Distant Devon delights - The Anchorstone Cafe, Dittisham

This is the story of a seafood platter. Not just any seafood platter, but the seafood platter from the Anchorstone Cafe, Dittisham. This may perhaps be the hardest seafood platter to get in the whole world...

During our visit to Dartmouth (see the previous post on Mitch Tonks' Seahorse restaurant) we had a nice lazy day exploring the area. One option is to take the little ferry up the river Dart to the village of Dittisham. Small red and yellow ferry boats - maximum capacity 12 persons - leave from the Dartmouth Town Steps jetty every half hour or so, and the roughly three miles (along the river) trip takes 20-25 minutes depending on the tide.

Arriving in Dittisham, what strikes you is firstly the beauty of the spot (Agatha Christie's Greenway mansion is just across the river, which plays host to millions of pounds worth of yacht), and second just how remote it is. I am assured that it IS possible to drive there - but the roads are utterly narrow, hedges give zero visibility and the jetty, pub and the cafe at at the bottom of a very steep hill. Boat is much the easiest option. Then you have to get a table.

I phoned the Anchorstone in advance, who do take bookings but only for 12 noon sharp! We were there bang on time and were rewarded with a very choice table overlooking the river, so it was well worth the effort. The menu features various interesting looking seafood options which change daily, often including fresh Start Bay crab salad. However, we went for their seafood platter...and what a platter it is. Ready?

Shell-on prawns, smoked salmon, fresh dressed crab, rollmop herrings, peeled salad prawns, an oyster, smoked mackerel, anchovy fillets, salad leaves, cous cous, tomato and cucumber, potato salad, red cabbage coleslaw, marie-rose sauce, brown bread and butter - and then freshly fried crispy calamari arrived a few moments later to complete the deal. £14.95, but very well spent. A nice pint of cold Peroni lager, a sunny lunchtime, wonderful scenery... ah, the essence of SeafoodShack.

The Anchorstone Cafe, Manor Street, Dittisham, Dartmouth TQ6 0EX Tel: 01803 722365 No website but try http://tinyurl.com/mbo46o.

Seafood in the Stroud valleys – William’s Fish Market and Foodhall

The little town of Nailsworth just south of Stroud is a bustling place, known these days as the home of conference football team Forest Green Rovers. This area, close to Tetbury and Cirencester, also has Royal connections – Prince Charles’ Highgrove estate is not many miles away and his estate shop opened in Tetbury last year.

William’s Fish Market and Foodhall is right in the centre of town next to the pretty clock tower. As the name suggests, it’s mostly a food shop which specialises in wet fish and seafood as well as lots of other lovely produce including fresh chorizo from Spain, a great selection of cheeses and a range of locally sourced goodies. At the back is a collection of café-style tables and the blackboard outside promised ‘oyster bar – brunch till 3pm’. So, I couldn’t resist.

The shop offers both Fowey and Loch Fyne oysters, and I started with three Fowey beautifully served with crusty bread and French butter. The menu offered a good range of lunchtime dishes including fish soup, scallop chunks in garlic butter, whole baked sand sole, mussel chowder, warm kipper with melted butter and smoked salmon with scrambled eggs. There were meat and veggie options too, including seared calved liver with sage & lemon butter, and gnocchi with tomato and basil sauce.

Our cheery waitress told me that the mussels were particularly good at the moment, so I went for the moules frites (£8.50). The mussels were from Shetland, deliciously plump and with a very rich colour. Some nice thin chips made up an excellent dish. My companion couldn’t resist the fresh grilled chorizo sausage and mash (£9.50). You don’t often see fresh chorizo like this, it’s more normally found as a salami-type dried sausage, but these were wonderfully tasty and spicy and served with garlicky mash and a tomato sauce.

William’s is a great find, a lovely place for lunch and stocking up. Their website is under reconstruction as I write, and it seems as if there may be plans to open in the evenings too. At the moment it’s only open during the day. William’s Fish Market and Foodhall, 3 Fountain Street, Nailsworth, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL6 0BL, Tel: 01453 835 507, http://www.williamsfoodhall.co.uk/

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.

