To island or not to island? Kitchen opinions sought - with pictures!

[TheStoryofmyLife]

So I've been persuaded by you lot my architect to keep two entrances to our to-be-extended kitchen (thanks to this thread). That sent me back to the drawing board on layouts.

Now after many hours slaving over a hot Ikea room planner, I've narrowed the choice down to two basic possibilities and would be interested in views of the neutral MNter.

It's a family kitchen, DCs are 9 & 12, we cook a lot and when we're allowed to have people in our house again plan lots of entertaining.

Our must-haves are:
Big table
Plenty of food preparation space
Lots of storage (we're giving up an under-stairs cupboard to a new loo)
Ability to face into the room when cooking

I have lots of thoughts about the pluses and minuses of each option but would love to know yours.

I've done these versions of the plans with plain cabinets as have loads of ideas for the decor (not grey!), it's really the basic layouts I'm keen to know your thoughts on. They're not 100% final so things like sinks or hobs may move. We don't have the width to do the classic long run of units, parallel island, table on the other side layout so these are the two options.

Which would you do?

When did we become a nation where the kitchen is our social space whilst we cook up a storm every evening?

At the same time we stopped isolating the cook I guess.

A & B - too cramped
D - too old style, lot of walking to different units to get work done
C - simple but effective

I'm leaning heavily towards C, glad to see the majority here is too.

I'd love a separate dining room, @Goodnessandlight but the price we pay for being in a nice part of London is a small house. So the kitchen is where our dining area will be, and the same table will double up as a homework, working from home and no doubt general dumping space. And yes we do spend a fair amount of time cooking every day!

I honestly don't think even the full DeVol treatment could get me excited about D

Really appreciate everyone's input, thank you all.

I think you need to think about how you'll use the space if you go for Option C. I can see that you've said the kettle, toaster, breadbin will all be out on the counter to the left of the hob. That would drive me nuts having to have that much "stuff" out, but at breakfast time for instance, those things are all in a position next to a wall (and near a door way I think) and you're going to have the family all trying to get access to those things for breakfast? Does that really work? Then you've got people presumably walking between the kettle /toaster and the fridge (for milk/butter) across another doorway? Won't you all get in each other's way?

C is fab, love it