A New Wave of British Canteens Is Revolutionizing the Country’s Dining Scene

There’s a 1994 episode of Frasier in which Kelsey Grammer’s character dismisses Daphne with a stinging line: “The moment I give a fig for what you think is the day that England produces a great chef, a world-class bottle of wine, and a car that has a decent electrical system!” The last point is still up for debate, because Lotus Tech automobiles are British but made in China. As for the first two: The vineyards of Kent are producing award-winning sparkling wines that put much of Champagne in the shade, while London and Edinburgh have some of the best restaurants in the world. The British restaurant scene has gone through a cycle of tasting menus, from spherification and coal oil on tartare to Basque-style cooking over fire. A significant anti-trend that began the year that episode of Frasier aired is the austere modernism pioneered by Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver when they opened St. John in Smithfield, with its no-nonsense white walls, bone marrow on toast, offal dishes, French wines served in simple bistro water goblets, and a 15-minute wait for fresh hot madeleines to round off your evening.

Fish stew with gurnard and pollock at The Palmerston / Photo: Courtesy of James Porteous

St. John has been the go-to canteen for the London fashion and art world since it opened. It spawned a sibling opposite Spitalfields Market and recently opened a branch in Marylebone. And every hot new restaurant in the last couple of years has taken something of its DNA. The style is distinctly British, with a soupçon of French peasant cooking. It’s generally carnivorous and has a spirit that mixes postwar austerity with decadence. If you go to Café Deco in Bloomsbury you can be sure of a chalkboard, wooden chairs, duck rillettes, incredible sourdough and salted butter, something with sea trout or a game bird, and Pink Fir Apple potatoes. Squint at the room and it could be the mid ’50s, but the wine list is spectacular and five pages long.

Margot Henderson—wife of the St. John cofounder—is a star in her own right, opening Rochelle Canteen in 2004 in Shoreditch in an old schoolyard. For years it was BYOB, and Fergus would often be there holding court with a magnum of champagne. Margot shares his modernist approach, from the decor to the cooking. A typical meal will be a pie with the glossiest of pastry tops, things with mackerel, others with radishes, perhaps onglet, and heavy puddings involving rhubarb. She recently took over The Three Horseshoes, a historic pub in rural Somerset, importing a similar menu and bar snacks of mince on toast and cheddar toasties.

Pigeon at Timberyard, Edinburgh / Photo: Courtesy of Timberyard, Edinburgh

Many new places, like Cadet on London’s Newington Green, are essentially wine bars with snacks, but make dishes such as terrines in-house. The team behind Timberyard—easily the best restaurant in Edinburgh—have opened Montrose, a wine bar with food. Also in Edinburgh, The Palmerston is a paradigm of the new-wave British canteen. The shelves are piled high with freshly baked loaves, and the menu is big on wild rabbit, fried pig’s head and fancy gooseberry trifle. It elevates ingredients ignored for years: We’re surely only a heartbeat away from a major tripe revival (its popularity never faded in Italy). “I grew up close to the poverty line in Australia,” says Palmerston chef Lloyd Morse. “We had cheaper cuts of meat and offal for dinner mainly because it was all my mum could afford. Eating that way as a kid definitely made an impact on my palate and the food I enjoy eating and cooking.”

The Three Horeshoes, Taunton, England / Photo: Courtesy of Emma Lewis

Marina O’Loughlin, contributing editor to Noble Rot, recently wrote a story defining the new-wave British canteen as a kind of gloriously familiar AOR radio for the palate: “Dadcore goes far deeper than any wood paneling or arse-friendly seating or an absence of katsuobushi. Dad-core restaurants don’t chase trends or fashions, but are dedicated to being, simply, very, very good.”

“Dadcore” dining rooms are also so good they are some of the hardest reservations to book. Like bleu de travail twill jackets (a favorite of the Hendersons), going to these restaurants says you are above the fripperies of Mayfair. You are in the know. Checking online at St. John as I write this, only late suppers at 9:30 p.m. are available for weeks at the Smithfield location. Over at Cafe Cecilia, founded by St. John alumnus Max Rocha, there’s not a single seat available in the evening for a whole month. “The photographer Tim Walker is here a lot,” says Rocha. “Nigella Lawson is booked tomorrow. But whether you are Bono or the guy next door, you get the same service. Some people come and have champagne with lunch, one girl comes in every day just to buy our Guinness bread, and we have a board where we get creative with special steaks. But it’s important to me to always have something on the menu at an accessible price point, and our house wine shouldn’t give you a headache. Opening this place, I wanted somewhere that my friends could come and have a bowl of soup and a cup of tea.”