The top line: The latest project from London restaurateur-of-the-moment Dominic Hamdy, founder of HAM Restaurant Group, which runs Bistro Freddie, Crispin, Bar Crispin, and Crispin at Studio Voltaire. Located on the Grand Union Canal, the all-day restaurant and bar is part of the newly launched hotel Mason & Fifth, and marks Hamdy’s first venture into west London. Canal’s kitchen is led by New York-born chef Adrian Hernandez Farina, whose experience includes Humo, ASKA in New York, and The French Laundry in California, while general manager Sean Cooper has worked at equally estimable places including The Fat Duck, The Quality Chop House and Muse by Tom Aikens. Canal marks the debut of Quality Projects, a new hospitality consultancy set up by Hamdy and which is said to have more projects in the pipeline.
On the menu: As evidenced with his other venues, Hamdy knows the type of food that gets people coming back and which is also just as suitable for lunch as dinner. The menu kicks off with a healthy selection of snacks, including crab doughnuts; a taleggio and onion flatbread; sourdough from nearby Ladbroke Grove bakery Layla; and Mangalitza sausage with pickled chillies. These are then followed by seasonal starters such as grilled peas with lemon; a striking blood red dish of bream crudo with cherry and chilli; and Trombetta courgette with stracciatella and pangrattato. Mains tick most boxes and include pasta dishes of ricotta filled tortelli with lemon and parmesan; and a squid ink tagliolini with clams, chilli, and garlic; chicken with creamed corn, nduja, and parsley; and monkfish with datterini tomatoes and capers. Also available are two larger dishes to share – a whole brill, bouillabaisse sauce for two share (£65); and a hefty 1kg ex-dairy ribeye with bone marrow sauce for two to four people (£90). For the drinks side of things Canal has teamed up with east London’s A Bar with Shapes for a Name, which has created a range of cocktails on tap, while wines from the broadly European-focused list range upwards of £7 for a glass and £39 a bottle.
The vibe: Canal’s spacious 70-cover dining room has a spartan, brutalist feel with exposed concrete pillars, floors and ceilings that amplify the clatter and clang that befits an all-day dining room. Long dark wooden tables and a spacious bar around which numerous stools are placed create different areas, as does its waterside terrace that has both table seating and a lounge area. By day it’s a bright, modern and welcoming space for allcomers but as the sun goes down the music is turned up the vibe becomes a little cooler.
And another thing: Listed on the menu between the starters and the mains is ‘the table cheeseburger’, a short interlude in proceedings where diners can order a cheeseburger (or more) for the table, which arrives divided into the requisite number of portions. Think of it as a meaty/cheesy palate cleanser...
11b Woodfield Road, Westbourne Park, London W9 2BA // mason-fifth.com/canal-restaurant/