186. Pig Saves Brummies’ Favourite Seaside Resort.

 

 

 Whether or not the extended period of necessarily taking holidays in our precious islands has saved the English seaside resort from a progressive, seemingly terminal decline one cannot say but Weston super Mare has not had a bad summer season and on an early October Saturday, warmer and sunnier than we should expect, there are good numbers of people, from young families who look more middle class than they used to (day trippers from increasingly gentrified Bristol?, I ask myself) to those of advanced and even greatly advanced age (some dressed rather pensioner chic), walking up and down the Royal Parade, throwing balls for their numerous dogs on the vast expanse of beach and queueing for ice creams at the former Cove West cafe not far from the new pier. 

  In Blog 27 I referred to this North Somerset town’s importance to West Midlanders as a holiday resort for the working class in the historic past - in the 50s and 60s the dominant accent was more Brummie than West Country in the summer months as ten of thousands from the centre of England thronged the town, snuffling out the best fish and chips, the hottest hot dogs, plentiful pots of tea and buckets of ice cream (then just vanilla, strawberry, chocolate or perhaps raspberry ripple) like truffle pigs out on a mission. Now the Mercians as still coming to visit but there are just as many Home Counties accents to be heard, as well as those identifying the speakers as coming from The North and of course, there’s plenty of Welsh, from just round the corner across the bay.

  For years there was a remarkably good restaurant with marvellous views - Michelin-listed The Cove (see Blog 27) - but this sadly went the way of all flesh and for a short brief period, as Weston College extended its hegemony over most of the buildings in the town, there was Lasseter’s (again see Blog 27) but its promise was short-lived. Then COVID-19 struck, locks went down and up and down and up and down and up again, Brexit got done and sent the hospitality business into a staffing crisis, fuel costs began to soar (and the story is not yet told by a long chalk) and anyone trying to run a restaurant at present has to rely on Boris Johnson’s rule by optimism as the only assurance that their business can survive.

  So it was not good timing to open a restaurant in November 2019 just as the coronavirus was festering nicely up to a boil in far off Wuhan and Boris was putting his Brexit legislation through the House Of Commons. I hate the phrase “A perfect storm” but this was indeed a perfect storm. But not knowing all that - which of us did? - two chefs from Lasseter’s - David Newman and James Baker opened their first restaurant on the site of a former bistro at the edge of the town centre, the Weston Mercury at the time saying that “the kitchen offers traditional bistro food with a twist, ‘to make it a little bit more special’”.

  The bistro, which pleasingly does not include the word ‘bistro’ in its name instead choosing the uncompromisingly English Ginger Pig Kitchen, is splendidly rustic, adorned as it is with an artificial (hopefully), mildly unsettling  pig’s head mounted on the wall (a thought of ancient baronial halls their walls lined with mounted stags’ heads flashes irrelevantly through my mind) and heavily varnished wooden tables and a mélange of chairs. The place is full of diners which can not be bad for off-season Weston and there is a degree of Pensioner Chic in evidence.

  A surprise amuse bouche is whisked to the table. A soupçon of what was basically a melon gazpacho, mildly acidic and wholly effective in waking up the taste buds of refreshment. The problem with one amuse bouche is that you can not help but think that there should be another one or even another two. But still, a nice little surprise.

  Down to the serious stuff. An excellent chicken liver parfait with some very edible toasted brioche, a delicious apricot chutney and a sensible two or three cornichons to cut through the richness of the dish. Look at Blog 27 and it becomes apparent that the chefs have brought some of their Lasseter’s’ dishes with them.

  

Then magnificent and bountiful dressed Cornish crab served attractively in a scallop shell with a perfect accompanying lemon mayonnaise and toasted pain de campagne and a salad whose elements were not all complementary to the crab. There were a few tiny pieces of shell in the crab but they did not detract from the immense pleasure the dish gave me and to be fair, I have still to visit a restaurant that has succeeded n eliminating every vestige of shell from its dressed crab. Finally a dessert/drink I recognised from my visits to Lasseter’s - a vey quaffable affogato with local clotted cream ice cream and generously-sized chunks of honeycomb.

  A fine meal, outwardly simple but highly enjoyable with the crab dish well worth storing up in one’s memory as an example of just how good bistro food can be in the hands of the right chef.

