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LET’S get one thing straight: comments here are not designed to offend.
I eat out frequently in Barnstaple at perfectly respectable places. Their menus are fine, the ambience good, service generally warm and efficient. But – and there’s the rub – I rarely find anything on the menus exciting or challenging. The spare tyre around my middle attests to the fact that I like to eat. I devour cookbooks like ladies of a certain inclination do Catherine Cookson novels. And I spend a disproportionate amount of time in the kitchen.
But in more than four years I can’t recall walking into a restaurant in Barnstaple and seeing things on the menu that simultaneously aroused my curiosity and made me salivate.The minute I opened the menu at The Old Custom House I knew it was either going to be exceptional or – apologies for the technical French – cack.
It was lunchtime so we chose from the tapas menu. Tiger prawns came huge and grilled, with a light coating of sea salt, garlic and olive oil and accompanied by a bowl of fruity mayonnaise drizzled with parsley oil.
The rare-as-requested slices of local rump steak were served in a deep, rich sauce, heaped with different wild mushrooms and peppers.
My least favourite was the home-made spaghetti in a tomato sauce with parmesan. It was good, but personally I prefer the al dente resistance of dried spaghetti with a sauce like this. But this is verging on the churlish.
The crab and clam risotto, well that would have been a treat if only because it’s the first time I’ve been able to eat fresh clams in a Barnstaple restaurant. But it was fantastic, loaded with shellfish flavour.
We reluctantly agreed to see the desserts menu – in the name of research, you understand – and, when I asked whether the puds were also tapas style I was offered the option of a dessert plate to share. Who wouldn’t? Only a buffoon or someone fitted with a gastric band.
What came was a fragrant panoply of fresh ice creams (plural), different types of biscuit, lemon cream desserts with a liquid caramel top and a much appreciated chocolate fix which came in the form of a hot chocolate pud with a gooey centre. Just what the doctor ordered me to avoid.
Lovely.
The Old Custom House is a rare treat of a restaurant. The food oozes classy ingredients, freshness, imagination.
Chef/patron James Duckett’s years in Spain come through loud and clear.It only remains for North Devon to support him: anybody interested in food owes it to themselves to ensure the new Old Custom House is successful and thrives for us all to enjoy.
The Old Custom House, The Strand, Barnstaple, Tel 01271 370123.
Tapas for two including extravagant desserts, soft drinks and coffee cost £31.60.
Friday, 5 September 2008
Of whiting, mackerel and anorexic penguins
HA! I got one. I finally got to see my rod tip bend, I struck on the rod and started reeling in.
Sadly it was so small I could barely feel it wriggling on the end. It was a whiting. I have nothing against whiting except the fact that there's not much flesh on the buggers. They're skinny little beasts.
Last time I bought one it was the size of a big bass that would have fed four. It hung from of each end of my big roasting tin, that I'd packed with sliced potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, stock and saffron. But when I got it out of the oven and came to dishing it up to my wife and in-laws, there wasn't enough to feed an anorexic penguin, let along the four of us.
So when I brought my very first catch in from just outside the harbour at Ilfracombe at 6am on Sunday morning, I thought it was a mackerel. I've nothing against mackerel - a fine eating fish - and would have been pleased to land one - despite the fact my sister and I landed 50 on a one-hour boat trip around Lyme Bay a few years back. But I would gladly have landed and eaten it, as my first fish.
Sadly, though, it was a mackerel-sized whiting and I put it right back in the drink.
I wasn't alone, however, and I just had to tell two guys who were there fishing with peeler crab and squid (and less success than me) that I'd just caught my first fish in more than a year. What a child I am...
So my duck is broken, I am no longer a sea-angling virgin.
Let's see what the future brings!
Sadly it was so small I could barely feel it wriggling on the end. It was a whiting. I have nothing against whiting except the fact that there's not much flesh on the buggers. They're skinny little beasts.
Last time I bought one it was the size of a big bass that would have fed four. It hung from of each end of my big roasting tin, that I'd packed with sliced potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, stock and saffron. But when I got it out of the oven and came to dishing it up to my wife and in-laws, there wasn't enough to feed an anorexic penguin, let along the four of us.
So when I brought my very first catch in from just outside the harbour at Ilfracombe at 6am on Sunday morning, I thought it was a mackerel. I've nothing against mackerel - a fine eating fish - and would have been pleased to land one - despite the fact my sister and I landed 50 on a one-hour boat trip around Lyme Bay a few years back. But I would gladly have landed and eaten it, as my first fish.
Sadly, though, it was a mackerel-sized whiting and I put it right back in the drink.
I wasn't alone, however, and I just had to tell two guys who were there fishing with peeler crab and squid (and less success than me) that I'd just caught my first fish in more than a year. What a child I am...
So my duck is broken, I am no longer a sea-angling virgin.
Let's see what the future brings!
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