Enticing menu at The Fellow

The Fellow is a big ground-floor room with good spacing between the tables and a sedate, mannerly air.

There was a vase of delphiniums on the bar, a lily on each table, striped lampshades, blackboards, some horsey pix. And there’s a roof terrace here too. To be able to create such a civilised atmosphere in the middle of King’s Cross seemed in its own way a much more radical achievement than the supposed urban adventurousness of The Driver. They play music here but turned down low to an anonymous rumble and then off altogether as the room warmed up.

The menu, which changes daily, is thoroughly enticing. The Sunday lunch menu (two courses, £19.50) details so many creditable sources for its ingredients that it reads like a gazetteer of Britain (Southwold shrimps, Cromer crab, Chidwickbury goat’s cheese, and so forth).

A pea salad (£6.25) was perfectly refreshing, well seasoned, with some leaves, lots of mint and some nice feta cheese, and the peas had been lightly blanched — does anybody actually like wholly raw ones on a plate, even though one eats them happily from the pod? Pan-fried duck egg with pea shoots and crispy bacon (£6.75) was well executed, the two thick rashers of bacon cooked brittle without being toothbreaking, and some unannounced little scrapings of confit duck mixed in with the peashoots for extra heartiness.

Flank steak was surprisingly tender, two big slices seared on the outside and rare inside, served with a rich sauce of wild mushrooms, and watercress (£12.50): excellent. Seared fillet of hake with clams in a white wine sauce, with samphire and more peas (£14), was golden-crusted but not at all overcooked for this dense fish, so much more highly rated almost everywhere else than Britain: quite delicious. And from the puddings, a "raspberry & thyme brûléed custard pot" (£5) showed that you can improve on absolute simplicity — this was a straightforward crème brûlée, suddenly enhanced when you hit the scented fruit at the bottom.

The long and thoughtful wine list is especially rewarding, offering particularly good bottles from familiar appellations — an excellent Sauvignon de Touraine and an unoaked chardonnay from Languedoc, for example — as well as some more adventurous choices. A 2007 Feudo Arancio Pinot Noir from Sicily did the steak proud, and among the sweet wines there’s a lovely 2006 Banyuls Rimage Les Clos de Paulilles.

The Fellow
York Way, London, N1 9AA