Serious fish in a super-Lyme setting - Hix Oyster and Fish House

We chose to visit Lyme Regis in August for several reasons. The Jurassic coast crammed with fossils and geology. The ancient Cobb harbour, redolent of Meryl Streep looking out to sea in the movie adaptation of John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The splendid museum, where Fowles was curator for many years. The historic links with the Civil War and James Earl of Monmouth’s doomed landing and invasion which culminated in the Bloody Assizes of Judge Jefferies. But the main reason was a more modern one – the opening of Mark Hix’s new Oyster and Fish House (http://www.hixoysterandfishhouse.co.uk/) .

After many years as executive head chef at Caprice Holdings, overseeing both Le Caprice and The Ivy in London, Hix has now set out to run his own show. That should be ‘shows’ really – this is his second establishment. The first, Hix Oyster and Chop House in Smithfield, opened earlier in 2008. The Fish House has a fantastic setting above the Cobb, in what appears to be a newly constructed affair of wood and glass. The views over Lyme harbour and towards the dramatic cliffs to the east are unrivalled and certainly provide an epic setting for dinner. There is even an outside terrace for lunches – there’s a thought which should get the fish-lover walking up the rather steep Cobb Road to the restaurant.

The menu is not too long and changes regularly. We started with oysters – Portland Royals (from the sea off Portland, in sight on a clear day some 20 miles to the East) and Devon Yealms (estuary oysters from the South Devon river of the same name) were very much to our liking – not too big and served with great care to include all the delicious liquor held within the deep shells. They were presented, unusually, with the top shell replaced and shucked in the French style, without severing the tissue connecting the oyster and the shell. Shuckers in France always do it like this, to prevent any accusations that they are using tinned oysters rather than fresh ones, whereas the norm in the UK and USA is to sever the oyster completely so that it’s ready to gulp down. Nice fresh bread and butter went along very well.

We went to to Lyme Bay fish soup with Julian Temperley's (not very noticeable) cider brandy and Fowey mussels with Burrow Hill cider. The soup was rich and delicious, even though served without the (somewhat traditional) grated gruyere and croutons – fine for a starter. The mussels were excellent, the sauce creamy and plentiful. I washed the mussels down with a bottle of Harviestoun’s excellent Schiehallion lager (http://www.harviestoun.com/) which has a bit more body than your average lager and went well with the food. I am delighted to report that Hix has quite a substantial selection of bottled beers and ciders along with a well chosen wine list – even including Rick Stein’s Chalky’s Bite beer (a confident move if every I saw one).

Main course was grilled fish for two. And pretty serious fish it is – the selection of the day included gurnard and john dory alongside Torbay sole and lobster. All this arrived on a wooden board, well cooked (after a longer pause than might be expected). All the fish fell off the bone – just as well in the case of the dory and gurnard, which arrived whole. The sole (also known as witch) was delicate and generously thick, and the half a grilled lobster added a little garlic into the proceedings. We had side orders of tomato and lovage salad (featuring three different kinds of tomatoes – very nice indeed) and chips.

Usually Jenny and I miss out on the desert course – but the offerings looked so tempting we pressed on. Jenny had cheese (of course) – Dorset Blue Vinney in this case, being the only one on offer. FOH manager Jonathan Jeffrey recommended another Temperley apple drink, Somerset Pomona to go along with it (http://www.ciderbrandy.co.uk/) . Apple juice and cider brandy are aged for two years in oak, producing a nice and not-too-sweet digestif that reminded us a little of Pineau des Charentes. He also had us trying Shipwreck, a 10 year old cider brandy finished in French oak casks salvaged from the Napoli, the container ship which spectacularly went aground off the coast of Devon in January 2007. Delicious!

Hix Oyster and Fish House, Cobb Road, Lyme Regis, Dorset DT7 3JP, Tel: 01297 446 910

Brixham fish in the heart of the Cotswolds - the Inn For All Seasons

We’ve been driving along the A40 between Cheltenham and Oxford for many years. It’s a winding road which can be annoyingly slow if you get behind a lorry, but it does pass through some glorious countryside and past quite a few roadside inns. Some of these are clearly struggling for custom, but this can’t be said of the Inn For All Seasons, just before Burford at Barrington. The car park often seems fullish and there’s a sign outside promising FRESH FISH (in big letters). Is this the secret of their success?

