Canvas

Somehow I feel like this restaurant has fallen under the radar of the rest of London. As soon as I heard about the concept of Canvas, I was intrigued. The concept? It’s a choose your own tasting menu. You get a list of courses, and you choose how many you want (the menu states 3, 4, 5, 7, or 10). They also offer wine pairings to go with each course consisting of the standard wine pairing or iconic wine pairings. When I showed the website to the other half, his response was «Well ten courses with iconic pairings is the correct choice».
So I booked it. I kept thinking to myself that I needed to do it sooner rather than later as I was concerned getting a booking would get harder and harder as their popularity increased. Since they only opened in January, I booked us in using their online booking system. The online booking system is a bit strange. There’s a pre-​paid deposit you put down for your meal, and you get £100 toward your meal when you arrive. If you book at non-​standard times or early enough they claim you can save quite a bit of money. I booked at six pm and only paid £80 for the £100, so there can be a bit of saving. Of course it all depends on how much you spend. I was slightly concerned about the dining experience after this strange online booking system, so I was really unsure what to expect when we arrived.
Since we had the earliest booking, we were the first to arrive. The restaurant is really warm and welcoming when you walk in. It’s quite small, but intimate and they didn’t try to overpack the restaurant with too many seatings (I think they only have twenty). Of course we opted for the ten course with iconic pairings. The waiter told us it was good that we arrived early then as it was likely to take awhile. That was the plan from the beginning. We chose three seafood (scallops, crab and langoustines), four meat (pork, foie gras, chicken and beef) and three desserts (cheese, beetroot and bread and butter).
So the meal started out well. The two amuse bouche (a parmesan cake and a Brussels sprouts soup with parmesan foam) were absolutely fantastic and really made us excited about the meal. (Plus now I want to make Brussels sprouts soup.) None of the courses were mind-​blowing, but they were incredibly tasty and well prepared. There was definitely a bit of originality in some of the courses, but mostly with the desserts (pre-​dessert was red pepper foam and orange cream… a bit odd, but interesting). There were a few hiccups (the beef was slightly chewy, but the other two cuts of beef really made up for it), but all in all everything was really good. My favorite courses were the scallops, crab, pork, cheese and the bread and butter. Plus the amuse bouche and the petit fours. And the wine pairings were pretty fantastic. Each of them went really well with the courses, and we had one of the best Sancerre we’ve ever had. The sommelier also gave us two extra glasses of dessert wine at the end, so no complaints there. They have a really nice and interesting selection of cheeses as well, with one of the bet Epoisses I’ve had.
The service was impeccable, and the sommelier was really friendly and chatted with us quite a bit about wine and really pretty much anything we’d ask him about. Given the quality of food and service, I was really shocked that the restaurant itself was fairly empty until about 7:30 or 8:00. There was another table that came soon after we arrived, but they had a three-​course menu so left quite early. There were several empty seats through the night. I’m hoping that it’s just that they’re really flying under the radar and that when word of mouth spreads this place will be packed. So everyone should go try it out. Go now. Just in case. They do lunch specials during the week as well, so go!