Catch at the Old Fish Market, Weymouth

When you think about it, it makes sense on many levels to open a high-end tasting-menu-only fish restaurant in Weymouth. Firstly and most obviously, this section of the Dorset coast is where much of the best seafood in the country comes from anyway, and how better to enjoy it than via the smallest amount of food miles possible. Secondly, freed of luxe or city centre locations and the costs associated with that, what could easily be a £150+ tasting menu in some five star country hotel or Mayfair joint comes in at an extremely reasonable £75, punchy compared to most local competition perhaps but not unheard of.

But another reason that Catch couldn't open anywhere but here is that the completely charming Weymouth harbourside feels part of a healthy, working fishing community, and to have this wonderful showcase for all their hard work right next to where the dayboats unload their catch must be a source of constant pride. At least, it really should be. Catch have two such boats, parked right outside the restaurant, that supply the kitchens daily with whatever's good on the day.

The strictly day-by-day supply of fish and seafood means two things - one, that the tasting menu changes so much over the course of the week that it's better not to examine it too closely before your visit as half of the dishes could have been swapped out for something else by the time you sit down to dinner. It also requires a supremely nimble and able kitchen, to pivot from skate wing to gurnard, from lobster to spider crab, from cockles to mussels, from one day to the next, while still producing a coherent succession of dishes and a satisfying overall experience. Which Catch very much is.

Sea bass was so lightly "cured" that it was essentially sashimi, and absolutely all the better for it. It came with a vibrant arrangement of pea mousse and broth, studded with pea shoots and little blobs of mayonnaise, which complimented the fish without letting its delicate sweet flavour get swamped. Very tasteful, very intelligent, very enjoyable indeed.

Trout tartlets involved more chunks of sweet raw fish but also roe, which burst in the mouth alongside the crunch of the delicate pastry casings and along with a cured trout mousse made for a delightful variety of textures. There were little blobs of something citrussy amongst the fish (which they probably did explain to us but I've since completely forgotten) and lemon zest and wild flowers to complete the picture.

Crab came in two stages, an idea so perfect for a seafood-focussed menu I'm surprised I'd not come across it before. First we were served a neat disc of white crab meat, with pickled grapes - a very clever idea - and sea herbs, around which was poured a very attractive two-tone sauce of white garlic and something green, perhaps nasturtium oil.

Then part 2, nice bouncy home made spaghetti bound with a sauce of brown crab meat, silky and salty and full of complex earthy flavour.

Next the fish course, on this occasion gurnard landed by their dayboats and tasting essentially perfect - meaty and firm like monkfish tail but with an even more interesting almost buttery flavour. As if that wasn't enough, it came with asparagus - because whenever you can serve British asparagus, you definitely should - and an incredible "chicken butter" sauce which I think I may have finished off with my fingers. Sorry.

And then to prove that Catch can cook red meat just as well as fish, a piece of local venison, seared to rare, with a little medallion of roast turnip and finished with one of those glossy, cheff-y jus.

Desserts were equally impressive. Firstly "tea, honey, mint" which involved a mint granita, a tea ice cream and a very neat honeycomb of some kind of biscuit, and then a little slice of sponge topped with a lemon ice cream studded with szechuan peppers and some macerated strawberries. Next to that was poured a lovely thick strawberry sauce the colour of a stop sign.

And just like that, a world-class seafood restaurant has hauled ashore in Weymouth. And if you're wondering how such an "unlikely" town could have landed such a great place, or if you're anything like my colleague who grew up round there and couldn't believe I'd even entertain the idea of spending a weekend surrounded by its slightly faded Victorian charm (and believe me, those aren't the words he used), well you just haven't been paying attention.

I will always have a soft spot for the richness and variety of restaurants in London, and I don't see myself tiring of the place any time soon. But the fact is, every time I make the journey out to Kent, or Lancashire, or Northumberland, or Cornwall, or more recently Wales and now Dorset, I eat better and better. Rather than attempting to recreate a little slice of Marylebone in the sticks to give the locals a taste of what the're missing back where things matter, restaurants like Catch (see also the lovely Parkers Arms in Bowland, or the Tolcarne Inn in Penzance) have built themselves around the local fishing and farming infrastructure and are uniquely placed to make the absolute best of it all. Judging by the fact every table was taken the night we visited, it's already the hottest ticket in town. And that makes absolute sense to me.

