Big eats at Ben’s Canteen

Posted on April 10, 2013 by benscanteen

If you’ve got a hunger then come see us at the Canteen.

Tonight (Weds) it’s Ribs Night. We’ve got a whole rack of baby back ribs waiting for you – served with hand cut chips and slaw. We’re also doing some specials; nachos with pulled pork or chilli and a deep fried banana split with homemade peanut butter ice cream.

Then on Thursday it’s Munchies night. Basically this is an excuse to indulge; join us for pizza chips, a mega cheesy meatball sub and a peanut butter and jam ice cream sandwich. Pig Out!

Of course we’ll also be serving our regular dinner menu which is full of dirty burgers (and some lighter bites such as the Benny Benny Chicken which is a carb free zone and our Mackerel Nicoise). We’ve got the original BC Burger, a beef patty topped with home brined beef (#doublebeef) and smoked cheddar, then we’ve got the Sloppy Ben (topped with homemade chilli con carne) and the Big Benny Melt (topped with Mac & Cheese, yep Mac & Cheese).

Talking of big eats, have you tried the Chilli Cheese Dog yet? Two all beef dogs smothered in chilli con carne and melted cheese.

Don’t forget, we’re not just about food… we do a fine line in drinkies too. We’ve got a bunch of cocktails, some awesome gins (including some you’ve probably never tried), a pretty cool wine list which includes Greek and Lebanese wine (which are superb value for money and crucially taste great) and Meantime London Lager and Pale Ale on tap with Curious Brew and Sambrooks in the fridge. Good times.

Little Bird Gin at Ben’s Canteen

Posted on March 18, 2013 by benscanteen

If you’ve been into the Canteen recently and gazed at our gin shelf then you may have noticed a bottle called Little Bird. It’s top notch stuff and you’ll probably spot Ben sipping on it as it’s currently his favourite gin.

Chances are you probably don’t know a lot about Little Bird, so here’s the lowdown,

In 2011, 50 gin enthusiasts, drinks industry professionals and friends assembled in Peckham Rye, London, to blind taste 50 different bottles of gin and score each one on nose and taste.

Clear choices for more citrussy flavours and much lighter juniper tastes came out and team Little Bird started to develop a recipe to appeal to a more modern palate.

After a year of testing, trialing and sampling, the final recipe for Little Bird Gin was born and the first batch of just 1,122 bottles was made to the exact recipe. Since then, knowledge and delight in Little Bird Gin spreads through word of mouth.

Little Bird Gin’s Vital Stats

Home: London
Style: London Dry, of course!
Aromas: Grapefruit and orange, juniper and ginger spice.
Flavours: A buzz of grapefruit under your tongue and a rise in heat at the back of your mouth from the ginger and juniper.

Ben’s Canteen – The Weekend

Posted on May 25, 2012 by benscanteen

This week we’ve been loving the sunshine and reflecting that if you want breakfast, lunch, brunch, dinner or just drinks around Clapham Junction, Wandsworth, Battersea or Clapham then St John’s Hill is a belter of a street for it.

Anyways, here’s what’s going down at the Canteen…

We’re now keeping our kitchen open all day on Saturday, normally we close it between 4 and 6pm but no longer.
We’re getting massively into Sipsmith’s Summer Cup, this genuine rival to Pimms is going to make your weekend an awesome one.
We run a super popular brunch but we wanted to spice it up some more. So, we’ve created a Bloody Mary menu - come and try it out this weekend.
On the subject of booze, we’ve never been so excited about a shelf, behold our Gin Shelf.
Ditch those Sunday blues with our Sunday Roast. We serve it from 2pm every Sunday. Enjoy Roast Orkney Beef, Pork Belly or Roasted Chicken with roasties, cauliflower cheese and broccoli, greens, root veg mash and yorkies.
With an eye on next week, you should come and try out our new lunch menu – we’ve added a bunch of news salads, fish cakes and more.
Time and Leisure just nominated us as one of London’s best local restaurants, if you like us then would you be so terribly kind as to vote for us here?!
Also, Ben recently got interviewed by our friends at Le Cool, click here to read the interview.
To add to our British food, done well ethos and British beers we’ve added a selection of English wines (British wines means something else), including a cracking sparkling by Chapel Down. Come and run the rule over them this weekend and let us know what you think.

