Canteen, South Bank, London

FANTASTIC! Best bacon sandwich I've ever had. Great breakfast. Great eggs florentine. Fab roast. Brilliant food, never had anything less than perfect. Great friendly service. Super wine. Can't fault it. (Maybe slightly uncomfortable chairs?) SUPERB!

I visited last Sunday evening (8th May 2011), early, about 6pm. The restaurant was about 30% full. The menu resembles that of a good gastro-pub. I was a bit disappointed by the range of main dishes and ordered a simple steak and chips. I asked for the steak to be cooked rare.

I was surprised when the plate arrived within about five minutes, therefore, not surprised that the steak was raw not rare. Apart from a mild browning on the exterior surface, as I cut in to it it was clearly completely uncooked. It was also cold - literally cold! This was proved because the nondescript blob of orange butter that had been placed on top of the steak had not even started to melt.

The chips reminded me of those available on the seafront in various sea side towns. A bunch of stalky salad had been placed on the plate - completely undressed.

I was not offered anything like mustard or dressing.

I ordered a double espresso. It came, luke warm, in the kind of glass I would expect to drink orange juice out of in a Premier Inn.

It was £17.00 and the meal was accompanied by the delightful refrain of a screaming child.

I will in future avoid at all costs. Even the Pizza Express would be better. At least they know how to cook the food on the menu.

I went to the Royal Festival Hall with my girlfriend's family, and for our pre-theatre meal they'd booked us all a table at Canteen. We struggled to find the place but luckily with my smartphone on the case we were heading in the right direction. While walking there I thought I better have a look and see if this place was any good, and stumbled across a Jay Rayner article, admittedly for one of the other branches but given that they had the same name and therefore (in my mind at the time) had the same menu, I had a look at his recommendations.

It was all going well until I read what he had to start - devilled kidneys on toast. I'd never had kidneys before and was a bit apprehensive, but if the devilled kidneys here are anything to go by, I've missed out big time. They were fantastic, soft and tasty in a lovely thick sauce. My pie and mash for main was brilliant, with crisp pastry and lots of filling, and my pudding was equally good (though thankfully not equally meaty!). Service was not excellent, but still good and overall a brilliant meal that we all enjoyed.

I'm looking forward to going back and trying some of the other options on the menu, I hope they won't disappoint!

Modern British food, made in house. Yes that's right in house. It is a chain yet it still feels family run which is nice. It is a Coeliac's dream as you can ask the front of house mgr what is in what dish and they know as they create it themselves from scratch! We visited last year and saw a great FOH mgr who had a notebook packed with GF options. Visited again this year and the guy had left so service was a little patchy. However, we can recommend that if you need a great long slow sunday lunch to blow away the cobwebs of a wild night before - then this is it. Perched on the South Bank you can sit outside and watch the world saunter by or dine inside. We opted for the latter. It has a quirky design, very minimalist so that you almost feel you're in a library that just happens to offer great food. The wine list is amazing although a tad pricey as this is the South Bank. We ate the buttered Arbroath smokie and had roast chicken or was it duck (?) for main with great greens. Note: the Smokie is billed as a starter yet is huge so come hungry!

The staff were friendly and very open to adapting dishes to make them gluten free. It's a great choice for a lazy Sunday meal with a partner or friends that are visiting the city and want to see the South Bank. Do watch the price. Dishes quickly add up and they add 12.5% service charge to your bill. So more a place for an occassional than regular gluten free bite. If you take a date there you can wind up the evening by wandering over to Skylon for some great gluten free cocktails and soaking up the sunset over the river Thames!

I ordered a main course beetroot, broad bean, pea and cheese salad today. At a price of £9.60 I expected it to be reasonably substantial. Cue a small plate with perhaps 4-5 tablespoons of veg and a few thin shavings of cheese on top - this barely even looked like a small side salad. I can't believe there was more than about 30p worth of ingredients here, which would make the markup about 3000%. Sent it back and ordered something else. To be fair it was handled gracefully and my replacement meal was offered free, which suggests that the manager quietly agreed the dish was a rip off (I guess this is a franchise and the menu is outside his control). If you play it safe (pies, chicken and chips) you can eat well here, but choose carefully.