10/10

I was invited to Catch and didn't see a bill, but with wines you're probably looking at £120/head + service to make the most of it. We stayed at the Gresham Hotel, which was absolutely lovely and I slept like a log, although the matching wines might have helped. Trains are direct from Waterloo and take about 3 hours, so it pays to make a weekend of it, especially if that means you can visit the Crab House Café in Wyke for Sunday lunch before the train home.

EDIT: I've been told that the tasting menu is Saturday night only, rest of time it's a very attractive seafood selection. It's all on their website anyway.

Inn at the Sticks, Llansteffan

In an attempt to describe meals in sufficient detail (sufficient to try and convince people I know what I'm talking about, that is), it sometimes feels like I'm rather unfairly picking out every fault in a dish instead of letting the minor issues fly and focusing on the overall effect. The thing is, details are easy to explain, and faults doubly so, and so it's very easy to fall in that trap of being super analytical without really getting to the heart of whether a restaurant experience overall is good or bad.

I wouldn't really know to change this - old dog, new tricks and so on - or even if it's possible, but let me say this about Inn at the Sticks in Llansteffan before we go any further: we really enjoyed our evening at this friendly - and superbly popular - gastropub on the Camarthenshire coast, and for the prices they are charging I'd recommend it to basically anyone.

Right, it's time for the details, and actually this vast bowl of mussels got all the details right. The wine and butter broth was deep and satisfying, studded with shallots (I think) and fresh parsley, and the mussels themselves were plump and fresh tasting, free of grit and full of flavour. The three of us shared this single portion as a starter, and still struggled to finish our mains.

Bread, pleasant enough itself but served with a very nice soft salted butter, came draped with a few leaves of wilted salad. No, I don't know why either but these are details - who cares if they want to serve dry salad on bread, or chopped chives on butter, we just removed them and carried on. Easy. No harm done.

Main courses varied quite a bit in portion sizes so I'll take you from the smallest to the largest. First fish and chips, pretty modest and perhaps a tad over, but was still perfectly enjoyable and the chips - huge, crunchy things - were fantastic. I'm going to ignore what they did to the peas though, as life's too short.

Next, and another victim of the Sticks' compulsion to put salad on things, was chicken kiev, hiding under about a half a kilo of rocket and parmesan. Once I'd scraped the rocket off, I was treated to a huge slab of greaseless, crisp chicken breast, which oozed garlic butter as the breadcrumbed casing was broken into. For £10.50, no complaints. Well you know, some complaints but none that really matter.

King of the portion sizes was the catch of the day - hake - which arrived as two giant fillets, literally double what you might be forgiven for expecting for £14. They were utterly perfectly cooked, moist and buttery and firm, and with gorgeous dark, crisp skins that revealed themselves after we'd scraped off a mound of buttered parsley. Actually, the parsley was a lovely accompaniment and a decently judged portion, so I've no need to be mean about it.

And that was all we could manage. A great little unpretentious dinner in a pretty Camarthenshire town, and a very early one as high season and word of mouth had clearly had quite the effect on their bookings. We turned up at 5pm (the only available table), ate extremely well for about an hour and a half, then got back to our clifftop AirBnB in time for digestifs on the verandah. The total bill came to £22.65 each plus tip, which we were more than happy to add for service so enthusiastic it bordered on cultish, like being waited on by the cast of Book of Mormon.

So why sweat the details? If you can rock up at a joint like this with £22 in your pocket and a hankering for fresh fish and chunky chips and come away happy, who needs to know about superfluous salad or weird peas? Nobody, that's who, if at the end of the evening your body is brimming with joy and butter-induced heartburn. Sticks at the Inn is the pride of Llansteffan, and they should be very proud indeed.

7/10

The Felin Fach Griffin, Brecon

The Felin Fach Griffin is a gastropub of serious pedigree. Their sister restaurant is the Gurnard's Head in Zennor, Cornwall, long one of the most well-regarded and popular spots in the West Country, and where we enjoyed a fantastic meal back in between lockdowns in 2020. Given that this particular trip to Brecon and Camarthenshire wasn't as overtly foodie as the Cornwall holiday I thought just one dinner from a team who clearly knew what they were doing would be a nice highlight of the trip, a bankable win even if the rest of the meals would be more along the lines of a National Trust egg and cress sandwich.