The fish is delivered from Brixham in Devon, and does indeed seem to be fresh. It’s also varied and well-prepared. There’s a cosy bar (for this is very much still a pub where one can drop in for a pint) as well as a restaurant alongside, and the atmosphere is very much English countryside – local farmers alongside Cotswold society and visiting tourists. The menu has a good choice of meat and poultry – but our attention was riveted on the fish specials board in the bar. And what an excellent choice it offers: gilt-fin black bream (with stir-fry of fennel and lime butter sauce), roast loin steak of monkfish (on Paris mushroom with chorizo sauce), or fillet of Bibury trout (and lightly curried brown shrimp butter).

We started off with half a dozen oysters from County Louth, small yet very plump and a great start. Starters of Scallops with bacon and salad and Dart salmon nicoise (a generous piece of salmon atop new potatoes, French beans, anchovies and hard boiled egg – fantastic!) set us up nicely for the main event. I must admit I was hoping to see Dover sole on the menu, but the grilled plaice, large and meaty with butter, parsley and lemon more than made up for it. Jenny had a Thai fish curry with rice, mixed fish in a chunky and very spicy sauce. We were both very well pleased.

The wine list is not long but well-chosen and offers a good range, including a nice house Champagne at £27.50 which proved excellent value. There was no room whatsoever for dessert, but a pot of coffee nicely rounded off our evening. I noticed an excellent selection of rare malt whiskies behind the bar. The Inn For All Seasons is a beacon of great fish in the Cotwold countryside – drop in next time you’re passing, or even better stay for a couple of nights and enjoy the surrounding valleys and walks. More at http://www.innforallseasons.co.uk/.

Oysters at 8000 feet: Sapphire in Vail, Colorado

The resort town of Vail lies (as the name might suggest) in a deep valley in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Coming in from Denver shows how these mountains form the backbone of North America – the vast plains to the east suddenly giving way to peaks of up to 15000 feet. Vail itself is a great spot to spend a few days. In contrast to the working town of Aspen some 50 miles distant, Vail seems like a recent development where Swiss-style chalet architecture meets upscale galleries and fine dining restaurants, and the Betty Ford alpine garden sits alongside ski-lifts waiting for the winter to arrive.

Sapphire Restaurant and Oyster Bar is located right in the centre of town and boasts the only raw bar in the vicinity. I ate there twice during a conference visit and was very impressed both times, particularly with the oysters and fish. Owners Susan and Joel Fritz source their shellfish from both coasts; when I visited there were large-ish Wianna oysters from Nova Scotia alongside smaller Effingham oysters from British Columbia and delicious Royal Myagis from Washington state. This being the USA, the plate came with the usual (and very good in this case) cocktail sauce of tomato and horseradish, and a rather sharp and nicely contrasting vinaigrette. Add in some terrific snow crab claws at $1.50 a pop, and you have a great plate of seafood to start your evening.

Main courses are varied and imaginative, and chef Peter Millette is clearly on top of his art. I fell in love with the miso marinated ahi tuna, seared very rare, sliced thin and served in a sushi style with sticky rice, wasabi cream and pickled ginger – a really top-class combination. I also enjoyed the crusted roast Alaskan halibut served with saffron, fennel and tomato, couscous and harissa sauce – a very savoury combination where the fish stood out rather well against the slightly spicy and tasty accompaniments. I washed it all down with a couple of glasses of Mirror Pond Pale Ale from Deschutes craft brewery in Bend, Oregon (http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/) – as usual with US microbrews this is plenty hoppy and goes very well with the food.

So when you’re up Rocky Mountain Way, have no hesitation to drop in to Sapphire and enjoy some great seafood (the menu is very varied, and has plenty of meat and other choices too). They also have the best deck in Vail and a fine lunch menu, so pretty much any time is Sapphire time. More details at http://www.sapphirerestaurant.com/ .

The world's crispiest batter? The Old Passage at Arlingham

One of our favourite local seafood restaurants is the Old Passage at Arlingham, a few miles south of Gloucester. Set in wonderful surroundings on the banks of the Severn, the restaurant is housed in the former ferry-house where for hundred of years people set out to cross the wide river. On a nice evening, a walk along the riverbank is an ideal prelude to some serious shellfish.

Sadly, the weather let us down. Arriving early, we had plenty of time to sip a drink and peruse the menu. The establishment has changed hands in the past year, and is now run by Sally Pearce and her son David. However, the welcome and feel of the place is very much the same as ever, and I was delighted to find that they now sell Cotswold Lager on draft, an ideal prelude to some oysters.