  So good was it all that I returned the next day for Sunday lunch. Thus it was that I came face to face with Thatcher’s Gin not surprisingly endowed with the flavour of apple and very pleasant it was with good tonic and well matched with the prawn cocktail I chose as starter (again see Blog 27) which was a cornucopia of crustaceans, large and small, with a pleasing, mild, not too acidic Marie Rose sauce, all looking very pretty in a scallop shell.

 

 It was not possible for me to resist choosing the roast as main course; I could have had beef but why would you go to a restaurant called The Ginger Pig Kitchen and not choose pork? The succulent sliced pork came with about every Sunday lunch accompaniment that you could imagine and another cornucopia - this time of vegetables. There was a well cooked donkey carrot of a size I have previously seen served as the main element of a main course in an expensive Vegan restaurant, excellent cheesy cauliflower, broccoli and a happy surprise in the form of crispy cabbage as well as tasty red cabbage. The roast potatoes were better than many restaurants manage to serve up and there was a decent stuffing and a fine Yorkshire pudding plus apple sauce and crackling though this was sadly inedibly too hard unless one was ready to imperil the structure of one’s teeth. It was all finished off by a decent gravy. Such pleasure for we rostbifs or should I say rostporcs? 

  Having rediscovered the pleasure of affogato I rounded off the meal with that little self-indulgence. Chef David Newman came out to speak to his happy diners - once more the restaurant was full to the rafters with customers. It looks as though this restaurant is one little piggy that is not going to be slaughtered ahead of its time.

27. Locating Fine Food In Birmingham's Favourite Seaside Resort.

  If you find yourself in the West Country resort of Weston super Mare you will still hear lots of West Midlands accents on the streets, beach or in the dining establishments. For decades the resort was a favourite destination for the good citizens of Birmingham and their families (along with other West Midlanders), it being just about the nearest seaside resort to the Second City. Now it is still less than 2 hours by direct train and it is a convenient stopping off point for those journeying on to the far Deep South-west in the form of distant Cornwall.

  Weston is a resort for the Mercian working class still, not the effete middle class of London and the south-east, who might splash out to pay the prices of places like Aldeburgh, and the dining places reflect the main clientele who need to feed in the town. If you're careful, you can find passable fish and chips and 1960's style roast dinners and pies and sausages and all day breakfasts. Food which looks like it was prepared in the 21st century is alas rather rare.

  Up until last winter there was an excellent restaurant, The Cove, which when it was at the peak of its existence served the most delicious of fish dishes and some highly original other delights. I recall one fabulous starter of cauliflower panna cotta which was sheer nectar for any enthusiast of that wondrous vegetable and on numerous visits of delight to The Cove I witnessed many magnificent dishes, especially perfectly cooked fish, emerging from the restaurant's kitchens. The Cove, even in the 2018 Michelin Guide, was rightly acknowledged as an excellent place to eat but it fell foul of the howling mob of the despicable Tripadvisor, who moaned incessantly about the restaurant's sometimes rather slow service - instead of relaxing in a lovely situation with a splendid view across the bay and out to sea, and just sitting back and enjoying themselves grazing on delicious food sold for very reasonable prices the mob whinged and whined that their breakfast bacon sandwich wasn't served quickly enough. And so, in this age, of the near-illiterate informing the hopelessly ignorant by means of non-peer reviewed electronic communication, The Cove's customer numbers tailed off and the restaurant seems to have succumbed to a slow and terminal decline. Miserabile dictu.

  The Cove's sad passing would have left Weston a gastronomic desert but that Weston College took over the Winter Gardens situated on the promenade across the road from the beach and a stone's throw from the Grand Pier and opened a new restaurant in the building in September 2017 which is called Lasseter's after Dr Paul Lasseter Phillips, Weston College's Principal and Chief Executive.

  David Newman who had grown in the Weston area was appointed Head Chef having worked as a sous chef at Mendip Springs Golf Club, Head Chef at The Exchange in Bridgwater and more recently was Head Chef at Chartwell's.