And so it turned out, which of course is great news for all concerned, but even I, expecting good things, was blindsided by the quality of the experience. There's a serious maturity on display at the Griffin, real technical skill when it comes to getting things like perfectly cooked, meaty cod fillet or a deliriously attractive crisp brown skin on a piece of chicken, but something else on top of that, a grasp of flavour and texture that only the very best kitchens can produce. There are lots of good gastropubs, but not many at this level, and certainly not many making the very best of local asparagus and garden herbs for £38 for 3 courses.

But let's start at the beginning. House bread was a) great and b) free, both of which as it should be. If you scan down a menu and see a variety of exciting sauces and jus on offer, then you're also going to want a decent bread to soak into them, and it's always a nice bonus if you don't have to worry about extra cost.

Value is a theme that runs through everything the Griffin do. There are cheaper restaurants, of course there always will be, but you really do seem to get a lot for your money here, whether it's the clear amount of cheffy effort that's gone into this fluffy white onion soup (with accompanying disc of Welsh rarebit) that would not look out of place anywhere with a Michelin star.

Or this beetroot tart with goats cheese and walnut pesto, yes not an entirely original combination of flavours but incredibly well executed with its delicate pastry base and interesting selection of herby dressings.

Best of the starters though was this neat little fillet of poached salmon, with a lovely smooth "horseradish buttermilk" sauce and chunks of fresh sweet pickled cucumber. The salmon had a nice firm texture, it was all seasoned well, and a couple of sprigs of dill from the garden (at least I assumed it was from the garden, as I saw some growing there) finished it all off.

Just look at that bit of cod. Examine it; breathe it in, glory in it. It was every bit as good as it looked, and alongside some choice bits of braised celeriac, fennel and the like it stood out as the kind of serious fish dish you would happily travel halfway across the country (as indeed we had, although it was only 5 minutes drive from our wonderful AirBnB in Talybont) to eat. Pescatarians need not apply, as that deliciously silky sauce underneath is actually "chicken juices" but you know what, cod and chicken *always* works.

Chicken was also worth the journey on its own. See how crisp and golden brown the skin looks? See how clear and silky the jus, see how perfectly charred the miniature garden vegetables. This came with a bowl of "crisp potatoes" (sort of like very crunchy patatas brava) but I couldn't resist trying a portion of their triple-cooked chips too so yes we may have slightly overdone it on the potatoes. Both were wonderful though, so it's hard to have any serious regrets.

Maple & hazelnut-glazed celeriac with "sweet & sour" shallots and charred asparagus was a veg-led dish that would make any vegetarian happy, and although I didn't get to try it (I was pretty full by this point thanks to two portion of potatoes) I'm reliably informed it was very good. Looks good anyway, doesn't it?

Desserts were each ordered thanks not to the main event but the accompaniment. I am far less interested in "Chocolate delice" than "Guiness ice cream" and although the chocolate was more than decent the ice cream was thick and malty and superb. Likewise, Artic roll was very nice but even better was the rhubarb sorbet parked on top, which was packed full of summery flavours.

Having a short stroll around the extensive kitchen gardens after dinner, in the late summer sun (we were very lucky with the weather in Brecon, or maybe it's always like that who knows) it occurred to me that when an operation really puts the effort in, it often creates a virtuous circle of increasingly impressive returns. Start up a kitchen garden and yes you may not save any money versus buying your veg wholesale but the changing seasons force a creative kitchen in new and unexpected directions - all of which improves the restaurant experience. And the better you get at the gardening, the better your menu gets, and so on. The Felin Fach Griffin have created their own ecosystem of seasonal flavours, and know exactly how to make the most of them.

Because yes, a kitchen garden is one thing, but the Griffin are able to work in excellent local producers (including a particularly good fishmonger by the looks of things) and end up with a menu of charm and variety, and serve the whole lot (with a couple of glasses of wine) for a very reasonable £42.50pp. And this is where the real skill lies, in sending customers away with a spring in their step and the knowledge they'd quite happily go back and do it all over again as soon as is at all possible. That requires not just a great kitchen but a charming front of house and a lovely low-beamed building in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. God, it's good to be eating out again, isn't it?

