Thomas Carr Seafood and Grill, 59 High Street, Ilfracombe, North Devon EX34 9QB (01271 555 005). Meal for two including drinks and service £60-£90.
The Thomas Carr Seafood and Grill on the high street in Ilfracombe is that mate of yours who could be a huge success if only they got their act together; the one that leaves you tipping your head on one side sympathetically and frowning a little. As a fully functioning restaurant it is, frankly, a mess right now, and they know it. During my lunch I am given rousing speeches about what they want the place to be when it grows up and what it isn’t quite yet. They tell us about the – dread words – “fine dining” restaurant they plan for upstairs, and the outside terrace out back of the lower ground level. But which they haven’t got around to yet. Because, you know, stuff.
I can’t help but clock a touch of rising damp down the stairwell to that lower ground level. Unusually for me, I also can’t help giving a commentary on the state of the loos when I return from them. The late Anthony Bourdain once instructed us all to pay acute attention to the hygiene standards in the parts of restaurants you can see, because it’s a clue to the standards in the parts you can’t, but I’ve never been that porcelain-obsessed. Then again, rarely do I see anything like this, which turns me into some Victoria Wood character who wants to bellow: “Brenda, bring me the Marigolds. We’ve got a situation.” There are lots of ill-advised polished metal splashbacks and metal wall panelling which show up every man-drip. Everybody knows men’s toilets are a nightmare of drips and stains.
And then there’s the menu, which even our cheery waitress says is a bit weird. It’s a medley of all the greatest hits they haven’t yet had. There’s a mention of chilli beef nachos, which sound like a refugee from a wipe-down menu, alongside something nerdy involving fennel-cured salmon, oyster cream and crispy salmon skin. The latter reads like they’ve been boning up on the menu at Copenhagen’s Noma from 2005.
So I’m reading the signals and thinking that the effort it has taken me to get to Ilfracombe on the North Devon coast – a 100-minute drive from Exeter – has been wasted. The room doesn’t help. It’s a huge expanse of bar with a brutal tundra of bare floorboards. There are too few tables, all with mismatched chairs, some of them in a startling mustard yellow. Who looked at those and muttered: “Yes”? Still, they sent me an imploring email when they knew I was going to be doing an event in the area. Admittedly they wanted me to try the tasting menu at the Thomas Carr Olive Room on the other side of town, the mothership with its awards and stars, which the eponymous chef opened in 2015 after years cooking with Nathan Outlaw. However, they also mentioned the recent successful crowdfunding campaign they had undertaken to open this Seafood and Grill. They didn’t at any point mention it was going through a troubled adolescence and best to leave it alone until it grows up a bit and tidies its room. Plus, as I’ve said before, tasting menus make my palms itchy. Which means I’m here and, as ever, being hopeful.
That hope is fully rewarded. There are some false starts. If you’re going to offer a lobster macaroni cheese, please don’t overcook the macaroni and don’t forget to be stupidly generous with the cheese. There aren’t many things to get right in mac and cheese. Those are two of them. Likewise, if you mention crispy salmon skin, it had better be so crisp it snaps obligingly between my fingers. These bend, sadly, but the lozenges of fennel-cured salmon they are perched upon are delightful: soft, the right side of oily, with a delicate cure which leaves just enough room for a little light fishiness. The oyster cream is a gentle intervention from the bivalve rather than an overwrought slap. It’s waving, not shouting. Prawns in garlic butter are all four of those words done right. The prawns are plump and so fresh they squeak and bounce beneath the teeth. They sit in a bubbling pond of salty molten dairy fat, silted up with chopped garlic, just begging for a bread intervention. They get it.
It’s with the mains that everything really comes into focus. A pearly piece of hake rests in a deep shellfish bisque, given go-faster stripes courtesy of handfuls of lemongrass and ginger. It’s rare that a soup mounted with ladles of cream also feels invigorating and curiously healthy. Perched on top is a quenelle of the sweetest of sweet white crab meat. It’s one of those dishes that reminds you why you made the effort to come and eat this close to the sea, where the seafood is just that little bit brighter and friskier.
Skate wing is dressed with brown butter, capers and crayfish, and is one of the best versions of this dish ever laid in front of me. I pull the strands of skate from the cartilage, enjoying the satisfying way the flesh slips from the wing, like it was waiting to be undressed. I shovel up some capers and nutty crayfish, and sigh. There are new potatoes to remind you that this is meant to be a balanced lunch, but all eyes are on that glorious skate.
Desserts are hardly earth-shattering, but thoroughly serviceable. The long plank of chocolate brownie is big on squidge, has a pleasingly crisp surface and is joined on the plate by both a clotted-cream ice cream and a spiced, sugared ginger biscuit which snaps obligingly in the way the salmon skin didn’t. A crème brûlée is an extraordinary shade of yellow which almost matches those weird leather seats. If it was a classic version of the dish, I would be standing up and applauding. Unfortunately, they’ve decided to “improve” it through the addition of under-sweetened rhubarb, which is no improvement at all.
As you can guess by now, I am going to let the rhubarb mistake slide, partly because of those other dishes (especially those two mains) and partly because whatever the idiosyncrasies of this place and its growing pains, it has a warm, beating heart. It demands to be liked. At lunchtime a starter and a main is just £18, which is a pound less than the à la carte price for that hake dish. Three courses are £24. The value is undeniable. If I were nearby, I would choose to eat here again without hesitation. Take that as a recommendation.
News bites
Another meal at Parson’s in Covent Garden confirms it’s a class act. Yes, it’s a seafood grill offering up whole fish to share, but the joy lies with the starters and sides: the peppery brown shrimp croquettes, the whipped cod’s roe, the salad of grilled baby gem, prawns and anchovies or the trout tartare with bloody mary jelly. You can put together a serious lunch just from those (parsonslondon.co.uk).
The Ottolenghi group is launching a new restaurant in London’s Fitzrovia. Rovi, which will have a small takeaway operation as well as a sit-down restaurant, is majoring on grilled vegetables: the likes of braised and smoked carrots with puffed black barley and pickled herbs, hasselback kaffir lime beets with lime cream and kohlrabi ravioli.
The sandwich chain Eat has found a new way to use up leftover bread. They are donating it to the eco-brewery Toast Ale, which replaces a third of the malted barley with bread that would otherwise be wasted. The first brew is now on sale, including at Eat’s five licensed branches (eat.co.uk).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
