Canteen

It’s Wednesday night and we are lucky to get a table. Canteen is buzzing with the city crowd. The atmosphere is flirty as thirty somethings find their tables for the evening. The sleek and modern design of Canteen and its classic pub nosh food perfectly accommodates the city set.

The place is crowd friendly with its canteen style seating (communal tables and booth seating). All chrome, wood and glass, Canteen has all the pretense of contemporary city dining, only it’s more relaxed and the food, more traditional than urban fusion.

The menu that doubles as a place mat outlines the philosophy of Canteen: seasonal eating with an emphasis on sustainable and local produce. The food is also additive free. We like it.

We select what we consider to be perfect British nosh: fish and chips, pies and the Canteen roast.

Fish of the day is skate. It arrives heavily fried atop a generous serve of chips and a jar of tartare sauce. The chips are cooked to perfection but the delicacy of the fish gets lost in the batter. We contemplate sending a SOS.

The pork belly proves a better choice. Served with a roasted apple, it is well cooked but nothing to rave about. Both dishes would have fared better with a side dish.

The well celebrated Canteen pies prove a better choice – the mushroom and beef pie is very good. The pastry is light and crisp and the beef, very tender. Served with mash and kale, it was delightful. The leek, cheddar and mushroom pie didn’t quite hit the same mark. We appreciated the sweetness of the leek and the seasonality of the ingredients but more cheddar was needed to bring a sharpness to this dish.

At Canteen, desserts are straight from the pages of Enid Blyton and have us all reminiscing about childhood books and remembered cakes and sweets.

Treacle pie served with Jersey cream was perfect. The cream was buttery in colour, rich and heavy. Pure indulgence - there's nothing like good produce.

The steam ginger pudding with pears was another favourite. The vanilla rice and jam was good but more enjoyed for its nostalgia than its taste. We couldn’t finish the fruit crumble and custard – we were just too full.

The service is professional yet suitably relaxed. There is no hovering of staff and no sense that you are being rushed.

Those in the know have heralded Canteen as the future of dining. We’re not sure. Yes the design work is outstanding and the slow philosophy hits the right mark. Any restaurant committed to serving the best of national produce with good provenance deserves all the accolades it gets. The food needs to be more consistent. That said the approach is spot-on.

Would we recommend Canteen – absolutely. We’d go again on a Saturday when the Spitalfields market reopens.


2 Crispin Place, Spitalfields London, E1 6DW UK
T: (+44) 0845 686 1122
E: info@canteen.co.uk W: http://www.canteen.co.uk/

Cambio de Tercio

Perhaps we should have known better. When a restaurant tells you that they will only accept your booking if you agree to leave by 9.00 pm, then you should expect the service to be a little enthusiastic. And so it was at Cambio de Tercio on Saturday night.

We arrived promptly at 7.00 pm wanting to enjoy the most of our evening. Mojitos were ordered as we studied the menu for the best of its Iberian dishes. We selected from the tapas and main menu. We barely had a pause before our dinner arrived.

The cured beef ham served with carmelised figs was delicious. The sweetness of the fruit combined well with the smokiness of the ham that was notable for its freshness.

The Serrano ham croquettes were rich and flavoursome but were of an inconsistent temperature, no doubt reheated.

The fillet of beef served with chestnut puree was a real highlight – the beef was beautifully cooked but the aubergine chips on the side were a novelty and did little to enhance the dish. The Valencia rice with squid and cockles was another disappointing dish. The promised baby squid was barely detectable and the proportion of the dish was surprising small for what was a main dish. Curiously the squid ink was presented as a dressing.

Table service was far too prompt. Questions of double seating aside, dishes removed as quickly as the last person has been served detracted from the pleasures of eating. We like to linger over our food and this was certainly not an experience of slow eating. It was fast eating with a hefty bill.