9/10

The Gurnard's Head, Zennor

The Gurnard's Head, sat high above the rugged north Cornwall coast amidst towering abandoned tin mines and dramatic moorland, is nothing if not a welcome sight for weary hikers on the South West Coastal Path, as well anyone taking the somewhat less strenuous approach (I'm not apologising for this) of having a bit of a lie-in and driving up from Penzance just in time for lunch service. However you get there, though, it seems the days of being able to just rock up uninvited and order a steak & chips are long gone - the Gurnard's Head is one of the most popular gastropubs in Cornwall even off season, and with domestic tourism booming, snagging a table is a case of getting extremely lucky, or (our approach) booking many months in advance.

With social distancing, too, there are even fewer precious tables to choose from, and so we felt very privileged indeed to be settling into a cozy corner in this lovely old building while the weather outside, which had all morning threatened to do something awful, finally broke into a dark, sustained downpour. If it hadn't been bucketing down perhaps some of the people trying their luck with a walk-in could have braved a picnic table outside; as it was, I overheard more than one group of rain-soaked hopefuls being gently let down by the front of house. We watched them with some measure of sympathy as they squelched away, before tucking into some warm sodabread and salted butter.

It was very nice sodabread though, and so was this plate of tempura PSB and goat's curd, which had a nice greaseless fry, a good fluffy, citrussy curd and a very clever touch of smoked almonds which added crunch as well as a touch of the embers.

Warm grilled sardines, meticulously filleted so that they could be eaten without the usual subsequent 10 minutes of picking pin bones out of your teeth, came draped over sourdough bread and with a little last gasp of summer, a tomato and basil salad. And it was a very nice salad of course, but the star of the show were the sardines - superbly fresh and with a good firm flesh, with a gentle crisp skin from the grill, and seasoned perfectly. Cornwall really is the place to go for fish, it seems.

After the best part of two days enjoying the best fish in the country, though, a part of me just wanted to be deliberately contrary, so for a main I chose rump steak. And though the steak was nice - pink and tender and with a decent flavour - the star of this plate of food was the sauce, a thick, glossy reduction which clung to the folds of the sprigs of kale and made it all great fun to eat. Also good was a blue cheese mousse, which added a nice hit of salty dairy.

Oh and chips were fantastic - each of them crunchy outside and soft within, with loads of lovely crispy bits at the end to gobble up.

Given we'd taken it a bit easy on the savouries, we felt justified in ordering two desserts - firstly this excellent sticky toffee pudding topped with a huge mound of clotted cream, which obviously went down very well...

...and a chocolate creameaux with coffee and dulce de leche which I had a bit less of an interest in (I tend to avoid coffee) but seemed perfectly nice to me.

The bill came to £23pp, which seems astonishingly cheap on the face of it but bear in mind we'd ordered two starters as mains and weren't drinking, unless you count a glass of local cider brandy that I ordered on a whim before the desserts. They don't automatically add service on either, so you can add on a few quid for that, but even so this not an expensive place, and the extremely attentive staff earned every bit of the tip they didn't ask for. In these large, well-spaced dining rooms every table was taken and quite rightly so - this is a justifiably famous pub.

It's easy to forget, as we gobbled and chatted our way through a happy lunch at the Gurnard's Head, that this is still a deeply uncertain and frankly terrifying time for anyone attempting to make money out of the business of cooking food and selling it to people. Since our return to the real world, the government has introduced at 10pm curfew, a completely bizarre political gesture which won't save many people from getting Covid who wouldn't have got it anyway, but will definitely further cripple the finances of pubs, bars and restaurants who have just seen another 30% disappear from their bottom lines. So book early, and book often, and enjoy yourself, and let's all just try and get through the next few months without going completely mad, because that seems to be just about the only strategy that stands a chance of working at the moment. And you can do worse, if you're in the area, than with a meal at this windswept spot on the Cornish coast, somewhere expertly placed to help you forget about the rest of the world, at least just for a while.

8/10