Canteen Review

Due to a smaller crowd last week, instead of our original destination we headed to Canteen. Canteen has always been on my list as a destination, but could never have been a regular outing because of its size -- Canteen only has seven counter seats and less than half dozen booths, each of which is smaller than the traditional four-seater booth.

Canteen, serving California cuisine in a place adjacent to a hotel not far from Union Square, was pretty good. And it was certainly fun to sit at the counter to watch the employees run around doing their jobs: the chef (a former Rubicon chef), one assistant chef (who prepared most of the appetizers, the amusebrioche, and plated most other dishes), one waiter, and one bus-woman.

Canteen serves seasonal food, meaning the menu changes often -- they reprint it daily, though I imagine a few items can remain for a month. All the same, I'll describe the items we ordered because the common theme of traditional ingredients with unusual presentations is likely ever-present.

When seated, they gave us a little item to tease our palettes: a small crunchy piece of bread topped with cranberries and tiny chunks of some sort of raw meat. The meat, with or without the cranberry and bread, was nothing special, but we definitely enjoyed the cranberry.

One appetizer we tried was the avocado salad. Served as a tall cylinder, the avocado was slightly mashed (into shape) with a bit of lemon and some ("sweet and sour") vinaigrette. It was tasty, with the acid from the lemon the vinegar serving as a nice counterpoint to the smoothness of the avocado.

The other appetizer, tuna confit, wasn't as good. Basically, tuna tossed with fennel and some flavor from orange rinds. It was okay.

Our favorite entree was the lamb, consisting of tender slices of both leg and loin served on a bed of mashed white beans. Personally I preferred the leg -and I found it rather neat to eat them side by side to compare- but both were good and with some character (from both the lamb flavor itself and from some cumin and chili flakes). I really liked the white beans too, both in flavor and texture (not quite pureed to a soup but not whole beans either).

The other entree, a sizable chunk of pork shank served next to a cabbage salad and a "potato cake", was still decent but not as good. The shank was unremarkable to me (but then I'm not that big a fan of pork in general). The only thing I remember about this dish was that the potato cake had character.

For desserts we had a fairly decent vanilla souffle -I have trouble judging because I don't like real vanilla that much- and a quite good chocolate crepe. The later was a slightly crispy chocolate crepe filled with a very good rich souffle-textured chocolate filling, all next to a tangerine sauce (that we ignored because it was too sweet).

Total was $52/person for a three course meal counting taxes and tips but not drinks. (Entrees are low $20s; appetizers and desserts are high single-digits. You don't need three courses to feel full.)

Original Announcement

Since Canteen was the result of a last minute change of venue, there was no original announcement.

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