Review at a glance: ★★★★☆
The wisdom of crowds — that the collective knows more than the singular expert — is not an idea that I trust, partly on the grounds of Tripadvisor and partly because I suppose if I did I’d have to fire myself. Still, one widely held banality strikes me as more or less true — that there are no good hotel restaurants.
It’s not watertight, granted. There’s The Ritz, as flawless as a Saturday morning lie-in. Ormer at Flemings Mayfair; 1890 at the Savoy. The rest? I’ll go — but only if someone else is paying.
Maybe you’re thinking this is because hoteliers are mostly tight-wads who promise chefs the world and then bully them into contracting cheap suppliers. But you’d be wrong: it’s about the loos. They’re always a spell-breaking trek from the dining room, through grey corridors and out into reception, for a pre-pee assault course of tourists and trolleys and suitcases on the loose.
At Canal, there’s none of that. The loos are to the side of the room, like a restaurant in long trousers ought to have. It has its own entrance too. In fact, the only giveaway that it’s not just a place in Westbourne Park but an add-on to the third London Mason & Fifth is the website. Oh, and the burger that necessarily but incongruously punctuates the menu. But that’s hotels; someone is always going to want a burger.
Owner Dominic Hamdy is a savvy operator, with three Crispin branded places, and Bistro Freddie, now vastly improved over its inconsistent opening incarnation. Canal is like them in that it looks good. Here there are lots of steel table tops and neutral tones, and a big open kitchen in which sit a reassuring number of suitcase-sized boxes of Maldon salt. There is good art, and lampshades that look a little like a cross between The Quality Chop House’s confit potatoes and crinkle cut chips. You get hungry just looking at them.
The setting? On a canal — had you guessed, clever clogs? — and how you feel about it will depend on your aesthetic delicacies. The opposite bank seems to consist mostly of two things: graffiti, and canal boats where it looks like they mostly barbecue inside. When the sun goes down, Canal’s terrace is a calm, soothing, almost beautiful space to sit. While there’s daylight, I’d nab a seat facing the restaurant.
There is a sense of unity throughout the menu that makes a bad order tricky
The crowd here is late-twenties, early-thirties, as good-looking as their surrounds and probably spending similar amounts on upkeep. This is Notting Hill-ish, and so are they; people who will not blanch at paying for £75 bottles of rosé, though the new parents among them will be relieved at the £7-a-glass house wines. It’s a list that rises kindly.
The kitchen turns out what might be called London Mediterranean, mostly in an Italian pose, though Spanish, French and British influences wriggle in. There is a sense of unity throughout the menu that makes a bad order tricky: if you have the plate of pickles — various beetroots, very gently done, the oil and beet juice together like the interior of a lava lamp — you can happily have the cheerful crab doughnut, with its light dough and pink innards. Stracciatella, sitting in a pool of olive oil — liking olive oil is a requirement for liking here — might follow, with its gently blackened turrets of courgette. But bream crudo would have suited too. Was mangalitza sausage a little out of place, with its likeness to the frankfurters I had every Saturday lunch after swimming classes? Pickled chillies held it in keeping.
Ricotta-filled tortelli with lemon and courgettes smelt of perfect summer lunches spent by the Amalfi sea. Brill in a bouillabaisse sauce arrived, billed as something for two or three to share, but which could stuff four or five. We ate hungrily, then lent back, hands on belly in defeat. I would go back for that alone.
Canal is not perfect — little lapses in service, and someone in the kitchen is timid with seasoning. It is a not a knock-your-socks-off restaurant; the flavours are too familiar, too sweetly soft for that. But, like nearby Canteen is too, it is perfect for the area. It is somewhere for Saturday afternoons in a haze of summer sun and going with all your mates. It will not set the world on fire, but it is not built to do so. I loved it, knowing as I left not everyone will get it. But that’s fine. Who needs the wisdom of crowds?
11b Woodfield Road, W9 2BA. Meal for two about £170; mason-fifth.com
