The right food in the right place - that is all I ask. You know the sort of food; an oyster sucked from its shell only a mile or two from its bed, or a piece of smoked salmon eaten within a sniff of the smokery. Or what about deep-fried cod munched in the street with seagulls screeching overhead, or a plate of asparagus that poked its rude head through the soil not a mile away from the stove on which it is cooked? For all the delights of metropolitan living - the Thai or Keralan restaurant on the doorstep, the pizza bike, the espresso bar on the corner, sometimes you want more, you want food that has a true sense of place.
I fancy an oyster. Half a dozen actually. The map shows that I can get to the Suffolk coast within a couple of hours from Liverpool Street, on the assumption I am willing to spend 47 quid to sit in East Anglia Railway's filthy rolling stock. I am not driving, I have no choice. Friends suggest Southwold. The Good Food Guide recommends the Thai fishcakes with chilli salsa and the turbot with couscous and salsa at The Crown. But I want Suffolk not Bangkok or Tangiers.
If there is one thing better than going away for the weekend it is going away mid-week. Even on a bonafide day off you feel like you are playing truant. A good start. Everywhere is quieter too and there is a chance for townies that the staff in museums, garden centres, restaurants and shops will hate you slightly less than usual. It helps to book a hotel in advance. The point being that you will want somewhere civilised to come back to when your shoes are full of sand and you are yawning from all that sea air. Leaving accommodation to chance is a habit fraught with disappointment.
The Crown and Castle at Orford - huge fireplace, squashy sofas, two minutes from the sea - is almost next door to an oysterage and two smokehouses. An even better start. It is also near Woodbridge and within a rollmop's hurl of the pebble beach at Aldeburgh. What is more, it copes with dogs and children as long as their owners are well behaved. I am bringing neither, but I want to avoid the sort of place that doesn't welcome such luggage. The rooms are fresh and bright. No one stands on ceremony. The proprietors, Ruth and David Watson are well known locally, having previously run The Fox and Goose at Fressingfield and Hintlesham Hall.
First stop Butley Orford Oysterage. They have Orford oysters and salmon from their own smoke house. This is everything I ask of a restaurant; simple, un-mucked-about food in (very) unpretentious surroundings. Almost everything on the menu here is locally caught or grown. The smoking of salmon, prawns and sprats is done 'round the back' and this is the food you should stick to here. The smoked cod's roe, so rarely found nowadays, comes with thin slices of hot white toast and makes you wonder why anyone would even think of beating it into a Mediterranean taramasalata. Thick, smoky, fishy and salty, this a great treat. Smoked sprats, which are difficult to find anywhere else, are chewy and fudgy, and lobster is as fresh as you would expect when the pots are within shouting distance. If you cannot wait for a table then you can content yourself with taking away the smoked eel, cod's roe- the rust-coloured lobes of smoked cod's eggs or crab from the little shop next door.
Richardson's smokehouse hides behind the Oysterage and smokes anything that stands still for long enough; pheasant, ham hocks, bloaters, garlic, eel, sausages. Their secret is long, slow smoking over local oak. Good stuff here, though I admit I wimped out of the six-hour smoked Stilton.
Signs point to asparagus and strawberries wherever you look. You can't have a box of long green spears without desperately wanting to eat some. Everywhere that has a table and chairs offers fresh asparagus at this time of year. Regatta, a relaxed family restaurant with a positively jolly atmosphere in Aldeburgh High Street, a short drive from Orford, gets their spears from nearby Grange farm, who also send their spears up to the royal family. There are more asparagus recipes than you can shake a stick at but none of them beat a handful of spears, steamed. You can have these at Regatta, plus wreck-caught Aldeburgh cod, local lobsters with mayonnaise and crab too. I had two tiny local slip soles, as delicate as lace, each one barely thicker than a silk tie and cooked to perfection.
If I am at the seaside then I must have ice cream. At the back of the 152 delicatessen in Aldeburgh past Antonio Carluccio's bottled antipasti and the Yorkshire preserves (why Yorkshire, don't they make enough jams and chutneys down here?) is a deep freeze stacked with sensational ices. These are from Alder Carr, and are unusual not just for their flavours - raspberry, tayberry, blackberry, summer pudding - but for their recipe. Nothing but fruit and cream goes into these locally made ices. I do like the more usual custard base but there is something refreshingly clean and pure about the Alder Carr range.
I am not very fond of shingle beaches. To this townie's feet it's like walking through treacle. But there is only one sandy beach round here and it's not this one. Still, there are benches to sit on and eat ice cream which is fine by me. For the record I scoffed a tiny tub of blackcurrant so purple it sent my teeth mauve, and another of gooseberry and elderflower. The excuse for both was that I am not often this area and I know of only one outlet for Alder Carr in London (Villandry, Great Portland Street, W1).
The British aren't good as 'seaside'. We just don't get it. It is like sunshine isn't really part of our DNA and we are just getting the hang of it. Hence the sunburn, the socks-with-sandals dress code and the inability to go to the beach on any day other than a bank holiday. Needless to say the beaches round here are hardly St Tropez but then, that's not what I have come for. I have come for food with a sense of place.
I go sole searching. Neat rows of huts post their catch of the day on a blackboard all along Aldeburgh's pebbled length. 'You'll have to come back later for crabs, they should be here in half an hour.' But there is sole, plenty of it, grey, white and slippery in its boxes, and it is in finer fettle than any you are likely see in any fishmongers. There may even be lobster for tea.
The fish comes in here twice a day and you must stand and wait on the shingle if you have a shopping list, but better to just buy what looks best. Prices are lower here than further inland, but there is little cheap fish nowadays. I've had fish for lunch, a shopping bag full to take home on the train and still can't help eyeing up the boats on their way in.
