Rating: 5/10
Telephone: 01353 662582
Address: 25 St Mary's Street, Ely, Cambridgeshire
Open: Lunch, all week, 12.15-2pm; dinner, Mon-Sat, 7.15-9pm
Price: £45-50 a head for three courses with wine
For the second time in a few weeks, a visit to a place attached to one of Britain's great cathedrals underlines what a difficult balancing act is running a restaurant. Without wishing to reinflame the minor local controversy that followed my review of Tatler's in Norwich, which was heavily marked down (perhaps, in retrospect, too heavily) for dismal service despite the high quality of the cooking, the point I so clumsily failed to make clear is that a restaurant is about much, much more than its food.
At the Old Fire Engine House in Ely, the East Anglian form book was turned on its head, for here the service and nearly everything else was terrific. The setting in the shadow of the cathedral is magnificent and the 18th-century house, which doubles as an art gallery, is as charming as the welcome from a chatty Scottish woman who pronounced the word "yes" as an undulating tri-syllable in apparent tribute to David Walliams's demented Little Britain hotelier.
Sitting in the cosy bar over drinks and complimentary bowls of good olives and unsalted pistachios, studying a handwritten menu packed with enticing dishes based on local ingredients (beef and shallots in Adnam's ale; home-cooked ham with piccalilli), I assured my friend with nauseating smugness that he could rely on my unerring instincts and anticipate a treat. Walking to the restaurant through the kitchen is a novelty that might not appeal to all, but we thought it added to the cheery homeliness, and the dining room seemed a nicely understated farmhousey room with tiled floors, off-white walls bedecked with jolly paintings, and doors on to a pretty garden. "I'm telling you," I reiterated as we sat down at a scrubbed wood table, "this is going to be great."
Then the starters arrived. There is a peculiarly British stoicism in the face of grave culinary disappointment, and to this we gave not full vent, because that was impossible, but every ounce of vent we could find. Determined to like this restaurant for so many reasons, we looked at each other and nodded with pious satisfaction at the first mouthful, and at the second, and even the third. My friend might even have made it to the bottom of his bowl unbowed, because his chilled pea soup, although a little watery and insipid, was far from terrible. My "crayfish au gratin", on the other hand, exploded the pretence by the fourth forkful. It wasn't really au gratin at all, but a sort of cheese bake, the dish cooked for so long on such a high flame that the cheese - possibly cheddar or gruyère; without DNA testing, there was no knowing - had lost its integrity and its taste, what flavour it had being a rancid, greasy tang that obliterated the shellfish.
The main courses replicated this form. Fillet of sea bass in a cream and dill sauce was OK, if slightly misconceived - the ethereal flavour of good bass wants nothing more than a little rock salt and lemon juice to draw it out - but my "casserole of pigeon" was again misnamed. What it was, in fact, was a huge, entire pigeon overcooked by at least an hour, its sandpaper dryness undisguised by the thick, globulous gravy in which it was doused, served with a few boiled new potatoes but not another vegetable in sight.
How can you not want to love a place where the waitress comes over when you're midway through an enormous portion and evidently struggling, and asks, "Would you like seconds?" I can't remember hearing that question in a restaurant before, and while it put the final gloss on the whole farmhouse effect, the poignant thing was that I didn't strictly want firsts.
This place has long had a strong local reputation, so perhaps we caught it, as we caught Tatler's, on the offest of days. Whether that is the case, running a restaurant is an extraordinarily tough way to make a living, and the last thing any sane critic wishes to do is damage a labour of love in which people are so obviously striving to please. If only there were a happy compromise whereby you could spend a delightful evening at the Old Fire Engine House, and have a takeaway delivered to the table.
