I say "fish-slanted" because, though the menu bristles with the likes of oysters, cockles and lobsters, with a fruits de mer platter (min two persons) coming in at a minimum £30pp, there’s as much turf as surf here.
As the date pointed out there’s not much "Coast" about a wild mushroom risotto or a chicken and duck liver parfait. Maybe they worried about depleting the oceans.
They’d scoured them diligently for my standout glass of tiger prawns with aioli (£6), sensational specimens with a fresh, meaty bite. A fish soup was another winner: clearly home-made, it was unusually creamy and delicious mopped up with warm, crusty bread.
"Catch of the day" proved a case of art over sense — a lemon sole (£15) gained nothing, except slight mushiness, by being wrapped over on itself in a pretentious parcel. But we greedily slurped up a bowl of steamed Brixham mussels with cider cream and generous chorizo chunks (£10.50). So stuffed were we from mopping up the mussel sauce we couldn’t face heavy puds such as rhubarb and apple crumble.
With no fresh fruit option, we opted for ice cream, and were delighted by a £5 selection of some of the most delicious home-made ice cream we’d recently sampled. Honey and herb, blackberry ripple and a double-chocolate truffle that left us humming, "Oh we do like to be beside the seaside..."
