Close to Limerick City Gallery of Art, Canteen is a tiny, but popular café on a street in the picturesque Georgian part of town with its sights clearly set on sustainability and local produce.
Originally opened as a ‘pop-up’, chef-patron Paul Williams continues to serve pared back modern food with a healthy angle from this miniature café. A Tipperary native, Paul had spent some time in the kitchen of Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck restaurant before returning to Limerick.
Canteen is a happy marriage of two of the most popular recent food trends, the new breed of trendy pop-up style restaurants and ‘food truck’ cuisine. It looks like nothing special, but when there's nothing else to look at, the spotlight comes to rest firmly on the food. The decor is plain to the point of spartan, but at Canteen provenance is prized above all else.
The food is fresh, clean and vibrant and full of flavour. These are good ingredients, treated well or “simple things done right” as Mr William's says himself. This applies both to the food and the coffee.
Opening early at 8am for the city centre workforce's morning coffee hit. Breakfast features Crowe's Farm sausage and bacon on a Wild Onion Bakery bagel and Flahavan's porridge and locally made Aztecs yogurt.
For an inexpensive lunch you can choose between lunch boxes, wraps or salads to eat in or takeaway. There are good soups and soft drinks freshly made every day, changing seasonally and made with natural ingredients. Try a crunchy dukkah mix sprinkled on mackerel, pea and hazelnut salad or organic lamb meatballs cooked in plum tomato sauce with wholemeal couscous.
There is plenty of choice for vegetarians with an exotic selection of wraps like lime and chill halloumi or Gobi vegetable curry lunchbox to pick from. For those with a sweet tooth, there are treats like flourless double chocolate brownies, banana and walnut bread or a bee-pollen infused chocolate caramel coffee slice.
There is a highly rated brunch and some occasional evening events. There are themed pop-up nights such as Burger night, Mexican night or Sushi-Sushi night, an evening of miso soup, sushi and green tea with a dollop of fiery wasabi.
This is feel good food with exceptional locally blended Badger and Dodo coffee to boot. The service is downbeat and there are no frills and fancies to speak of. But there's no need when the food speaks for itself. It's good festival food, expect biodegradable cups, cardboard serving boxes and disposable wooden cutlery.
This is one of a very few restaurants in Limerick offering ‘superfoods’, but as they say at Canteen "different is good".
