The Guardian
September 2012
'Simple things make you coo with pleasure thanks to the freshness of the ingredients.'
'Apart from anything else, there's the beauty: a glass jar of perfectly ripe greengages sits beside sundae glasses of strawberries
and meringue; an enamel tub brims with rosy lobsters. In the semi-gloom and dark-painted walls, it's as affecting as a Vermeer
still life’ says Marina O’Loughlin in her review of the restaurant in The Guardian September 2012. ‘There are only a handful
of tables, a few of them in the kitchen itself. The food, which comes without any kind of starter/main course rhythm, is
everything you want lunch by the sea to be. There's dressed crab, sweet and pungent, with the kind of wobbly, homemade
mayonnaise you can cut with a knife.
Simple things make you coo with pleasure thanks to the freshness of the ingredients: oily, chargrilled sourdough piled high
with creamy goat's curd and emerald broad beans; a whole wild seabass with ticklish green sauce of capers, gherkins and fresh
herbs. A slab of delicate courgette tart is subtle and soothingly bland; Hendy suggests raw, mandolined courgettes: "Let
some ripple and loop back on themselves, so it looks like a rectangle of green-edged tumbled ribbon." Everything is
plonked insouciantly on white plates and canteen metal trays, with nothing more than a slice of lemon or slick of sauce.
Crab bisque offers the tricksiest presentation, but even that's just a metal saucepan on a tray with ladle for self-serving.
It's gorgeous, too: rich, deep crab flavour, lick of cream and brandy. Which kind of says it all.'
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