Snappy Birthday at the Crab House

As Phil and Kirsty have spent the last decade telling us every time you switch on Channel Four, it’s all about positioning. And as far as locations go - with its spot on the edge of a lagoon, overlooking Chesil Beach and the Atlantic Ocean beyond - the location of the Crab House can’t really be beat.  All of which made it the perfect choice for this year's Official Birthday Dinner.

Their ethos is based around sourcing local ingredients, with their eponymous crabs being caught in the English Channel and their fish all landed in local waters within a 40 mile radius of the restaurant. The Portland oysters come from even closer to home, being grown from seed on the oyster beds that run adjacent to the restaurant. Meaning you can take an preprandial stroll along the shore and get a look at your dinner before you sit down to eat. 

As well as farming their own oysters, these guys have their own beer Crab House beer – an ale and a stout, brewed in conjunction with Hunter’s Brewery in Ipplepen, Devon. The former was a decent enough common-garden ale, while the latter was lighter than a normal stout, with a sweet smokiness that was perfect for seafood. A Picpoul, one of my favourites with fish (or with anything, I'm not fussy), was chosen from a comprehensive and well-priced list that included fizz from the Furleigh Estate in nearby Bridport.

The warm loaf of complimentary bread was just like the traditional malted granary my Mum used to buy for us as a treat when I was a kid, which I would eat in doorsteps, spread with an equal thickness of butter. Here it was served with the far more modern accompaniments of balsamic and olive oil and was only hampered by 'slices' still being attached at the bottom; meaning that trying pull them apart, combined with the very friable crust, meant a breadcrumb blizzard that soon covered us all in a fine crispy dust.

I shotgunned the Ewing to first dibs on starters and chose the Black Cow vodka-cured sea trout with fennel, cucumber and lemon from the specials board. All my English teachers would, I’m sure, be very disappointed to see me describe it as pretty as a picture, but if the cliché fits, wear it. And when the only criticism is you could have easily eaten twice as much – sublimity does not always equal satiation - you know things are off to a good start.

I'm not sophisticated enough to care much for oysters, but the Ewing loves the salty globules of wobbly mollusc and she very much enjoyed her sweet, plump Portlands, served raw on the half shell. Those with my aversion to their slippery natural state might prefer them grilled and here you can order them topped with pesto and parmesan or country style with bacon and cream.

I always think of red mullet as one of those ‘cheffy’ ingredients - like gooseberries or game or globe artichokes - that seem to crop up with wild abandon in recipe books and cookery shows, but are sadly absent from the shelves at Tescos.  So after seeing it on the menu -  albeit served with the unseasonably summery flavours of red pepper, goats cheese and basil stuffing - it made my main an easy choice.

Overall it was very pleasant - if all rather delicate flavour-wise, considering the bold ingredients involved – but the enormous amount of tiny bones made each mouthful feel somewhat hazardous. Especially as I still have flashbacks to a fish bone related incident in Venice that involved a makeshift rescue operation involving a hotel table lamp and some tweezers.

A better choice bone-wise was my Mum’s skate - from the specials board - which was served as a central tranche of a larger specimen, rather than a whole wing of a smaller fish. Beautifully cooked, served with a punchy chorizo, smoked paprika and spring onion-flecked sauce, the pearly flakes of fish slipped from the cartilaginous bones with ease.

The Ewing's monkfish curry successfully balanced toothsome nuggets of delicate tail with a deep and fragrant sauce of plate-licking deliciousness (she just about managed to restrain herself). Add fluffy lemon and coriander scented rice and the obligatory poppadom and you had the surprise hit of the evening.

Sam also chose from the specials board and, lacking any pictures and a memory like the netting at the bottom of an oyster bed, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was turbot. Whatever fish it was, it was a fine-looking specimen that had been roasted on the bone and served simply with new buttery spuds and seasonal veg.

After numerous awkward moments trying to swallow snotty whelks or hairy pig’s feet I’ve pretty much given up ordering strange things on menus, but the temptation after seeing cucumber panna cotta with strawberry soup on the desert menu was too great to resist.

Of course, I should have known better; while the cucumber flavour wasn’t too odd and the strawberry ‘soup’ was pleasingly sharp and refreshing, the panna cotta - to match its colour - was set to the consistency of a tennis ball and the flavours were far more redolent of a balmy summer then the encroaching chill of early October.

Better was the two-tone chocolate mousse with a crunchy carapace of bitter chocolate giving way to a light and milky centre and accompanied by a couple of plump, purple figs soaked in coffee. Perhaps a plate would have been better than a wooden board, but perhaps I’m being grumpy. A slice of almond tart also more than passed muster, evidenced by lack of photos due to its swift demolition.

Of course if you have fish this fresh, a deft hand in the kitchen and a more than competent front of house, you could be eating dinner from a damp portakabin in a lay-by on the M11 and it would still taste good. But add in this view, looking across the oyster beds as the sun slips over the horizon, and everything seems to taste, just like the oysters, just that little bit sweeter.