Eating and Drinking in Clapham Junction, Battersea

Posted on May 21, 2012 by benscanteen

Last week was the St John’s Hill Fabulous Feast, a week long celebration of food and drink. It reminded us that St John’s Hill is a seriously good spot for food and drink.

You’ve got The Plough, Powder Keg Diplomacy, The Birdhouse, The Fish Club, Adulis and more… all of which surely makes it a wee bit more interesting than Northcote Road and probably the most exciting street for bars and restaurants in Battersea, especially as it’s a stone’s throw from Clapham Junction?!

So, what do we here at Ben’s Canteen bring to the street?

Well we see ourselves as an all rounder, we aim to serve you a top notch coffee with brekkie or brunch, something tasty for lunch, a treat for tea and a cracking dinner with drinks being served via our bar all day and night.

Chiefly, we see ourselves as an alternative to the pub. Don’t get us wrong, we love a boozer but we got a bit bored of tap after tap of beer (most of them generic continental lagers) and numerous big screens with Sky Sports News on loop but where do you go to escape that? Whilst keeping everything equally relaxed? That’s what we strive to be.

We want to be that place where you can drop in on your own or grab some friends and catch up over drinks and simple but super tasty food. We love the fact that Clapham Junction is just a short stroll from the Canteen as it means you should be able to persuade your friends who live that little bit further away to drop in and hang out with you.

To help become this place we serve breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner every day. We serve British food, done well. We’re infamous for our All Day Breakfast Scotch Egg and the BC Burger has been named as one of the Top 10 in London.

Obviously to become your alternative to the pub we need plenty of booze, we’ve tried to make it interesting and a little different. So, we work with small independent brewers, such as local boys Sambrook’s. We’ve put together an interesting wine list that features some English wine, not least a sparkling one in the form of Primrose Hill by Chapel Down. We’ve put in a special Gin shelf which features gins from small London distillers such as Sipsmith, SW4 and Portobello Road.

Remember, that unlike a lot of new trendy hangouts, you can actually book a table at Ben’s Canteen - click here to reserve yours now.

Ben’s Canteen – The Weekender

Posted on May 18, 2012 by benscanteen

This week has been all about The Fabulous Feast on St John’s Hill – and this weekend sees the street’s celebration of food and drink go up another gear with all sorts of events and activities taking place, including a bunch of pop-up stalls.

Here’s what’s going down at the Canteen…

We’re going to keep our kitchen open all day on Saturday, normally we close it between 4 and 6pm but not for The Fabulous Feast.
We run a super popular brunch but we wanted to spice it up some more. So, we’ve created a Bloody Mary menu - come and try it out this weekend.
On the subject of booze, we’ve never been so excited about a shelf, behold our Gin Shelf.
Ditch those Sunday blues with our Sunday Roast. We serve it from 2pm every Sunday. Enjoy Roast Orkney Beef, Pork Belly or Roasted Chicken with roasties, cauliflower cheese and broccoli, greens, root veg mash and yorkies.
Sunday night, at 8pm, will see Murderous Cupcakes in the Canteen, we think it’s going to be fun, you should come.
We’re getting massively into Sipsmith’s Summer Cup, this genuine rival to Pimms is making us feel all summery in lieu of any actual sun.
Time and Leisure just nominated us as one of London’s best local restaurants, if you like us then would you be so terribly kind as to vote for us here?!
Also, Ben recently got interviewed by our friends at Le Cool, click here to read the interview.
To add to our British food, done well ethos and British beers we’ve added a selection of English wines (British wines means something else), including a cracking sparkling by Chapel Down. Come and run the rule over them this weekend and let us know what you think.

The Gin Shelf at Ben’s Canteen

Posted on May 10, 2012 by benscanteen

As you know at Ben’s Canteen we serve British food, done well. We’re now extending this British ethos across our drinks offering as much as possible. With this in mind we’ve started a gin shelf at the Canteen.

On the shelf we currently have,

Sipsmith
Jensen
SW4
Portobello Road
Hendricks
Hoxton
Bombay Sapphire
Millers

Gin is actually our favourite spirit so we’re seriously looking forward to getting stuck into this line up and we think you should join us.

If there is a gin you’d like us to add to the list then drop us a line or tell us when you’re next in and we will try and source it.

