Took advantage of a keenly priced set lunch here today, in a low key but luxe dining room with comfortable chairs and linen tablecloths and napkins.
They served 2 kinds of warm sourdough bread (white, and fennel and raisin) to start, with whipped butter. Forgot to take a photo.
I had the BBQ beef brisket to start, husband went with cured gurnard tartare.
My beef fell apart easily at the nudge of a fork. The sauce had ginger as the main flavour profile. There were some bits of picked cucumber and radish. And a sprinkling of puffed rice.
My husband enjoyed his more spring-like dish - I didn’t taste it.
For mains we both had the hake fillet, which came on a bed of wilted spinach sitting in an intensely savoury broth made of brown crab with a few gnocchi and spring peas. A few baby mangetout were perched on top. I wasn’t quite sure what the little puffy bits on top were, some kind of puffed grain perhaps. The fish was cooked absolutely perfectly, coming apart in translucent pearly large flakes.
Instead of dessert, we shared a rhubarb ‘nojito’ (non-alcoholic). This was initially quite sweet but became better as the ice melted and I mashed the mint and lime into the drink. I appreciated the use of a metal straw!
The drinks menu looked nice and more reasonably priced than the one at The Briny in Southsea. There was a separate wine list.
I was intrigued by this piece of cutlery, what it is meant to be used for? I used it to eat the hake fillet.
The bill:
Service was formal but warm.