Where? You know, the big glass dining room at the foot of King’s Boulevard, an olive’s hurl from both King’s Cross and St Pancras stations, and with an enviable terrace to lounge about on whenever the days actually warm up.
What? Weekend brunch is a very busy affair, although not as crazy as over the way at Granger & Co, where a queue slithers out past the nearby German Gymnasium even in icy conditions. We grabbed one of the last tables at Vinoteca and scoffed a simple plate of smoked haddock, soft leeks, explodingly orange-yolked poached egg and creamy hollandaise. In short? The flavours sung.
Why? At £9 it feels good value for this part of town. You can drink tap water if you want to keep the costs down and even with a tip you’ll be forking out less than ten quid each. Plus it’s filling enough to keep you going till supper time.
Don’t: Go there if you’re really hungover or have an aversion to ankle-biters. It’s pretty noisy and there were a couple of lawless toddlers crawling up the shoulder of the woman occupying the tightly packed table next to us. And an intimate conversation should be avoided, perhaps: your fellow diners are centimetres away.
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Notes: Service is unpredictable. It took us about twenty minutes to get a (very good) bloody mary – and then the food arrived seconds later. Typical.