Please note, since this review was published, Foodilic has been renamed as La Valle. Time Out Food editors, NOVEMBER 2019.
There’s a cosy ‘Flintstones’-type feeling about this King’s Cross café. A squiggly, cartoon-like pink and green tinted window stretches across the back wall, and all the furniture is made out of wonky, rough-hewn wood. You order up-front at the counter and then eat perched on one of the stools, which feels like sitting on a curvaceous sawn-off tree-trunk.
A main meal with one salad is £6, which is fantastic value for a sit-down lunch, and the food suits that price point: this is hearty, homey, healthy stuff – think stews and chicken legs and Ottolenghi-cookbook-style-salads. Mind you, four people tried to take my order at the same time, which was well-meaning but exhausting.
Greens are the highlight at Foodilic. A baby spinach, button mushroom and beansprout salad was gutsy and beautifully textured. An unexpected combo of mango and avocado was fantastic even though by all rights it shouldn’t have been. Also lovely was a dish of peas, sweetcorn and tiny diced cucumber – a salad of small things.
However, my lasagne was comforting but bland; more interesting was a vegan moussaka, made with impressive cashew ‘cheese’. Both benefited from salt.
Everything feels carefully made, and quirky in a good way – which sums up Foodilic itself quite nicely. If you’re in King’s Cross, this is a great-value spot to grab lunch.