Keep Portland Weird - All the pubs pt.1

Listening to other peoples’ relationship advice is about as helpful as following centenarians tips on making it to a hundred; ‘have different interests’, 'be passionate', 'drink two bottles of Miller and a glass of whisky before bed’ etc. I’ll leave you to decide which answers match which question.

While I don’t have any invaluable tips (although I wouldn’t recommend squeezing your wedding ring with a pair of pliers in an attempt to resize it), if I had to distil the reason I’m still (mostly) happily married, it would probably come down to the Ewing’s reaction to my proposal of spending a few days visiting all the pubs on the Isle of Portland. When I saw her unbridled enthusiasm for an idea that even I thought was a bit ridiculous, I knew I had a keeper.

Which is how we came about traipsing around the limestone-tied ‘island’ - which is actually attached to the mainland at the eastern end of Chesil Beach, the impressive shingle tombolo that stretches 18 miles down the Jurassic Coast - while sampling the wares of the 15 hostelries on the Isle. These pubs being defined by the map on the West Dorset CAMRA page, minus the British Legion, as it’s really a club (mmm...attention to detail - TE), and with the addition of the Punchbowl, which I assume was omitted for not serving ‘real ale’).

Alongside a short write up of each visit, in case anyone should want to follow in our footsteps, I have also invented my own ‘sticky carpet’ rating - devised to celebrate all the wonderful quirks and eccentricities of a proper British pub. 

For a low rating think gastro pub with stripped back floorboards, scented hand cream in the loos, and a seasonal menu involving game and seafood. A high rating is reserved for a boozer with cigarette burns on the loo cistern, a resident dog curled up by the fruit machine and a menu of dry roasted peanuts and scotch eggs. There’s probably some metaphor for modern marriage in there somewhere, but I’ll just leave it as them both being perfect in their own way.

Before our first evening spent getting battered, we stopped for batter of a different sort at the island's most recently opened fish bar, Chesil Chippie - chosen as I was curious to try their more outré offerings of Lyme Bay Scallops, smoked cod goujons and battered samphire, as well as getting my fix of Southern chip shop favourite, the pea fritter. With our food freshly fried to order, and the friendly staff making our short wait much more entertaining, I was looking forward to our al fresco fish supper.

The original idea was to arrive to the last blazes of autumnal sunshine before picking up our supper and scrambling over the pebbles to watch the sunset somewhere over Lyme Regis, but clearly the British climate had other ideas. While the rain held off, the wind (as my Mother had been repeatedly warning me prior to our trip) was whipping particularly ferociously, even for the notoriously gusty Isle of Portland.

Luckily, unlike pesky sand, the pebbles here are far too big to be shifted by a stiff sea breeze and we managed to eat our first dinner on the beach - even if the Ewing ended up as cold as her leftover chips. All the food was well worth windburn, with my favourite being the scallops and the Ewing’s the cod, while we fought over crispy scraps of salty samphire dragged through their impressive homemade tartare sauce. The pea fritter was also particularly brilliant example of the genre and, luckily for me, I got it all to myself.

As we started to fear a side of frostbite with our fish, I was glad there wasn’t far to go to reach our first pub, the The Little Ship, situated almost opposite the chippy. While the temperature didn’t feel much warmer than being outside, the greeting was friendly enough and I was pleased to see a dart board, pool table and fruit machine, which I took as a hopeful portent of the sticky carpet standard of pubs to come. There was even a traditional wooden skittle alley, although it seemed to be being used to store old tables and chairs on our visit.

In what would become a depressingly constant theme to our trip, the cask ale was limited to one choice; Wadworth’s 6X – although we were told there were another couple of casks ‘settling’ behind the bar. Despite the restricted selection it was served in fine condition and made a pleasing first pint. The Ewing, after deciding moments before that she would never eat again, also picked up some lurid blue fizzy sweets that were purportedly helping support cancer charities – offset, no doubt, by the cost of the rise of type two diabetes (supporting charities really is a double edged sword sometimes - TE).

The Little Ship: 2x pints Wadworth 6X £7.00

Sticky carpet rating: 7. Higher than average thanks to the pool table, darts, fruit machine and skittle alley - not in use (oh what could have been...TE). Loos are SC standard, although at least they boasted both soap and loo roll.

Overall score: 5. All the attributes of a good old British boozer, but in a strangely disjointed setting, probably not helped by it being fairly quiet on our visit. My pint was well kept though, and an extra mark for a great soundtrack of Dylan, the Stones and the Doors.

The Cove House Inn - an atmospheric 18th century hostelry built of Portland stone, just two minutes’ walk from our first stop - was much livelier. Being there just for the beer, we were restricted to the bar, as all the tables in the restaurant areas were booked for dinner. No matter, we perched up on our stools and were entertained by our enthusiastic barman as he pulled our Pints of Adnams Broadside.

