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Konstam at the King Albert pub in Kings Cross opened in April 2006. It takes the idea of using locally sourced ingredients to the extent of aiming just for produce grown within Greater London (it manages to get around 80% of its ingredients in the winter, rising to around 95% in the summer). I was curious to see whether pigeon was on the menu, and indeed it was, but this was sourced from Amersham rather than Trafalgar Square. The lunch menu costs £18.75 for three courses. On the a la carte, starters are £6 - £8.50, main courses £12.75 - £17.75 and desserts £6.50 - £7.50, with vegetables £3.25 extra, and bread (from the Flour Station) charged extra at £2.75. Chef Oliver Rowe used to cook at Moro after having worked in Europe.

The short wine list starts at £18 but most bins are in the £25 - £50 range; the list is mainly French, with a few other choices. It features selections such as Leon Beyer Pinot Gris 2006 at £34.50 compared to a retail price of £14, Riesling Grunlack Spatlese Schloss Johannisberg 2007 at £48 for a wine that costs around £24 retail, and the Languedoc wine Minervois Cuvée Selection, Domaine de Rouviole, 2004 at £28 compared to a shop price of about £13. It does manage one English wine, the pleasant Nyetimber Classic Cuvée, West Sussex, England, 2003 at £40 for a wine that will set you back around £22 if you buy it retail.

The restaurant is in a converted pub in an unprepossessing part of Kings Cross opposite a massage parlour. The dining room has some unusual décor: blue painted floor and chairs with rather odd lampshades that look a little like cobwebs, but on a sunny day like today it was pleasant enough; the tables themselves are what an estate agent would describe as cosy. 

A celeriac soup with toasted hazelnuts, chives and sour cream had reasonable celeriac flavour, and the hazelnuts added a texture contrast, though the soup seemed slightly sweet to me, which was a little off-putting (1/10). A simple dish of steam mussels with shallots, cream and beer (from Battersea), flavoured with bacon, was more successful (2/10). 

The best dish was roast pork belly from Amersham, the pork moist but not too fatty, the crackling excellent, served with pumpkins and an apple and elderberry sauce (4/10). Mushroom and leek pierogi (Polish dumplings) with almonds, sour cream and horseradish was decent enough, though for me was light on seasoning: more horseradish would have helped (1/10). 

For dessert a Bakewell tart featured good pastry, and was served with a sloe gin ice cream that (fortunately as far as I was concerned) had subdued gin taste, made from berries they infuse themselves with gin (3/10). Coffee had reasonable taste (3/10).

The bill for two people, admittedly just with a single glass of wine, was just £22 a head plus service. Service was excellent, our waiter knowing all about the provenance of the produce, and seemed to have a real passion the for local produce goals of the restaurant.

Kitchen W8 is a welcome revamp of the old 11 Abingdon Road premises, which has involved an improvement in the décor and, more importantly, in the kitchen. The place is now owned partly by Phil Howard and partly by previous owner Rebecca Mascarenhas (who has the erratic Sonnys).  The dining room retains its split into different, quite cosy, sections with banquette seating around the walls, and seats up to 75.  The wallpaper is a little dark but there are plenty of mirrors to offset that.  There is the obligatory wooden floor, but noise levels are reasonable.  Chef Mark Kempson was previously sous chef at The Square, and also worked at the Vineyard at Stockcross, so has a good pedigree.

The menu offered nine starters (£6.50 - £10.50), eleven main courses (£14 - £24.50). with extra vegetables at £3.50 and half a dozen desserts (£6.50).  Cheese is £9.  Urbina Seleccion Rioja 1998 was listed at £40 for a wine that costs around £14 to buy, my favourite Louis Roederer non-vintage champagne was £65 compared to a shop price of around £25 (prices vary wildly for this wine by the way, so check around), and Little Yering pinot noir was £20.50 for a wine that retails at about £7 or so.  Breads were white and brown sourdough from Boulangerie de Paris, which has established itself since 2005 as perhaps the classiest UK bread supplier in my view. The brown sourdough in particular was excellent, with a lovely crust; this is supplemented by a pumpkin and onion bread that is made from scratch, and had nice texture (6/10 bread).  

Below are brief notes from my most recent meal.

Ravioli of Dorset crab pasta had fresh and good quality crab, albeit served with slightly softer pasta than would have been ideal.  There was a creamy sauce flavoured with lemon and fennel, and some iceberg lettuce (4/10). 

Rib eye steak (from Ayreshire) had pleasant, though in the case of this piece of meat the ageing was just a little longer than optimal.  Matchstick chips were decent, though not as crisp as I would have liked, though they were at least properly seasoned (5/10 overall for this main course).  Pot-roast guinea fowl was flavoured with bacon choucroute, served with a sauce of golden raisins and hazelnut.  The meat was cooked carefully, though it was far from clear what the hazelnuts added; they have quite a strong taste which rather dominated the dish (4/10). 

Rhubarb food was enjoyable, the rhubarb adding just the right level of acidity to the dish, while a blood orange sorbet had good flavour (5/10).

This Sicilian restaurant is on the site of what used to be Passione, in busy Charlotte Street. The narrow dining room is split into two parts, and has the regulation wooden floor and plain cream walls. Chef Santino Buscigli is from Sicily, but was not in the kitchen on the night of my visit. The menu had antipasti at £8.50 - £11.50, pasta ranging from £6.50 up to £18 for the truffle risotto, main courses from £17.50 to £26, with set menus for lunch and pre-theatre at £19.50 for three courses, or £17.50 for two courses.

The six page wine list is entirely Italian, and features a few wines from Sicily. We drank the excellent Felsina Bererdenga I Sistri Chardonnay 2007, which was priced at £44 for a wine that has a retail price of around £17. The lovely Antinori Tignanello 2006 was listed at £135 compared to a shop price of around £52, and at the upper end of the list, Massetto Tenuta dell’Ornellaia 1999 was £550 for a wine that will set you back around £360.

As we browsed the menu we snacked on enjoyable arancini (rice balls), which had a risotto centre flavoured with cheese and lightly fried shell (5/10) and good green olives. Appropriately, there were also some excellent smoked almonds (Mennula means almond in Sicilian).

I began with seared salt crust tuna with sweet and sour red onions. This was a successful dish, the tuna of good quality and the onions a good foil for the fish (4/10). Also good were carefully seared scallops on a bed of Puy lentils, with baby spinach, a little chilli, and almonds (4/10).

Unfortunately the last savoury course was a mixed bag. Risotto with Umbrian black truffle was very good, the rice having good texture and flavour from a proper stock, the black truffles fairly generous (4/10). Yet linguine with lobster, basil and tomato suffered from seriously overcooked lobster, more Michelin tyre than Michelin star, and pasta that was a little under done (1/10), while gnocchi with almond, tomato and basil pesto were simply a soggy mess (0/10).

Desserts dragged the meal back into positive territory, with a selection including Sicilian cannoli filled with sweet ricotta cheese, plum and frangipane tart with custard and spiced Sangiovese granite, and chocolate and almond torte (4/10).

Service under the smooth Angelo Todaro was very good throughout. The bill came to £67 per head. Overall this was an enjoyable if uneven experience (the chef not being in the kitchen probably did not help matters), but the place felt genuinely welcoming.