The first time I heard it was in the late 1990s. We’d left the theatre, and someone suggested we hop in a cab and head to the ‘Canteen’. At 10.30pm, other than Joe Allen or Stringfellows, where on earth could eight people find dinner? We arrived at the location 15 minutes later. Jesus (not that one) was still there, two tables were hastily pulled together, and we sat till 1am talking nonsense. This ‘Canteen’ was Le Caprice – then under the watchful eye of maître d’ Jesus Adorno and still the centre of the world.
Why the ‘Canteen’? For Tory grandees, David Bailey-era celebrities and people who wore ties, Le Caprice was their dining room, refectory and cafeteria, where you and your peers could drink well, enjoy a great menu and always get a table. It’s a term that has been applied to many restaurants across London since, with varying degrees of accuracy.
It’s also a rather snobby one. A phrase that takes an exclusive, power-drenched room and reclassifies it to sound like something in a factory basement. The term doesn’t just capture the clientele, but also tells the story of the food. A ‘Canteen’ must serve an array of dishes that suits its audience. Nothing avant garde but nothing that would disappoint a visiting dignitary, either. The true London canteens would have something for everyone. I was offered sashimi for the first time at Le Caprice. Weird, but it worked.
Around the millennium, the fashion crowd soon moved on from Le Caprice, following owners Chris Corbin and Jeremy King to The Wolseley around the corner. However, The Wolseley was never a ‘Canteen’, its Mitteleuropean food and cavernous room was perhaps a bit too canteen-ish.
And by then a new canteen for the capital had reared its head, buoyed by New Labour optimism and anchored at a highly unlikely spot by the Thames. The River Café had been popular with the soft-shouldered Armani elite of the creative arts and a certain upper-middle design set, but soon it replaced Le Caprice as the centre of everything. You’d freeze outside to get a table if you had to.
At the same time, another ‘Canteen’ opened, this time in New York. Balthazar, launched in 1997 on a then-unfashionable corner in SoHo, was helmed by Keith McNally, an expat who wanted to create a Parisian brasserie with an American take on a power room in the Clinton era. Amazingly, it still has some pull to this day, keeping its vibe and significance while serving millions of covers.
Meanwhile, back in Hammersmith, the River Café still thrived before Tony Blair began to run out of steam, and people had become tired of wearing shapeless jackets.
Enter Richard Caring, who knew how to hoist two fingers at the champagne socialists. Caring, who came up under Philip Green, had by that point bought Scott’s under the Caprice Holdings banner, the historic Mayfair fish restaurant. The Scott’s (re)opening in 2006 was possibly the greatest in history. All sexy and cool, blending Essex shine and Mayfair sheen in a way that heralded the end of the slightly leaden era of Gordon Brown. But these Caprice Holdings palaces of excess would always drive Londoners to something completely different, less overt and central, which gave rise to more localised ‘Canteens’.
In 2010, an Italian restaurant in Islington called Trullo lit the blue touch paper for a ripple of neighbourhood restaurants across London that were better than the central eateries and half the price. It was the natural continuation of the River Café model, pared-back, produce-first, Italian-leaning canteen cooking, which spawned a host of imitators. And none has done it better, perhaps, than the eerily apposite Canteen, a bustling spot with a pale mustard awning which sits now at the wrong (or perhaps, in fact, the right) end of the Portobello Road.
Canteen, gratifyingly, is the platonic ideal of the ‘Canteen’, and from the team that created the modern ‘icon’ pub, The Pelican in Notting Hill. But in an act of brutal irony, at Canteen there is no booking, no good table, and no monumental wine list. Oh my god: it’s an actual canteen. Only with one crucial caveat. The food is actually some of the best in London.
But what remains that evokes the old magic of Le Caprice? That swoony power room of late nights and power tables and long conversation? The crowd who graced that haunt in the 1990s has, well, matured, and so now worships at the shrine of Sally Clarke, a place that still expects you to turn up in a tie (or a blow dry) and where Jesus Adorno still gracefully conducts the dining room. There’s also Jeremy King’s latest spot, The Park in Bayswater, which, after just a year, has already made its name as the go-to, perfect, all-day Americana Canteen. Elsewhere, The Dover, on Mayfair’s Dover Street, is perhaps the closest modern cutters-and-thrusters might get to the golden age of shiny canteens, thanks to its please-all trattoria-meets-New York menu, its Martini-forward drinks list, and exquisitely flattering lighting.
Where else? Lately, I’ve settled on two places I consider my canteens, with menus that offer the perfect balance of choice, pleasing everyone with its exceptional execution. The first is Maison François, run by François (Frank) O’Neill, London’s next mega-restaurateur. It’s a luxe, all-day brasserie with a bulletproof menu of French classics.
The next breaks all the rules of the ‘Canteen’, located in a hotel dining room that’s been cursed for 20 years by failed restaurants. Even Gordon Ramsay had a crack. But I recently ate celeriac soup and roast chicken, with Joanna Lumley dining adjacent to me, and worked solo on a bottle of Coche-Dury. And I started crying. It was that magic feeling of everything being just perfect. So hat’s off to the team at Claridge’s for finally getting it right. London is too big and bold to have one official ‘Canteen’ these days. And with such a choice, we must perhaps find our own.
1. Le Caprice
Now deceased, the little restaurant behind the Ritz was the epitome of money, glamour and power. From Lady Diana to Martin Sorrell to Nicholas Coleridge, it was the original and still the ultimate ‘Canteen’.
2. River Café
A haven for creative power players and champagne socialists, with Matthew Freud, Tristram Hunt and CAA bigwig Emma Banks entertaining Charli XCX. The guestlist on Ruthie Rogers’ podcast, ‘Table 4’, is testament to the varied glitterati that still descend almost nightly.
3. Scott’s
Formerly synonymous with both fashion and the establishment, Scott’s was more recently solidified by Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson dining outside daily for a year. Nowadays, it’s a bit more TOWIE and boys-done-good.
4. Balthazar, New York
A clash of cultures, where a fanny-packed tourist from Wisconsin might sit down next to Anna Wintour.
5. Sally Clarke
Your parents are spending your inheritance on exceptional nursery food and good Chablis, with Lord Rothermere as their youngest client.
6. Maison François
Art, fashion, finance. Imagine Grayson Perry chatting with the Earl of Rosebery.
7. Claridge’s
The last days of Rome live on at Claridge’s, with Ben Elliot enjoying three breakfasts a morning and Paula Fitzherbert (doyenne of London hotels) nodding sagely along with the Emperor of Japan in the restaurant.
8. Canteen
Notting Hill central casting (and that’s just the young and Instagrammable staff). You’ll see Paul Bettany, Dua Lipa, Lily Allen, Tom Straker (sneaking out of his own restaurant a few doors down), and Central Cee living their best lives.
9. The Dover
A sultry, Manhattan-ish spot giving Samantha from Sex and the City. Expect to see an exiled Chiltern Firehouse crowd, including Paul Price of Burberry.
10. Trullo
The hub for north London’s literary and political elite. You’ll see John Frieda (his son owns it), Dolly Alderton finishing her Pride and Prejudice manuscript, and probably someone from Mumford & Sons.