I have visited this restaurant twice and have walked out both times. The first time myself and a friend visited, we were seated and we ordered two drinks, after 20minutes the drinks had not arrived and the waiter had also not been back to take our food order so we decided to walk out, without any concern from any of the waiting staff. I then, being a gluten for punishment, re-visited this restaurant last Monday, again myself and a friend were seated, this time however the waiter did not ever return to even take our drinks order, and i again walked out after sitting idle for 15minutes. I really genuinely do not recommend this restaurant, the staff are unorganised and are unconcerned with customer service.

Interestingly straighforward and unfussy - a good spot for a quick bite to eat before popping round the corner to the BFI or National.

To their credit, the up-beat table staff were able to cheerfully deal with our picky group of six, who all arrived at different times.A plainish menu, featuring in the evening an array of "basic"starters, mains ( including macaroni cheese!), salads ( chicken, tarragon, and walnut - highly recommended), and desserts, along with a choice of two pies ( one vegetarian, one not) and a "day-boat special" ( think fish and chips). Food is pretty reasonable all round,for example the haddock and chips was uninspiring pub-standard, but won't provide an exceptional dining experience, and there is also an interesting selection of beers on the drinks list - I'd recommend the Hooky Gold.

Really enjoyed this - classic British cooking, simple and well done, and without a huge amount of fuss.

The restaurant itself was very busy when we turned up and we ended up taking a table outside, but this might not be so doable in the winter months!

A little on the pricey side, but not extortionate and a lot better than some of the other options nearby. Desserts were particularly good.

Took a friend there for his birthday (his choice) and thought it was terrible. We had to wait half an hour for a table even though there were plenty free. The staff didn't seem very interested in actually serving us - I had to go and ask the manager if we could have second bottle of wine (there were four of us) after we'd had no luck with three waiting staff.

Someone seemed to have had a paper fight in the toilets, which had loo roll all over the seats and on the floor.

After complaining we were given free coffees and then they added a cheeky extra dessert to our bill!

The food was a bit meh to be honest and after their casual attitude to charging us I wouldn't go back.

aw, bless'em.
Picked this place to meet with a friend and her terrible-two baby for a coffee and a bit to eat. It is really light and airy with big wooden tables. a few more private booths and outdoor tables on the terrace. It's on the rear side of Royal Festival Hall, so no river views, but the service makes up for that. We instatly were told we could leave a buggy in a spcae near the door and were brought a high chair. Nothing was too much trouble and our waiter took extra care to be nice to my little friend. They were also very accommodating about the fact that during the 45 mins my friend and I were there, he managed to arrange half a box of raisins, a ham sandwich picked into 1/2cm pieces and some grate carrot on the floor under his chair.
Whoops!
All-in-all a great place for family eats - casual, fairly cheap, good service and child-tolerant!

I was pleasantly suprised by Canteen on South Bank. Being on South Bank I expected it to be poor quality food, expensive and bad service. However, the service was friendly, the steak I had really was brilliant and at 8pm it was still warm so we couls sit outside in their really pleasant seating.

Great place for a bite to eat in the evening, would definitely recommend. We only had a main course but on a previous visit I have tried the Neils Yard cheese which is always a winner!

Only downside is that it's slightly overrpriced but most likley because of its position. You must go.

Sometimes a long leisurely meal is not what you want. Sometimes you need to get in and out like a viking raid (minus the raping and pillaging of course). It’s amazing the way a need for quality food at speed reduces your choice.

Unless of course you go down the sarnie and drink route – a quick Pret, an Eat or, god fobid, a Greggs style abberation. But there is a third way. The Canteen way.

Canteen isn't the place for a long dinner with many courses, while the emphasis is modern British food, it’s not St Johns or Rules. It highlights on the menu the dishes that come quickest out of the kitchen for goodness sake.

But it also highlights that everything is made in those very kitchens, from the buttered Arbroath smokies to the piccalilli. No “special sauce” or Heinz mayo here. No siree.

So I don’t mind sharing a 6 person table with two other couples, I don’t mind the odd average dish, because you know what? It’s a damn site better than anything else you can get nearby at the same speed.

It’s a bit like the calculation I made as a wayward teen, applying some fiendish algorithm to determine which wine brought most alcoholic bang for my (minimal) buck.

Here it's the small dishes that deliver on the bang-for-your-buck scale. I went straight for devilled kidneys on toast with a side of chips and some spring greens.

The kidneys were great. Properly meaty without that bitter edge you can get if they’re not absolutely fresh. The texture was firm but not chewy and they put just the right amount of cayenne kick into the sauce.

