Testimonials

The following is an abstract from an independent review of the Canopy restaurant posted by
Yee Gan O on Yelp.co.uk here. It awarded us four stars (out of five)!

"I love supporting local independent restaurants and so, I was really excited to spot the sign for The Canopy Restaurant as I drove through Epsom recently. It's nice to see a new place open despite the adverse economic climate.

For those with long enough memories, The Canopy occupies the site of the old Roosters fast food joint near the back entrance to the Ashley Centre. It closed amidst a sea of rumours and the site has been derelict for a few years.

My salsa friend Hilary and I booked to try The Canopy before we went dancing on Friday. They have given the space a good facelift - it brought a smile to my face to see a chandelier in the old Roosters space! The overall ambiance in the evening is quite intimate.

The menu immediately caught my eye - very cleverly written to have a broad appeal, cater to different markets but still retain a wow factor. They offer a nice lunch menu (sandwiches, create your own omelette, etc), a great value afternoon tea (unique for Epsom) as well as dinner, which has more grown-up dishes and some dishes with pizzazz like steaks being offered on volcanic hot rock, which is cooked at your table.

It was quite busy on Friday evening and we checked with our server that they would be able to serve us 3 courses before we had to leave for salsa. This demand for speed may have led to the kitchen making 1 or 2 tiny errors, like the mash for one of our main courses being a bit lumpy though the other mash was fine.

We shared a starter - spinach roulade with roasted red pepper cream, and saffron dressing. The plate was well dressed but we probably needed more of the punchy dressing to accompany the roulade which lacked a little flavour on its own

For main course, Hilary had the pan seared fillet of sea bass with Italian potatoes, vine tomatoes and caper-berry sauce - she enjoys fish and pronounced herself very satisfied with it and proved it with a clean plate.

I had the lamb's liver served on a bed of creamed potatoes topped with smoked bacon and onion gravy. This was a good combination of flavours - rich liver, salty bacon and sweet onion gravy. Presentation-wise, perhaps the liver could have done with searing on a griddle to develop those heavy scorch lines, which impart umami flavour but it tasted just fine.

The star turn of the evening though was an outstanding sticky toffee pudding with a rich toffee sauce. Our server was very sharp to straightaway notice that the vanilla ice cream was missing from our dish and this was duly delivered. The sticky toffee pudding was heavenly - light, moist and unctuous. Top marks!

This is their third week after opening and as the bugs are ironed out, I trust they'll go from strength to strength. I wish them every success and I hope this will be a lovely addition to the dining scene of Epsom for many years to come.

http://www.yelp.co.uk/biz/the-canopy-restaurant-epsom