04.04.13 - Waterloo

The Wigmores’ house doesn’t look the way you expect an artisanal cheesemaker’s to look. From the outside, the house is a mixture of countryside and suburban and you would never guess that, at the end of the garden, in a converted workshop and stables hides a fully functioning dairy. The size of the dairy too belies the work that goes on inside. Somehow in their small rooms, the Wigmores produce 3 great cheeses.

Anne and Andy Wigmore came to cheesemaking after trying other employment and finding it wasn’t for them: Andy is a former journalist and Anne a former microbiologist and cheesemaker at the National Institute for Research into Dairying; in fact she’s the only one of our producers to have such a technical background. Their first cheese was Spenwood, a hard ewes milk cheese, followed by Wigmore. These recipes were then adapted to Guernsey milk when they had an arrangement with the Duke of Wellington’s estate to make cheese from the milk of his herd. The cows cheeses were named Wellington and Waterloo after the estate. They no longer buy milk from the Wellington Estate, but from a farm near Henley and around that time, they decided to stop making Wellington and concentrate on its more popular counterpart Waterloo.

Waterloo is a washed curd cheese, which means that during the make, a quantity of whey is replaced with water, before the curds are drained and moulded. Removing the whey has the effect of taking out some of the acidity and usually washed curd cheeses have a gentle flavour.

Every year we are invited by the British Ambassador in Paris to serve cheese at a big garden party in honour of the Queen’s official birthday. The first year we were invited, wanting to show off the quality of British soft cheeses, we took Waterloo. Once there and faced with a queue of french diplomats some in military uniform and displaying rows of medals, we realised we’d not made the most tactful choice. Luckily the flavour of the cheese convinced them … that and the fact that we temporarily renamed it Austerlitz!

04.04.13 - Isle of Mull cheddar

Along the fragmented coastline of West Scotland lies the Isle of Mull, a bleak and beautiful landmass of mountains, lakes and small sheltered woodlands, no longer than thirty miles in length and twenty across. Tobermory is its only town, with a third of the island’s population of 3,000. Jeff and Chris Reade moved from Somerset, where they had been making cheddar, to Scriob Ruadh Farm (pronounced Ski-Brua and meaning Red Furrow) in 1979.

At that time, the farm was a shell: the farmhouse had no roof and the first thing they had to do was put a roof over the cowshed (it promptly blew off in a storm). It was 1999 before they had fully roofed the farmhouse as housing their herd and building a dairy took precendence. The Reades milk about 100 cows, mainly Friesian but with some Jersey, Ayrshire and Brown Swiss too.

Chris and Jeff have four sons who also live on the island. Two of them (Brendan and Garth) work on the farm and their brothers run a hotel on the west of the island and a bakery in Tobermory respectively. Back at Scriob Ruadh, Garth is the herdsman and Brendan looks after all their equipment. It is too expensive to get a mechanic over from the mainland if something breaks so Brendan can build and fix everything from tractors to computers.

Life on an island requires the Reade family to be resourceful and to use local resources as much as possible. Even feeding the cows provides challenges. Summers are short and the cows are kept inside for a lot of the year. In order to avoid supplementing the cows diet with expensive feeds from suppliers on the mainland, the Mull cows are fed the spent grain husks from the whisky distillery at Tobermory which is called draff. The Reades collect draff from Tobermory. It is mixed in with sileage and fed to the cows. It smells and tastes winey and fermented, which contributes to the yeasty, feisty, sharp flavours in the cheese. The pale colour, is also due to the cows diet being low in grass. Sileage, draff and hay contain less carotene than fresh grass and carotene is one of the things that colours other cheddars golden.

04.04.13 - Innes Log

Stella and Joe Bennett make their goat’s cheeses beneath heavy oak beams in a converted stable on a Georgian-era manor farm in Staffordshire. The cheeses are made using the milk of their own 350 goats, who live in several airy stables nearby. Up until last year, Joe sold his surplus milk to St Helen’s Dairy, purveyors of goat’s milk dairy products, but with the growing success of his business he decided to leave that contract and focus on turning all of their milk into their own cheeses.

Innes Log is one of a very few cheeses developed through collaboration between cheesemakers and Neal’s Yard Dairy, and showcases our commitment to working directly with our suppliers to provide feedback directly from customers and channel that energy into improving our cheeses. The Bennetts’ original flagship cheese is Bosworth Ash, a white Penicillium candidum-rinded log that often develops a sharp ‘goaty’ flavour during its maturation. Wishing to move away from this prickly profile for a new cheese, we worked with Joe to develop a cheese with a thinner, moleskin-like Geotrichum candidum rind, which has less tendency to become ammoniated and has a warmer and more savoury flavour.

We also experimented with switching out the vegetarian rennet they used for kid’s rennet imported from France. (While the Bennetts have maintained their use of Penicillium in the Bosworth ash, the improved flavours imparted by the rennet were such a success that they now use it for all their cheeses.)

