For the kind of people who think London ought to be all Farrow and Ball-coated quaintness and whiffs of Dickensianism, Canary Wharf is a rude assault, an obnoxious jungle of the anti-quaint. It is also, to many, an embarrassing paean to a moment that only the 1980s could have produced: one of gauche capitalistic, deregulatory optimism soused in international finance. One Canada Square, the frontispiece of the development and once Britain’s tallest skyscraper, is named in honour of the Toronto-based property developer who bought the project in 1988 (and a few years later went bankrupt).
I found myself dazzled anew, less by capitalistic intensity and more by mystery
Canary Wharf, once so bursting with raw power and money that everyone from newspapers to banks trekked out East, has become more of an outcast condemned to the periphery. The cacophonous sound of heels in a hurry tapping along the endless glossy floors of its mall and towers became more muted in the late 2000s when the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit. Brexit was a further puncture, and Covid the nail in the coffin, as the people who once filled those towering blocks learned the luxury of working at home – and won’t unlearn it.
I had all but dismissed Canary Wharf as a creature of times long gone. But a few weeks back, alighting there to visit the offices of a new media company whose podcast I was appearing on, I found myself dazzled anew. Less by any aura of raw-edged capitalistic intensity (that has vanished) and more by a sense of mystery and strangeness. In the barges moored here and there and the silhouetted cranes at the mouth of the Wharf estate, I felt the docks’ past, once awash in the business, tides and stink of the Thames, and the workplace of thousands of maritime labourers. Compare that with the contemporary stacks of glass and metal, the floating restaurants surrounded by empty waterways, people scurrying over bridges and boardwalks and the sound and sight of the driverless light railway rushing overhead.
On my recent visits, the skies have glowered and spewed forth violent showers, clouds skidding as night descended. GPS doesn’t work properly at Canary Wharf, so there is the surreal experience of going round and round in circles in just the kind of place that – being so very man-made and modern – ought to be easy to navigate.
But I realised a strange truth as I walked, lost, in the rain: Canary Wharf is better than ever. Convenient, of course, with its Jubilee line station, DLR stops and the Elizabeth line. More interestingly, it captures the imagination as a phantasmagoric world of quays, docks, islands and bridges reminiscent of the mysteriousness of the immersive computer game Myst, released in 1993 – five years after construction began on the Isle of Dogs. It’s also a jamboree of American-style consumerism; the malls are so long and huge they feel more like airports. There is every possible shop in Cabot Place, Jubilee Place and Canary Wharf (320 retailers to be precise). Once above ground, the Wharf’s new identity as a ‘mixed-use community’ with residents (the local Waitrose is the most successful in the UK and there are new surgeries and nurseries), workers and good-time-havers shows itself in a thickening offering of restaurants. Boy, can you eat and drink well in some of the 80 cafes, bars and restaurants.
I know because I went to see what it’s like these days behind those cold and gargantuan exteriors. I started at Boisdale’s outlet in Canary Wharf, a beloved institution for financiers thanks to its boisterous Scottish ownership, meaty menu, cigar rooms and extensive single malt offerings. Boisdale at Canary Wharf is vast and on several floors. When I went with my father to try some flights of single malt – a compare and contrast of Scottish single malts with Japanese drams – we found ourselves in an empty room, hosted by an urbane Czech Boisdale executive called Pavel. Pavel described how different things felt after Brexit and Covid, how the lunches of expansive expense accounts had disappeared, but how people now came from Essex to enjoy the top-drawer service and drink. As we sipped and chatted in tartan comfort, the dining room did begin to fill, and when we left, the verandah bar was a hive of mellow chatter. But it still all felt a bit tenuous, a bit lost.
A few weeks later I returned for a more bling experience with my glamorous friend Sam McAlister, the ex-Newsnight interview booker who organised the Prince Andrew showdown, recently played by Billie Piper in the Netflix film Scoop. In her leather jacket and trousers, sparkling in her trademark Chanel and Fendi, it felt like we were channelling the right vibes as we sashayed into Roe, a startlingly, almost rudely good new restaurant on Wood Wharf. The manager Anthony is deeply posh and murderously charming. It was a packed dining room full of normal people – the City this is not – but we were bowled over by such dishes as cuttlefish toast, snail vindaloo flatbread and Thai pork skewers with octopus. A baked potato was deconstructed and put back together as fried shoelaces covered in cheese. The sheer balls on this food was gobsmacking.
Places like this are opening thick and fast, these destination restaurants, for those who arrive largely by the Elizabeth line from the east of England. Marceline, Hovarda, Next and Newbie are 2024 openings. There are more huge entertainment complexes, like the arcade Fairgame and, opening next year, Imbiba’s 65,000 sq ft venue at 12 Bank Street. Where finance and media once reigned, now the life sciences are moving in: 2027 is due to see the opening of a vast 820,000 lab and ‘innovation space’ over 23 floors and there are a range of genomics and pharma outfits already in situ.
There’s still enough appetite and hustle, then, to keep Canary Wharf ticking. It’s not what it was a couple of decades ago, perhaps, but it’s become something else just as weird, divisive and, to a shameless capitalist bon vivant like yours truly, alluring.
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