Loch Fyne Restaurant

I have recently attended 4 birthday meals at various eating establishments. All of our meals were good and some were excellent, with one standing out from the crowd for me.

Loch Fyne is a seafood restaurant situated just away from the main shopping precinct at Canford Cliffs. I’m not going to go into too many details as I don’t want this to sound like a paid advertisement. I will say that of the seven of us there, all were very complimentary about the standard of the meal and the service.

Some of the meals we enjoyed were Mussels in Wine, Mackerel Pate, Whitebait, Bass, Half-Lobster, Seafood Selection (Bass, Salmon, Scallops and Prawn), and others. None of the meals were huge but were more than adequate in size for most people (and I am a big eater unfortunately) and very well presented. Highly recommended.

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Sole for Dinner

OK, I’m no chef, but I do enjoy my fish (not much of a surprise there really). So after catching my near 2lb’er on Friday evening I decided to cook the little fella tonight for myself and Christine. Nothing fancy, just a straight forward grilling.

Gutted, de-finned, skinned and filleted (collared), and then basted with a mix of melted butter, touch of olive oil, juice from a whole lemon plus the zest, and then plenty of black pepper.

Sole Prepared and Ready for the Grill

Sole after Grilling and Looking and Smelling Womderful

Served with a nice salad and potatoes. Bloody lovely.

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The River Cottage Anecdote

I wasn’t expecting to have a humorous anecdote develop from our visit to River Cottage HQ. It’s just a meal right! But the wife comes to the rescue to provide a talking point.

Eating at the HQ takes place in a converted long barn with an open kitchen at one end, a bar at the other and two long tables running the length of the barn between. Very informal and I have to say it generated a fantastic and friendly atmosphere with all present mingling, laughing and joking with complete strangers in no more than five minutes before they became very good friends. Magic.

Menu for the evening was:

• Spiced Parsnip Soup (with roasties floating around) and freshly made bread.
• Gurnard (very quickly seared in a huge metal wood burning oven outside in the courtyard)
• Belly Pork with Onion/Squash/Potato Mash and lots of Chard
• Pumpkin Tart and Yoghurt

Meal was excellent, though a little small. But after the four of us sank 6 bottles of wine it seemed a bit bigger.

The anecdote? The HQ operate an open kitchen policy whereby you can wander around them when they are cooking outside or (after the main dish) in the kitchen. The wife and friend wander out to the large metal oven to watch them cook the fish dish. Not being totally au fait with fish generally, and only having been told what was on the menu for this night, she wanders up to the chef and calmly says to him “How are your Gonads doing?”

It wasn’t until the following morning that it was explained to her.

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