To be fair, after being rushed through our mains, the service did slow. Desserts were more leisurely but it was clear that we were on our way out and that the table would be cleared just after 9 for the 9.30 seating.

The crème catalan – a Spanish crème brulee – was delicious. The sweetness of the crème laced with lime.

The Praline dish – a curious flotsam hiding cacao icecream and coffee sauce was an interesting choice for a Spanish restaurant. Noe, P.X., González Byass concluded our evening.

We were out by 9.00 pm as told after paying a £147.00 bill. We didn’t leave a tip. Perhaps Cambio de Tercio would be better during in the week but we won’t be going back in a hurry to find out. For a restaurant that is claimed to be the best Spanish restaurant in London, we were disappointed.

Address: 163 Old Brompton Road, SW5 OLJ

T: (020) 7244 8970

W: www.cambiodetercio.com

Bar Saaqi

Randomly pulled out from a hat, Bar Saaqi proved to be a pleasant surprise. We have to admit that we were somewhat cautious about the idea of Indian tapas, especially after we saw chips with curry sauce on the menu. Not deterred, we reasoned that good food can be found in some unexpected places, even if the background music is the greatest hit ballads from the eighties.

Saaqi was a woman who served intoxicating drinks to Kings and inspired Urdu poets. She was clearly a woman who knew a thing about the lure of alcohol and the arts. The tapas at Bar Saaqi is a part of the bar menu with a speciality in tandoori cooking. You can select individual dishes or do as we did and order a mixed platter for £11.95.

Someone’s mother is clearly behind this menu. We wanted to know whose mother and where she came from but our waiter couldn’t help. He was new or so he told us. We consoled ourselves with a bottle of Cruz di Piedra, a crisp and flirty wine from Spain.

Our food arrived thali style. The tangari kehab was subtly flavoured tandoori, the chicken was wonderfully moist as good tandoori should be. It was the hit of the evening. We won’t mention the mint yogurt side dish. Saaqui should have known better – very few of us find inspiration in a McKeen’s bottle. We were divided about the fish tandoori – the gara marsala encrusted fish only appealed to some of us. The paneer kathi roll was our vegetarian choice. The paneer was cooked with lots of capsicum with a little chilli, and wrapped in naan. We should have eaten this first as it was just warm by the time we tasted it. The luckhnawi kehab was disappointing – it was very, very dry (we almost chocked on the crumbs) and the mango chutney failed to resuscitate this dehydrated lamb.

Next time you are shopping down Oxford Street and need to escape from the throngs of busy shoppers and need of a drink, you could try some tapas at Bar Saaqi. Be there by 9.00 as after that the volume of the music goes up. The service is reasonably quick. Forget any expectations that your waiter will be able to tell you about the food (we like to know the regional origins of what we are eating). It was a little smoky but hey, it’s a bar.

Would we go there again - errrh, maybe. It's a better alterative that any of the chain eateries that you'll find on Oxford Street.

21-22 Poland Street, London W1F 8QL
Tel: 020 7734 5525

A great idea: London food blog

The idea for the London food blog started with an idea back in Melbourne. The dilemma of any self-respecting foodie is finding out where to eat. You’ve arrived, found your hotel and unpacked. Next item on the agenda is: where do the locals eat? Thus starts your epicurious adventure.

The tourist menus, including those two for the price of one, hold no interest. Nor do we feel inclined to book into a Michelin star restaurant, however tempting. We aren’t denying that a world trip exclusively devoted to eating at the world’s top 100 restaurants wouldn’t be a good thing. No, the joy of travelling is discovering local places – a fantastic deli, a specialist food store or restaurant much loved and frequented.

So who are we? The London food blog is a group of hungry writers, wine enthusiasts and the food curious that like the idea of exploring the city they live in. Some of us are from the Isles and others of us are foreigners who arrived and just want to stay. Our quest is to produce a local local’s guide to London eating as we follow our noses and our stomachs to explore the celebrated, hidden and recognised food haunts of London.