Arriving in Canary Wharf on a Thursday night – if you haven’t been for a while – is like landing on a different planet. Here everything is clean, new, made of glass and steel – and of course the dress code is strictly business. More importantly, for anyone contemplating opening a bar or restaurant – this is clearly where the recession is a word for a phenomenon that’s happening somewhere else.
Hot Dinners was in Canary Wharf to try out The Parlour – the latest all day ‘bar/kitchen’ from the company that’s behind the similarly-themed Refinery in Southwark. When we saw the heaving crowds of suits drinking outside, we felt the need to bolster our confidence with drinks in Roka’s new Canary Wharf outpost – which is handily situated the floor above The Parlour on Canada Square. Roka was similarly busy (this was the night before JP Morgan paid an average of £230k to 4,000 of its London staff so maybe that’s why everyone around here looked so happy). As you’d expect from Rainer Becker’s empire, Roka Canary Wharf was sharp and well-designed with service that was slick and snappy.
Suitably refreshed by a carafe of chenin blanc, we girded our loins and headed downstairs to the Parlour. Our entrance brought us through the main bar area, which takes up the bulk of this space. It was loud, noisy and heaving – words to gladden the heart of any restaurant manager – but made us feel like turning on our heels and running. We were glad we didn’t.
We were swiftly led into the restaurant proper which, although not separated in any meaningful way, was thankfully much quieter. Seating arrangements ranged from counter dining to high tables with bar stools and normal tables. The decor is urban – lots of exposed concrete softened with retro light fittings and backing on to an open kitchen.
Service here was as on-the-ball as it had been at Roka (are city folk more demanding and vocal about bad service we wondered?). Although a little light up-selling was employed, it didn’t take that much to persuade us to try a few drinks from the skinny cocktail list. This being January after all, it was good to know just how many calories our skinny blueberry sour and grape martini contained. They may been low on calories, but they had plenty of taste.
From here we meandered through the menu, starting with a mammoth platter of bread and olives, followed by prawn and lemongrass lollipops with citrus-soy dipping sauce and merguez sausage with rosemary rock salt potatoes to start. The prawn lollipops was the winner, sweet and fresh with a tempura-light batter and appealingly presented, standing to attention on a wooden block.
At this stage one of us stuck to the regular menu, ordering the Parlour beefburger. This was equally massive and a decent treatment of well-sourced meat from Alleyns of Mayfair. I went for the specials, choosing a lobster and crab risotto, which was pleasingly unctuous and flecked with chilli to save it from being too cloying.
For desserts – yes we had just a smidgeon of room at this stage – we tried the crème brulee (the crème being a little thin for our taste, but the crust suitably brittle) as well as deconstructed bread and butter pudding (which was good, but defeated us in the end). Throughout, the service was attentive and friendly without being over-familar – pitch-perfect in fact.
While we might not have trekked all the way out to Canary Wharf specifically to visit the Parlour, we thought it was a good find and definitely worth filing away as a place to go should you find yourself in this area anytime soon.
