Oysters and Guinness in the City: Sweetings Restaurant, London

Sweetings is a real City of London institution. Open on its current site since 1889 and apparently pretty much unchanged over time, it is also one of the very few London oyster houses to be rated by Toronto shucker supreme Patrick McMurray of the Starfish Oyster Bed and Grill (http://www.starfishoysterbed.com/) in his excellent book Consider The Oyster. I’ll be writing much more about Patrick as this series continues.

Back to Sweetings, which I visited on a chilly Wednesday in November. The place is on a street corner near Mansion House tube station, but in that part of London nowhere is very far from anywhere else, St Pauls and Bank are only a few hundred yards away. The window is filled with seafood laid out on plates to attract passers-by. Most of the clientele, however, didn’t look as if they needed attracting, being almost as much a a part of the scene as the quirky ancient décor.

The layout is rather unusual – counters along the sides of the place, facing outwards, with waiters positioned between the counters and windows or walls beyond. Presumably this allows for maximum top secret insider city gossip. There are also long tables towards the back which one is expected to share, two by two, as it fills up. Downstairs are the original 1889 loos (at least, that’s how they looked to me! But in quite a good way.)

The menu is totally given over to fish and seafood – not even a steak for the not-so-piscinally oriented. Excellent! I opted for half a dozen West Mersea oysters, described as native flats but a little smaller than one might expect. Anyway they were very tasty, nice and cold, bread and butter and lots and lots of lemon wedges on the table definitely added to my enjoyment. I do hate it when places scrimp on the lemon. A pint of Guinness – served in a pewter tankard no less – completed a great combination. I think it’s the only time I’ve ever been actually served beer in such a receptacle, rather than just seeing them hanging on the wall. Full marks. My companion’s lobster bisque looked very inviting on a cold day.

On to the main courses – scampi with bacon, and fish pie. This place is very much about good fish cooked simply and the way you want it. I asked for my scampi (8 tails) grilled, and it duly arrived such, with two thick slices of smoked bacon alongside. A side order of chips completed the picture – everything is extra. My companion’s fish pie again looked just the job for a cold day, mashed potato atop fish pieces in sauce. Lots more lemon on the scampi and an excellent and not-too-fattening lunch proceeded.

Sweetings doesn’t actually have a website (presumably as they weren’t around in 1889… I guess the adverts on the sides of sedan chairs are still running somewhere), but the various online reviews all rave about the puddings. I’m not much of a pud person, but the apple pie was really excellent, something like a pain au chocolat slightly-flaky pastry surrounding the apple. Two generous scoops of vanilla ice-cream and all was well. We didn’t have coffee – Sweetings is the only restaurant I have ever visited which doesn’t even offer it, apparently to encourage punters to move on a make room for someone else. Even though it wasn’t full when we went, the current financial crisis was not preventing a fair few besuited types gathering for a good lunch. So we wandered off to the nearer Costa coffee to continue our discussions. Not cheap at all, the bill came to £70+, but a unique London seafood experience. Why not get your financial advisor to take you?

Sweetings, 39 Queen Victoria Street, London , EC4N 4SF, 0844 5672326 but no point phoning as they don’t reserve tables, open 11-3 lunchtimes Mon-Fri only.

Finest crab on your doorstep – SEAFOOD & EAT IT Ltd

One of the great tastes of the British seaside is surely fresh crab – in salads, in sandwiches, latterly in pasta, or even on its own with lemon and brown bread. While our seaside towns often have lots of places to get and enjoy crabmeat, it’s much harder away from the coast. Even upmarket places like Waitrose, even though they stock dressed crab with mayonnaise and egg, have not been a source of fresh crab for the discerning diner – until now!

Browing around the seafood department of our local Waitrose I noticed a new offering – fresh Cornish crab, hand picked, in white, brown or potted versions, from a company wittily calling themselves Seafood & Eat It Ltd. (The company website confirms that this is after the glorious old joke “I’m on a seafood diet. I see food and eat it!”.

Seafood & Eat It was started by two brothers – Neville, a skipper fishing for crab from Newlyn in Cornwall, and Richard a former London office worker. While many crab fishermen were giving up, Nev has persisted and when his brother decided that his future lay away from the PC and the monthly sales target they set up together with a little help from the Prince’s Trust and the Fisherman’s Mission. The aim was simple – to supply the best quality crab meat to a wider audience. To this end they cook their crab in small batches and painstakingly hand-pick it to get the very finest meat onto your plate. They have been supplying the wholesale trade in Cornwall for some time, and in August 2008 the Waitrose chain began stocking their crab meat products for public consumption.

We first tried the potted crab, deliciously rich and absolutely ready to eat on bread or even (as their website suggests) with pasta. It was so good we moved on to the white and brown meats, and I used them in my own version of a classic crab with linguini and chilli pasta dish. Simply put about 50ml olive oil, a couple of chopped garlic cloves, two or three chopped red chillis, a handful of chopped spring onion and about two strips of finely chopped lemon zest into a pan and cook until it starts to sizzle. Meanwhile cook about 200g of linguini and drain, keeping some of the pasta water. Into the now-empty but still hot pasta pan put the chilli and oil mixture, and add the pasta, 200g crab meat (we used 100g white and 100g brown), the juice of half a lemon (and optional capers) and heat through till it’s hot. Use a splash of pasta water to loosen the mixture if it gets dry. Stir in a good handful of chopped parsley and serve with lemon wedges (serves two).

Seafood & Eat It crab meat is available nationally at Waitrose stores. Now’s an excellent time to try it out in whatever form of crab dish you favour. (And do answer our poll about your crab preferences!) Seafood & Eat It Ltd, Newlyn, Cornwall TR20 8TL, http://www.seafoodandeatit.co.uk/.