Craft Farmacy

Bone marrow with ox-tail marmalade tells a table what kind of kitchen Craft Farmacy is. The raw-bar identity opens the meal — Oysters on the Half Shell, the Grand Shellfish Tower for a longer-form order — but the comfort lane behind it is where the place settles in: Duck Poutine, the Notorious P.I.G. Charcuterie Board, Korean Pork Belly Bao Buns, the braised beef cheek built into a birria grilled cheese. The kitchen runs two restaurants from one Wharncliffe Road South address, and neither side carries the other. The dining room runs accordingly: date-night cocktails one table over from a longer share-plate dinner, the oyster shucker working through a happy-hour rush at the bar.

The raw bar carries the seafood identity. Oysters on the Half Shell anchor the order, with the Grand Shellfish Tower as the occasion centrepiece for a table that wants to sit with the ice. Beyond the shellfish, the menu gets specific fast: Fried Cauliflower as the share plate the vegetarian half of a mixed group actually orders, the Farmstead Cheese Board for grazing, Avocado Smash with Tuna Poke and Grilled Spanish Octopus on the lighter end of dinner. The Craft Burger keeps the menu approachable for a group that doesn't all want shellfish, and Double Layered Nachos hold the social-dinner end. The Chai Crème Brûlée and Crack Pie with Vanilla Gelato carry the close — composed desserts that don't read as afterthought.

What the menu says about the kitchen is straightforward enough: chef-driven plates on a comfort frame, with farm-to-table thinking woven through ingredient sourcing rather than printed across the top of the page. Locally sourced food is a feature here, not a slogan. The dishes that take real prep time — the ox-tail marmalade, the braised cheek, the bao buns, the slow desserts — sit beside a raw-bar program consistent enough to live as the recurring weekday draw. The Canadian frame holds the centre, and the cross-cuisine moves — Korean pork belly, beef-cheek birria, Spanish octopus — read as the kitchen working past category rather than chasing trends. The craft beer and cocktail list reads as a parallel program rather than accompaniment, which is the right setup for a restaurant whose oyster window is built into the operating schedule.

Farm-driven cooking is the through-line. The kitchen leans on regional ingredient relationships and uses them as the spine for plates that could have stayed in the comfort-food register but choose to push further. The thinking shows up where the prep time goes: slow braises, the ox-tail marmalade rendered down to spread on bone marrow, the pork-belly bao that lets a richer protein read as a share plate, the desserts composed end to end rather than plated from a wholesaler tray. Local food writing has placed Craft Farmacy in the small group of London kitchens working a clear point of view, and the menu carries that out in practice. The oyster bar identity is the first thing a diner notices walking in; the farm-driven comfort kitchen is what the meal becomes once the table has committed past the raw bar and into the share plates.

Sunday brunch runs from eleven to two-thirty with a fixed-format menu and optional raw-bar add-ons — the daytime version of the same idea, comfort plates with the oyster identity still on the side of the table. The private room upstairs holds forty seated and fifty-five standing, useful for a group that wants restaurant energy without sliding into a banquet feel. Tuesday through Friday, the half-priced oyster window between three and five is the clearest standing invitation on the calendar; closed Monday is the only night Craft Farmacy steps away. The Wharncliffe Road South corner has run the same two-restaurant idea since 2017, oysters at the front of the meal and farm-driven comfort cooking behind it, both halves working the same table on the same night.