It’s many years since we last ate at the Drum & Monkey. Certainly not this side of 2008, which is when I started to keep notes of our restaurant meals. We remembered it as a good seafood restaurant and that’s not changed. Speaking of things not changing, they have a “classics” section to the menu – things like fish pie which never really goes out of fashion. But, for the most part, the menu is bang-on for current “Modern British” seafood cooking.
There was a classic prawn cocktail to start for one of us. A generous serving of prawns, lettuce, tomato, red onion, cucumber and Marie Rose sauce, made quite pokey by a sprinkling of cayenne pepper across the top. The other plate was also fixed somewhere in Northern Europe. Mackerel had been given a light, sweetish pickle and was served with shaved fennel and kohl-rabi and an indeterminate savoury puree. The starters come with bread.
If the starters were very European, one main course, from the day’s specials, went a bit fusiony. Monkfish had been coated in char sui sauce, roasted and thickly sliced, just as a Chinese restaurant might do with pork. I’m not normally a big fan of fusion but I thought the treatment would work well with the firm texture of the fish. And it did. It was served with leaves of chicory and radicchio which brought crispness and a really nice bitterness. And there’s a puree from sesame and Maitake mushroom. I assume the chef reckoned the Asian name, rather than “hen of the wood”, fitted the menu better.
The other main was perfectly cooked hake with pancetta and a Pedro Ximenez sherry sauce. The menu said there was leek and lobster also in there but they must have been playing very much in the background as their flavours could not be detected. But it was still delicious.
Carbs are extras here and we ordered a dish of new potatoes. We also got a dish of mixed “greens” – mangetout, beans and courgette - which were cooked through but still with a bit of bite.
We didn’t want dessert but did have very decent coffee. And it’s the making of the coffee that brings our only criticism. Our table, booked at the beginning of August, was the worst in the place. Literally, right next to the coffee machine on the bar which, when in operation throughout the evening, is so noisy as to make conversation impossible. Had every other table not been occupied, we would have asked to move. For goodness sake, move it to somewhere less disruptive.