They came perched on a delightfully tangy, stretchy piece of toast that lent a certain crunch to the affair. Greens were fresh and tasty and the chips were decent.

My friend went for the roast chicken and I was surprised both at how good it tasted – juicy, darkly meaty and distinctly free range – and the size. This was no stunted teen (or accelerated toddler) this was a properly matured fowl. The skin was properly crisped too. Delicious.

And the whole lot, including 2 caraffs of wine and a pint of Meantime IPA came to something under £40.

I'd give it 3.5 stars if I could.

I like Canteen where I had a breakfast of bacon, eggs and bubble & squeak at their Royal Festival Hall branch. A special mention goes to their front of house as they dealt with a long delay caused by a table number mix-up with courtesy and charm. I almost felt guilty in accepting my breakfast for free.

We've been here more than to any other place in the Southbank part of London, convenient to Southbank and The National, but count it really as a cafe, which I think is their best food--the all day breakfast and the desserts. Especially recommend the Welsh rarebit, the pear and almond tart and the scones with cream. They don't always bring you enough cream and are not always great about letting you have takeaway for what's left. Worse, the service is VERY spotty probably because the 12.5 per cent tip is built into your bill so they're getting a tip no matter what the service. Still, it's a sweet and friendly place, what's good is great, and the whole family likes it. One other oddity--tey only take 30 per cent reservations--for the rest you have to chance it, so by all means book early if you can!

From the outside, this looks like a no-frills cafeteria style restaurant. However, the prices are a bit shocking, and more suited to a proper restaurant.

There is a good selection of dishes on the menu, as well as a daily rotating selection. But with a fish and chips at £12+, and the quality of the food just so-so, this is rather expensive and you're much better off just going to the Pizza Express or the Chez Gerard down the road. If you have more to spend, try to Ping Pong just round the corner instead.

I've been to Canteen a few times, but always for dinner. I always see people enjoying nice breakfasts reading the paper on Sunday mornings, why not give it a whirl?

I didn't want anything too big or heavy, so I opted for the £4 poached egg on toast.

The calorie-conscious American in me nearly had a heart attack when I saw how much butter they put on the toast. It was seriously soggy, though I know part of that may have been the egg. Another thing: one egg was cooked more than the other. I don't like my egg too runny, so obviously I liked one, but not so much the second.

The bread they used was lovely, but I kept dreaming about the raisin toast at One O One.

All in all, it was good, but I won't be going out of my way to have breakfast there again.

We were looking for somewhere to have tea and cake on a very busy Thames Festival day on South Bank. We considered the Royal Festival Hall cafeteria, but it was absolutely manic, noisy, kids everywhere and not a great selection of cake!

We stumbled upon Canteen, on the backside of RFH, and it was an oasis of calm in comparison. The scones were fantastic, and the menu also offers an eclectic range of yummy things from fishfinger sandwiches, marmite on toast and bowls of sausage rolls to a full roast, pies, etc.

What a great little find. Tucked away behind Royal Festival Hall, away from the river front, Canteen serves nice food at reasonable prices (well, for a tourist area in London, anyway).

We just stopped off for tea and cake and were really torn, which ones to go for opting for the equally excellent chocolate and beetroot cake, scones with cream and home-made jam, and carrot cake. Nice big pot of tea each and good coffee. Will be returning some time for a meal.

One of three or four in London. This is a great place for a meal before or after some culture on the South Bank and rather cheaper than the NT and RFH in-house restaurants. It’s also less manic than the rather more family-oriented restaurants round the other side of the Festival Hall. Open all day. Book a table or you’re likely to get directed to the tables with the backless chairs.

We have been meaning to try this place for some time and went finally for dinner yesterday. Not impressed with the overall looks of the place, lacked a bit of colour and passion however looked cosy and friendly.
We waited about 20minutes for our starters which in the end were simple but delicious. The main course arrived about at least another 20 minutes later which was quite disappointing. My salad as main course was tasty but quite small and stingy on the chicken for a price of £9.50. My husband’s pie mash, greens and gravy dish was really very good. I have had tea afterwards form a well-stained teapot and add the toilets were nowhere near as good or clean as what such a popular restaurant should have.
We have quite mixed impressions about Canteen. We would not run back to it for another meal however would certainly give it another try in the future.