  An apt attempt has been made to give the internal decor an Art Deco style and the dining room has a view out to the sea which is a delight especially on a warm bright summer evening - in this respect the restaurant conjures up memories of the view from The Cove. There is a 'pre-theatre menu' though there's little going on at Weston's theatres that makes the name seem appropriate but it is extraordinarily good value - 3 fine courses plus a glass of good wine for the ridiculously underpriced sum of £18.95p which ought to put the restaurant in the running for a Bib Gourmand though of course the theatre menu is only valid before 7PM when an a la carte menu kicks in though that too represents acceptably good value. Perhaps Lasseter's has done enough to have earned itself a Michelin Plate for 2019.

  I visited Lasseter's twice in one week and on one evening ate from the a la carte menu and on the second was offered the Pre-theatre menu which not only appealed to me because of the excellent price of the meal but also because it had a nice-sounding plaice dish on it which was missing from the a la carte menu.

  There was a cocktail menu and on my second visit I thoroughly enjoyed what was described as 'Lasseter's signature cocktail', the very quaffable 'Thyme in Somerset'. On my first visit I was tempted to try the most expensive gin on the list of gins - Williams Chase Elegant but when I enquired what was special about it that made it so more expensive than the others on the list I was told rather flatly that it was the shape of the bottle which didn't seem like a very good reason to pay an extra £1.50 to me. So I chose a glass of Hendricks and tonic instead and I was asked what type of tonic I wanted because people are choosing to drink the new varieties of tonic though not apparently for any good reason. I opted to go along with the current mode though I wasn't at all sure why I had chosen to do so and I was a little anxious about the potential inappropriateness of adding Fevertree's Elderflower tonic to my Hendricks and slice of cucumber but in fact it worked very well and assuaged my nervousness about what I did not expect to be a good combination.

  And so to the food.

Day 1 - A la carte menu - I had chicken liver pâté which was served in a generous portion but seemed a little bitter to me, a magnificent and perfectly cooked salmon en croute which was again a generous size with delightful pastry (a real gem) and then a very happy vanilla panna cotta with a quartered strawberry and strawberry coulis and blackcurrant compote, the flavour of which didn't quite match up with the strawberries.

  On Day 2 I ate from the Pre-theatre menu in which the price of the food was substantially reduced compared with the a la carte menu. I had chicken liver parfait which looked the same as the chicken liver pâté which featured on the a la carte menu and was served pleasingly in the same style as the pâté with the lovely summer freshness and lightness of pea shoots and cornichons, the sourness of which most aptly bit into the richness of the pâté/parfait. I was pleased that there was none of the previous mild bitterness that I had experienced with the pâté to be tasted in the parfait. I presume that if I had ordered from the a la carte menu on the second occasion,the bitterness would also have disappeared!

  My main course on my second visit was a beautiful whole plaice, of more than adequate size served with sauté potatoes, more pea shoots and crispy samphire which was new to me - the crispness that is - and quite enjoyable except that one or two of the stems were not crisp and more like fish bones in their consistency which wasn't so pleasant. I would have been pleased if instead of sauté potatoes nicely boiled baby potatoes, joyously buttered and perfectly salted had been served with the plaice as had been the case with the salmon en croute on my first visit. There really is a perfection in serving delicious fresh fish with buttered baby potatoes and nothing else more complicated.

  For the second time I had the panna cotta for dessert and this was served looking much more elegant on this second occasion and pleasingly without the blob of contrasting blackcurrant compote.

The meals were not perfect but they were thoroughly enjoyable and announced that refined modern British food, at an excellent price, is available in Weston.

  Some of the dishes on the menu - the pâté for instance - lead you back to British gastronomic pre-history but they look very much of the moment as served up in Lasseter's. My main regret is that the menus do not achieve what those of The Cove gave us - lovely and beautifully cooked fresh fish. There is fish and chips but I would like to see more marine fish dishes on the menu. After all the beach and the sea (when the tide is in) are only a few yards away across the road from Lasseter's and judging by the salmon en croute and beautiful plaice chef can certainly handle fish dishes to perfection. Perhaps the restaurant could serve a special fish dish every day to give those diners who wish chance to enjoy fish at its most interesting and delicious while looking out at a sea scene.

  Still, after the passing of The Cove it's very pleasing to know that Birmingham-on-Sea has Lasseter's fine dishes on offer to those who want more than fish and chips, curries and the tedium of burgers.

  The Cove, sadly missed:-