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Review

Cantina Vinopolis

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1 Bank End SE1 Tel: 020 7940 8333
Cost: about £25 – 30

For anyone who has ever been to a winery in France, Italy, Spain or Portugal, there will be something very familiar about Cantina Vinopolis. It’s not jus the terracotta floor tiles, or the ladderback rush seat chairs. It’s something about the quasi-industrial look, a room with a purpose. In character, this is very much the cantina dining room, recreated on the South Bank and part of the greater whole of Vinopolis, a rather stunning wine museum (for lack of a better word), shop and tasting complex all celebrating the glories of the grape. And not a bottling plant in sight, nor an over-eager wine maker who wants to show it off.

Built under railway arches, the curved ceiling is dramatically tall, the kitchen at the back of the room is mostly open and the menu has been created with wine in mind. And it is worth mentioning that there are a lot of wines to be had by the glass and the staff are quite keen to help find the right one for your food.

The menu is quite short – five starters, three salads, two pastas, for meat and five fish – with a contemporary blend of Mediterranean and Eastern. Call it Mediterrasian. Sashimi of salmon is quite gingery-tart with pickled ginger, spiced up with spring onion, pink peppercorns and a slightly sweetned soya dressing. Beef carpaccio is quite classical, with tapenade, confit tomatoes, capers, on a bed of rocket with shavings of Parmesan.

Grilled tuna with potatoes, French beans, anchovies and tapenade is a reconstructed Nicoise salad, very well presented. Poached haddock and poached egg with bubble and squeak and sauce Nantaise is unreconstructed comfort food of the piscine variety, nicely putting thoughts of foot and mouth out of mind, except when a smart-guy food writer mentions it all over again. A request for a light red to accompany this brought a flurry of interest from one of the wine waiters, who brought small tastings of three wines before we mutually settled on a pinot noir. Desserts, like sticky toffee pudding, cinnamon rice pudding and pineapple and polenta tart, sound quite tempting. Very handy for the South Bank/London Bridge area.