( new takeaway )
Af ters
SEASONS FISH KITCHEN Fish and chips are a great British staple, but are they worthy of a special journey? MARK TAYLOR reckons so, thanks to this new fish specialist
HEY, HANG ON a minute. Where are the sea views, the salty ozone smell and the screech of seagulls overhead? Seasons may call itself a Fish Kitchen, but it’s about as far from the coast as could be – not that you would know it once you step inside. It may be tucked away in the middle of the ‘shopping village’ next to the Farrington’s farm shop, between Bath and Bristol, but this new fish café and takeaway looks more like the sort of relaxed, cheery shack you stumble across in a remote Cornish cove. There is a decidedly St Ives-meets-Brittany feel to the place, too, which is to say there’s lots of New England-style white tongue and groove, a few blue and white striped cushions on bumnumbing white benches, and the day’s dishes chalked on a wall-size blackboard menu. There are strings of onions, bowls of lemons, paella pans and a few well-chosen and food-splattered fish cookbooks, including Rick Stein’s Taste of The Sea and Marco Pierre White’s Wild Food From Land & Sea. Small handwritten signs for daily specials hang from butchers’ hooks clinging to a brass rail – half-pints of shell-on prawns; Cornish sardines with chips and mayo; smoked haddock Scotch eggs; and smoked salmon, pancetta, spring onion and Cheddar filo pastry tarts. At the far end of this beach hut-sized business is an open kitchen with the type of shiny frying range you would expect to find in any seaside chippy. The big difference is that the chap in the chef’s whites and blueand-white striped butcher’s apron isn’t just any old fish fryer, but a chef with a Michelin-star background. Twenty years ago Alex Venables was head chef at Lucknam Park hotel, after which he took over The Tollgate Inn in Holt, near Bradford-on-Avon, with partner Alison Ward-Baptiste. The couple ran the village pub for 13 years, during which time they won two AA rosettes for the food, added bedrooms and a deli – and even got a rave review from Michael Winner. Two years since selling the pub, Alex and Alison are back with Seasons Fish Kitchen, a concept they hope to expand in the coming months, perhaps even taking it into a pub in the region, while keeping the café and takeaway in Farrington Gurney. Seasons Fish Kitchen is much more than just an upmarket fish and chips operation, as it also hosts ‘demo and dine’ evenings, where Alex teaches fish cookery followed by a two-course dinner with wine, as well as offering a ‘fish on wheels’ delivery service (free within a
five-mile radius of the farm shop, on orders over £30) and ‘perfect paella’ kits to take home. Although essentially a takeaway, there are two tables and a few stools at the counter for those who want to stop for a quick meal – but with no alcohol licence, it’s more of a piscine pit-stop than a place to linger. The fish is from Dorset-based family firm Samways, which supplies many of the best restaurants in Bristol and Bath, and it all comes from South Coast day boats, including their own. Dishes include grilled scallops, battered oysters, dressed West Bay crab, fish burgers (made with cod, mackerel and prawns), fish pie, Lyme Bay mussels steamed in cider and apple and Cornish lobsters with garlic butter. The deepfried fish dishes are all available in beer batter or glutenfree batter (cooked in a separate fryer), and chips are double-cooked in vegetable oil. Fish choices change with the seasons and what’s available, but on this visit they included cod loin, plaice, lemon sole and Cornish whiting. And if you want your fish ‘naked’ and grilled rather than fried, that’s fine too. My bowl of bouillabaisse (£7.50) was a rich, rustcoloured stew of tomatoes, chunks of garlic, plump and juicy mussels and generous pieces of hake, rock salmon (also known by the less glamorous name of huss) and Cornish whiting. It was the sort of rustic, deep-flavoured seafood stew you expect to find in a quayside bistro in Dieppe rather than a converted shed on a farm between Bristol and Bath. Alex admits that it has been a steep learning curve to perfect his fish and chips, but it has clearly been time well spent – the crisp batter on the cod had a remarkable lightness, and the cod itself was juicy with thick flakes of snow-white fish. The chef’s restaurant background also shows in the smaller details like the punchy homemade tartare sauce and the bashed peas flecked with mint. The chips were golden, crisp-edged and had the cotton wool fluffiness that comes from using Maris Piper potatoes. The freshest fish cooked simply by a Michelin-starred chef on a farm just off the A37 – Seasons is a unique place, and worth the detour. It will be interesting to see how this minnow of a concept develops into a much bigger fish.
✱ SEASONS FISH KITCHEN, Farrington’s Farm Shop, Farrington Gurney, Bristol BS39 6UB; 01761 452809; www.seasonskitchen.co.uk
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