Despite not being a local beer – the other cask ale offered was Doombar – it was a decent enough pint, but I was more tempted by the food menu, with seasonal offerings such as crab tagliatelle and haddock chowder to compliment the sweeping views of Chesil Cove (had it not already been pitch black by this point). The Ewing wanted a slice of banoffee pie to go with a second pint but, with two stops still to go I checked out the loos (in the name of research - clean but no lights in the cubicles?) and dragged her back into the hoolie raging outside (SO unfair, that banoffee would have been good - TE).

Cove House Inn: 2x  pints Adnams Broadside £7.60

Sticky carpet rating: 5 - with its uneven floors, low-beamed ceilings (mind out if you’ve had a couple) and prime spot on the sea front, the Cove Inn is the sort of charmer that would happily woo your mother. No darts or pool here, but they do serve scratchings and welcome dogs into the bar (and the barman LOVED  my woolly hat, that makes it an 8 for me -  TE).

Overall score: 6.5 - based on our fleeting visit, although the score would have undoubtedly been higher if we had returned for food.

Our next stop was to Castletown, to the far north east of the island, where we hit the The Royal Breakwater; a good looking building that, as its name cunningly suggests, is also a hotel. Inside had a funny kind of atmosphere, somewhere between a holiday club – with parents trying to finish their meals while the children, threatened with bedtime, ran merrily amok – and a proper boozer. The guy we met at the bar was certainly already very well lubricated as he attempted a hilariously disjointed conversation with the, far too accommodating, Ewing.

It was at this point when, after looking at the uninspiring beer selection, I made my move on to the rum and coke. I’m not normally a big spirit drinker, but being as we were in the right neck of the woods, rum seemed as good a choice as any and I eased myself in with a Mountgay Eclipse. A beverage chosen as Bond orders it with soda in QoS, just before he wins the Aston Martin DB5 in a game of poker. The Ewing tried to get her Malibu with pineapple, but the high winds had obviously felled all the palm trees on the island, so she ended up with Coke too.

Royal Breakwater Hotel – 1x Mountgay eclipse and Coke; 1x Malibu and Coke £5.20

Sticky carpet rating: 6.5. Pool table, dart board and fruit machines, plus a trail of ketchup across our table from abandoned sachet, set the scene, while the Malibu added nicely to the retro feel. The loos are accessed by walking across a strange kind of indoor alleyway, but were commendably clean.

Overall rating: 5.5. A friendly place, and I would have been happy to stay for another, but a slightly odd layout and didn’t feel quite ‘pubby’ enough for me.

Moving almost directly next door to our final stop of the evening, (ooo, our fave - TE) The Green Shutters was the pub I had most been looking forward to visiting; attracted by both the reviews and the name - sounding, as it does, like a ‘proper’ boozer, amidst a sea of forgettable generic monikers. Walking in I felt cheered that this was going to be a good stop, reinforced by the ale which, although small in stature, included the local DBC Pilsner, interestingly served on cask.

The Ewing sampled a pint of the above, while I stuck with the Mountgay and coke. Both solid choices, but the real excitement came with the snack we chose to accompany them – Shakey’s Black Country scratchings. I had seen bags of this strange looking snack, with its little yellow cartoon pig on the front, behind all the previous bars we had visited; and now, my hunger slowly returning, decided it was finally time to sample them.

Despite the midlands moniker, these are proud Portland pig bits, and very good they were too, despite the ominous health warning ‘only recommended for people with strong, healthy teeth’ on the back of the bag (now I don't remember seeing any piggies on the isle...suspicious - TE). They also must have had some magical effect on our inebriation levels, as we had suddenly perked up enough to start considering the range of top shelf whiskys as a nightcap, helped no doubt by Europe slowly beginning to claw back their second day deficit at the Masters, which I was following on the TV in the corner.

I picked the Auchentoschan American Wood, an easy-going lowland whisky I first tried on the overnight sleeper to Edinburgh, which knocked me out ‘til well past Carlisle. The Ewing was very excited to see Black Cow vodka - the world’s only vodka made from milk – which is also made just down the road in West Dorset. Not only did her choice, a double on the rocks, cause a stir amongst the regulars, but the barman also gave it to her at the bargain price of £2.50 as ‘it isn’t really that popular’ (sheer madness - TE). Which pretty much made up for the golf, and the fact we still had the windy walk back to the mainland to contemplate....

Green Shutters - 1x Mountgay Eclipse and Coke, 1x pint DBC pilsner; I x Shakey’s scratchings; 1x double Auchentoshan American Oak; 1x double Black Cow Vodka £14.30 (I mean, Oh. My. God. - TE)
Sticky carpet rating: 8.5 A solid score thanks to pool, darts, fruit machines, and a decent collection of charity tins - including 80s favourite Sooty, which the Ewing was particularly excited to see (collecting for the RNIB no less, well done Sooty - TE). In fact, we probably spent more money donating to these than on our beverages.
Overall rating: 9. Great pub with great staff and a lively atmosphere and somewhere I’d like to go back for a quiet daytime pint (the Ewing would like to go back to finish the vodka). I’m taking a point off for the beer selection being a little lacking, but the cheap top shelf spirits goes someway to make up for it.