Bloody Mary Menu at Ben’s Canteen

Posted on May 9, 2012 by benscanteen

Here at Ben’s Canteen we run the busiest and best brunch in South West London but we got to thinking, how can we spice it up?

Then it hit us… lets introduce a Bloody Mary menu, so now you can spice up your day not just with our traditional Bloody Mary (using top notch British Vodka from Sipsmith), but also,

Bloody Maria (Tequila)
Bloody Ruin (Gin)
Bloody Pirate (Rum)
Bloody Drunk Monk (Brandy and Vodka)
Virgin Mary (booze free but spicy)

Remember, we don’t just serve brunch at weekends, we actually serve it everyday (Mon-Fri 10am to 4pm, Sat 9am to 4pm and Sun 9am to 1.30pm). So grab some friends and pop down to the Canteen for a spicy hit in the form of one of our new Bloody Mary’s and some eggs, some gossip, some hangover chat, some papers, some escape from the rat race, some eye candy and all round good times.

Bank Holiday Weekend

Posted on August 26, 2011 by benscanteen

Right, its time to get this Bank Holiday Weekend started! Our bar is open all weekend and we’ve had a fresh delivery of London Lager so things are looking good. We’ve also had a fresh batch of the lovely Jeio prosecco delivered, so there is plenty of fizz in the Canteen. For the gin lovers amongst you we’ve got Hendricks, Sipsmith and Whitley Neill (our house pour) and we do a nice twist on a mojito in the form of a Louisiana Jam.

Of course the Bank Holiday isn’t all about getting trollied! We’re doing a full dinner service tonight, followed by brunch tomorrow. On Saturday night we’ll be doing a full dinner service and then on Sunday and Monday we’ll be doing brunch followed by tapas, from the contact grills on the bar, and grazing plates in the evenings – it’s going to be fun!

One final piece of news, for all you burger lovers, you can now add Montgomery Cheddar or Dorset Blue Vinny (both from Hamish Johnston), tasty as hell.

Bar Snacks/Starters

Pork Pie: £5

Traditional or pork and stilton with chutney and mustard – pies are from the award winning Mrs King.

Scotch Egg: £2.50

Egg encased in meat and breadcrumbs.

Cheeseboard: £7.25

A selection of cheeses from Northcote Road food hero, Hamish Johnston.

Charcuterie Board: £5.95

Selection of cold meats with chutney, pickles and toasted ciabatta.

Tartiflette: £5.95

Bacon, roast potatoes and grilled cheese on sourdough toast.

Quails Egg Salad: £5.25

Salad of rocket, parmesan and quails eggs.

Calamari: £6.95

Salt and pepper calamari, peppers, cucumber, thai style sweet chilli sauce and caramelised peanuts.

Mains

Cod: £12.25

Oven roasted cod with chickpeas, chorizo and tomatoes.

Sirloin Steak: £15.50

Sirloin steak with a peppercorn rub, dauphinoise and roasted tomato.

Beef Burger: £9.00 (add emmental cheese £1, add Montgomery Cheddar/Dorset Blue Vinny £1.50, add bacon £1)

British beef burger served with date chutney and chips.

Pork Belly: £14.25

Confit pork belly on colcannon with roasting juices.

Linguine: £7.95

Linguine with fire roasted peppers, vine tomatoes and basil.

Watermelon & Haloumi Salad: £6.50

Watermelon with haloumi and cucumber.

Sides

All sides are £3

Chips

Mash

Spinach with lemon and garlic butter

Green Beans

Broccoli

Side Salad

Desserts

Jude’s Ice Cream. Choose 3 Scoops: Raspberry Ripple, Salted Caramel, Vanilla or Double Chocolate. £3.50

Classic Cheese Cake. £4.95

Warm Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream & Berry Couli. £4.95

Eton Mess. £4.95

White Chocolate and Cointreau Crème Brulee. £4.95

Oh and as much as we personally hate to share we really don’t mind if you want to share your desserts, we’ve got plenty of spoons.

Cheeseboard

£7.25

Our cheeses come from Hamish Johnston, a local food hero on Northcote Road.

On the board we currently have,

Lincolnshire Poacher

Stinking Bishop (much nicer than the name may suggest)

Shropshire Blue

Woolsery Goat’s Cheese

Serving Brunch, Dinner & Drinks, 7 Days A Week

Tag Archives: Gin