The Innes Log is a yoghurty lactic cheese that is rolled in ash when it is very young, giving it its distinctive grey colour and lowering the acidity of the surface of the cheese, helping the first rind-forming spores to take root and grow. The hallmarks of the flavours of both of Joe’s cheeses are their gentle complexity; there are layers of savoury warmth balanced by the subtle and refreshing lactic tang of the yoghurty curds.

04.04.13 - Cashel Blue

The Grubb family have a long tradition of
food and farming in the area around Cashel.
In the 1800s they were millers. Louis’s father,
Samuel Grubb, bought Beechmount Farm
and its 150 acres in the 1930’s and in 1978,
Louis Grubb, having recently returned from
working in agricultural research in the West
of Ireland settled there with his wife, Jane and
their young daughter Sarah.

Their initial efforts concentrated on
establishing a commercial dairy herd,
however, in light of changing European
Agricultural policy, Louis and Jane were
anxious not to get tied into the depressingly
relentless and constrained regime of
supplying milk to the local creamery. Jane,
who had worked for several years as a chef,
suggested making cheese and as there were
no great blue cheeses in Ireland at the time,
they decided to make one. After a couple of
years experimentation on the kitchen stove
and then in a 20 gallon copper brewer’s
vat Cashel Blue came into being. In 2003
Sarah, Jane and Louis’s daughter, returned to
Tipperary, having worked in the wine trade
where she met her husband Sergio and they
both have joined the family business.

The Cashel Blue that we buy at Neal’s Yard
Dairy are selected in order to achieve a longer
maturation.
The Cashel Blue that’s destined for us is
identified at about 3 weeks when it will taste
sweet and lactic, with just a hint of blue. Just
before it is sent to us, it is tasted again. At this
stage the cheese is turning creamy and the
blue taking a firmer grip

19.03.13 - General Manager

Are you positive and motivating?

Would you describe yourself as hands-on?

Are you straightforward, level-headed and sensible?

Will you share our passion for bringing high quality, reasonably priced British food to the high street?

Do others describe you as confident, organised and great with people?

Are you currently a general manager?

Are you able to deal with all aspects of the business, including:

Budgeting

Labour costs

Profit and loss accounts

Health and safety

Food hygiene

Employment law

Do you have experience of Fourth Hospitality software?

If you’ve answered yes to all these questions, we may well want to give you your own Canteen restaurant to run.

Please double check you’re the right person for Canteen here, then email us at jobs@canteen.co.uk, quoting ‘general manager job application’ in the subject line.

Interested? Here’s a bit more about us.

And more about the perks.

13.03.13 - Easter weekend opening hours

The following are our opening hours for the 2013 Easter holiday weekend:

04.03.13 - MOTHER’S DAY AT CANTEEN

Celebrate Mother’s Day at Canteen with Afternoon Tea for 4 and a bottle of Nyetimber sparkling wine for £75. Advance bookings required, by telephone only. Available at all restaurants, 2-5pm, Sunday 10 March.

07.01.13 - Join us in January for a main and a drink for just a tenner

Back to work after a relaxing Christmas break and fun New Year? Don’t despair.

From 7th – 30th January, we’re doing pie and mash or fish and chips, plus a pint of Meantime beer or a glass of house wine, for just £10 – a deal so good you might just have to come back for seconds.

Happy New Year from all of us here at Canteen.

14.12.12 - Christmas and New Year opening hours

Please see below for our holiday opening hours.  If a certain date is not listed, then we are open for normal business hours.

Baker Street:

• Monday 24 December:  10am – 3pm
• Tuesday 25 December: CLOSED
• Wednesday 26 December: 10am – 3pm
• Monday 31 December: 10am – 3pm
• Tuesday 1 January: 10am – 3pm

Canary Wharf:

• Monday 24 December:  10am – 3pm
• Tuesday 25 December: CLOSED
• Wednesday 26 December: CLOSED
• Monday 31 December: 10am – 3pm
• Tuesday 1 January: CLOSED

Covent Garden:

• Monday 24 December:  10am – 3pm
• Tuesday 25 December: CLOSED
• Wednesday 26 December: 11am – 6pm
• Monday 31 December: 10am – 11pm
• Tuesday 1 January: 11am – 6pm

Royal Festival Hall (Southbank):

• Monday 24 December:  10am – 3pm
• Tuesday 25 December: CLOSED
• Wednesday 26 December: CLOSED
• Monday 31 December: 8am – 12am (ticketed event after 6pm)
• Tuesday 1 January: 10am – 7pm

Spitalfields:

• Monday 24 December:  10am – 3pm
• Tuesday 25 December: CLOSED
• Wednesday 26 December: CLOSED
• Monday 31 December: 10am – 7pm
• Tuesday 1 January: 10am – 7pm

27.11.12 - Enjoy a great British NYE

See in 2013 in style at our Royal Festival Hall restaurant on the Southbank.

Tickets cost £75 and includes four courses of delicious British food, a glass of bubbly and, of course, the chance to watch one of the best firework displays in the world without having to fight for space in the official viewing areas.

Ticket numbers are limited, so book soon by calling Canteen Royal Festival Hall on 020 7620 2505 or emailing them at rfh@canteen.co.uk.