Word has it that you can't beat the fish and chips here. Especially that from the Aldeburgh fish and chip shop at the bottom of the High Street. My spies tell me that even the most famous local foodies will turn up in the long queue with a bottle of cold champagne, then turn left and wind their way through the alleys to the beach. There might be deep fried skate wings, cod or haddock. This is our much-maligned takeaway food culture at its zenith, showing the world just how good it can be. Locally caught fresh fish, fried in bubbling oil and eaten in the sea air with your fingers. McDonald's eat your heart out.
The food shopping round here relies more on local grocers and butchers and farm shops such as the vast one at Friday Street than any supermarket. I stop here just to check out their veggies, which are mostly local but end up buying sheep's yoghurt and have to be dragged away from Margaret Holland's homemade cakes. There is a bustling farmers' market in the community centre at Woodbridge on the second Saturday of every month. The Loaves and Fishes in Woodbridge High Street has Rendlesham asparagus and goose eggs.
The area's most famous store is Emmett's in Peasenhall. Essentially a village shop, their ham is good enough to get a warrant from the Queen Mum and the new owner, Mark Thomas of Culpepper the herbalists has been adding cheeses and Spanish wines to the stock. I must try their sweet pickle ham or a shaving of their light, sweet cider cure but it's getting late. I smudge my nose up against the window but it is long past closing time. To add insult to injury I spy the largest collection of olives I have seen in this country. Now I like an olive with my sundowner.
I scream 'strawberries' and the car skids to a halt. They are the first decent ones I have had this season (Honeye, a variety that will will be finished by the time this piece comes out, and Happle which will still be going strong) but I know we can find better and it is barely five minutes before I yell again. This time, a truly fine berry, picked only an hour before I bought them, warm and lush in the mouth. Infuriatingly they have no name.
Strawberries are not the only fruit. In July and August all local eyes are on the loganberry. High House Farm not only sells the fruit, black and portly like giant bumblebees, but jam and jelly and frozen berries too. In season you help yourself to jam or flowers, or apple juice - Discovery, Cox and Bramley - and post your coins into honesty boxes. The loganberry jam is, with one exception, the most superlative jam I have ever eaten. I had it on toast, stirred through plain sheep's yoghurt (Ruth Watson's suggestion that one) and in jam tarts made with thin, shorter-than-short pastry. The exception, by the way, is my own damson jam.
You would drag me screaming to any group activity, (I would rather play kamikaze than karaoke) but such events as themed restaurant evenings or cookery courses are undeniably popular. Book early or lose out. Aldeburgh is the place to come for a sushi weekend, a duck evening or a mushroom feast (at The Regatta), and shellfish days or seafood weekends at the hugely popular Aldeburgh Cookery School. Unfortunately they also offer courses in the dreaded Fusion Food - a style of cooking we should be trying to forget rather than passing on to others.
Sea air makes me ravenous. Last meal of the day is back at the Crown and Castle, more oysters, sweet, salty and shockingly fresh - like someone has thrown you into the sea with your mouth open. Anyone who thinks they don't like oysters should try them here. You may find local turbot, sole, and skate too. The owners take much of the seafood directly from the boats. There is little tinkering with the raw ingredients, but if you want anything cooked even more simply - for instance your spanking fresh sole cooked without the shrimps and brown butter, or would rather eat in the parlour - then just ask. Oh, and there's treacle tart or very creamy home-made ices for pudding.
I didn't get to taste David Allen's black treacle ham at Neave's, the much-talked-of butcher in Debenham, or the Suffolk-cure bacon from Creasey's butchers in Peasenhall that friends swear by. Neither did I nibble on E.W. Revett's famous sausages in Wickham Market, drink at The Queen's Head at Bramfield, the only totally organic pub outside London or manage to get to the beautiful old Crown at Snape. I failed too to eat the crab samosas with chilli dipping sauce at the Captain's Table in Woodbridge. I did though, manage to find ices made with local fruit, ate fish and chips within sound of the sea and got to swallow down an oyster or two. As I said, the right food in the right place.
Oysters, love?
Oysters have always been linked with love. When Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, sprang from the sea on an oyster shell and promptly gave birth to Eros, the word 'aphrodisiac' was born. Casanova is said to have eaten 50 raw oysters every morning in the bath. An ancient Chinese legend recalls the great fortune that befell a Ming warlord who was secretly fed 100 oysters through the day by one of his concubines. That night she slipped quietly into the warlord's sleeping chamber to find him vigorously romancing the entire harem. The native oyster is best during the winter, hence the instruction only to eat oysters when there is an R in month. The most famous are from Whitstable, Colchester and Helford, in season from September to April. Some say the R myth arose from an area where oysters spawn in the summer season, and when spawning they taste fatty, soft and inedible.
Pacific oysters are not as esteemed as natives but turning down a plate of spanking fresh Pacifics is simply misplaced snobbery. They are more elongated, with longer narrower shells, are raised in hatcheries such as the one at Butley and, thank goodness, are in season all year.
How to eat an oyster? With difficulty. Wrap your hand in an oven glove then hold the oyster, flat side uppermost. With your free hand push the point of an oyster knife into the hinge that holds the narrowest end of the shells together. Wiggle the knife backwards and forwards until the hinge breaks. Twist the knife so that the top shell starts to come away. Slice under the upper shell and cut the ligament joining the oyster to its shell. Lift off the shell. Tip down throat.
Useful contacts
Aldeburgh Cookery School (01728 454 039)
Butley-Orford Oysterage (01394 450277)
Crown and Castle, Orford (01394 450205)
Emmett's Stores, Peasenhall (01728 660250)
The Regatta, Aldeburgh (01728 452011)
Richardson's Smokehouse (01394 450103)
