Canteen

Canteen Restaurant Review:

With its communal-seating benches and lean, clean lines, Canteen offers a British experience that should be the norm, and not the exception. Here all the British elements are brought together and celebrated properly. For a start you can eat breakfast all day, or incorporate toast and homemade marmalade or fish finger sandwiches into a dinner that could include meat pies, a proper pork pie and piccalilli or, on Wednesday and Sunday a full roast. The cooking, in the hands of head chef and co-owner Cass Titcombe, is uncompromisingly good and honest, so you get greens, mash and gravy with your pie, and desserts like orange marmalade bread and butter pudding with clotted cream ice cream. There's a mainly French wine list; service is topnotch. Also at Royal Festival Hall, Belvedere Rd., SE1, 0845 686 1122; and Park Pavilion, 40 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, E14, 0845 686 1122.