Review of Carnation Canteen restaurant

Updated October 12, 2026,first published November 18, 2024

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Katie McCormack Young Service Talent Award 2027

Owner-chef Audrey Shaw is a former architect, and her design sensibility lingers in every detail here: the pink marble-topped bar, handmade tables, fresh flowers that contrast beautifully with the cracked paintwork.

Farmers, fishers and makers are credited on the back of the handwritten menu, and staff speak about them with genuine enthusiasm – so too the low-intervention producers who populate the wine list. Cubes of raw eye fillet are tumbled over soft Grecian cheese and bread rubbed with purple garlic: gloriously messy, keenly balanced. Baby snapper, charcoal-grilled and finished with olive oil and lemon, is measured yet thrilling.

Lamb backstrap lands with tomato sugo, reduced over many hours, alongside sweet negi leeks in cumin-spiked yoghurt: rustic cooking with real finesse. Flan Parisien veers gently towards Greece, glazed with honey and sesame and resting on filo pastry. Done this well, simplicity never feels too simple.

Good to know: The walk-in courtyard is heated through the colder months.

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