The menu offers the bet selection of seafood and shellfish for many miles around. We started with a plate of Fowey No 2 oysters from Cornwall (nice, cold and not too large, just as I prefer them – there is a choice of Bigbury and Fin de Claire oysters too). Choosing a starter was much more of a problem – scallops thermidor, Scottish langoustine, a mini-fruits-de-mer plate…? However, you just can’t beat proper dark French-style fish soup with gruyere cheese and croutons, so that’s what I had. As an alternative, the pan-fried foie gras with scallops and poached rhubarb was richly delicious.

Choice of main courses presented another difficulty. A lobster from the tank? Not today – we tried a range of fish including line caught sea bream from Cornwall served (deliciously) with cockle, clam and samphire risotto, and fish stew (clearly a cousin of the soup I’d had earlier, and none the worse for that). I personally went with the beer battered fish and chips, served with proper marrow-fat peas. The fish was wonderful – the batter was the crispiest I have ever experienced with extra crispy parts having (I think) been drizzled on during the cooking in tempura style. It was still crisp at the last mouthful. Inside, the fish was moist and perfectly cooked. The business.

The Old Passage has been with us for some 7 years now, and continues to hold its place as the top seafood destination in the area. The place also has rooms, so you could consider staying over. Long may it continue. More details at http://www.fishattheoldpassageinn.co.uk/.

Maimon - hip oyster bar in Tokyo

Well, we aim to bring you the best of British seafood - but that won't stop us also running news and reviews of the world's top oyster and seafood locations.

This is Maimon, in the Nishi-Azabu junction district of Tokyo. Brought to you by the people who also run the ultra-hip Megu in New York, this is a stylish blue-tinged place that opens from 6pm - 4am - clearly a night-crowd pleaser. See that blue rim in front of the counter in the pic - that's real ice, with real oysters on top of it. Very cool.

They specialise in oysters from all over Japan, we had a dozen selection and liked the Kitakai oysters from the south the best. They came with a splendid collection of five sauces - cocktail, white wine vinegar, plums and shiso, yuzo-ponzu and 'japanese sauce with hot radish' which I liked the best. We also had grilled chicken skewers with paprika and marmalade (much better than it sounds). They have a huge ranges of sakes and shosu, and some good beers. Not at all a cheap place, but a must-try for any oyster lover lucky enough to be in Tokyo with an evening (or early morning!) to spare. Get the full low-down, in English or Japanese, at http://www.maimon.jp .

BBC Radio 4's Food Programme features British oysters

The popular Radio 4 weekly Food Programme today 23 March 2008) focused on British Oysters. Here's the blurb for the programme:

Oysters are truly a taste of the sea, and reflect the terroir, or perhaps merroir, of the area where they are grown. Native or Pacific, farmed or wild, from Colchester, Cornwall or Carlingford they all have their own unique character. Oyster enthusiast Hardeep Singh Kholi puts his taste buds to the test sampling some of the best oysters available, and finds out whether the native oyster’s recent decline might be on the brink of being reversed.

Hardeep Singh Kohli visits Wright Brothers Restaurant at Borough Market, London’s biggest oyster wholesaler, and now producers of their own in the river Fal, to taste some oysters and talks to co- owner Robin Hancock and Dr. Tom Pickerel from the Shellfish Association of Great Britain, about the state of oyster fisheries.

Reporter Dilly Barlow visits Richard Haward (pictured above), a traditional oyster fisherman in the creeks around the river Blackwater in Essex and discusses the history of oysters, how they are cultivated, the disease bonamia, and the emergence of the newly naturalised “wild” pacific oyster. Dr Lawrence Hawkins, National Oceanography Centre University of Southampton explains the impact on the native population of the disease bonamia.

Hardeep Singh Kohli talks to Rob Blyth-Skyrme, Senior Marine Fisheries Specialist for Natural England about the nature conservation threat of the naturalised pacific oysters.

You can listen to the programme for at least the next week at the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/foodprogramme.shtml. I note that programmes seem to be available for about three months at the moment. Well worth a listen, particularly for the discussion of the differences between Rock oysters (crassostrea gigas, native to the Pacific and now grown worldwide) and native Flat oysters (ostrea edulis).