King's Cross Road

I eat out a lot - probably more than I should – so it seems about time I put some restaurant-talk on this blog. My freelance job as a restaurant reviewer has given me lots of opportunities to sample fabulous (and sometimes not so fabulous) food around London, but sometimes the best, and most atmospheric, restaurants are ones friends suggest, or places I stumble upon randomly.

King’s Cross Road is the last place I thought I’d find a hidden gem of a restaurant, but so it was when, sopping wet on a rainy Thursday night, my boyfriend and I stumbled into the Paolina Thai Café to meet a friend of ours.

It was said friend’s suggestion to meet there, and unless I’d been looking for it, I probably would have missed Paolina’s altogether. Inside, the café has the frankly amazing décor of a Seventies sauna, with wood-panelled walls and retro furniture. There are a few two-seater tables and the open kitchen in the front of the restaurant when you walk in, and watching the women frying noodles in a huge wok got our stomachs rumbling as we waited for our table.

Paolina is a bargain for several reasons. Firstly, most of the dishes cost less than £6, and secondly, you can bring your own bottle of whatever, thus only having to pay a very small corkage fee. Our favourites were prawn Pad Thai, a simple take on the dish with a good number of butterflied, juicy tail-on prawns and sweetly spicy fried rice noodles, and the red chicken curry was lovely too: rather runny, but creamy, hot and fragrant.

The fact that all the tables were occupied, and immediately re-filled by waiting punters, shows that Paolina’s must have a pretty good following. Its dark, warm back room with its formica tabletops and electric heaters was full throughout the evening, and we arrived pretty late. I loved its old-school look and its smallness, and the fact that three of us ate to fullness for under £20. I didn’t think you could eat out properly in London that cheaply nowadays: time warp indeed.