contained a nice mix of lettuces which I loved, but should have been served in a separate bowl as the chip/steak pile was ontop of most of the greens. The red wine that was suggested by our waiter was actually very nice and was served at room temperature. Props to the man waiting our table for that.
Another guest in our party ordered their fig tart with a side of chips and aioli. The aioli was perfectly balanced, but tasted commercial. Ah well, can't win 'em all. The fig tart had a filo base, from what I remember, and arrived a dark brown. Uh oh. Burned filo. I didn't taste it, but apparently this was otherwise very nice. Still, for a gastropub in King's Cross you have to realise people have certain expectations about the quality of your food... I had no problem catching someone when we came to pay the bill which came in at around £20 a head, a fairly unremarkable price.
Two and a half floppy frozen chip chunks out of five.