All I wanted to do was find somewhere pleasant in which to eat Cromer crab. It didn't seem too much to ask. After all, I was in bleedin' Cromer. But the seaside town seems a desperate place now compared to what it was when I went there on holiday as a kid. They may sell the crabs from little stalls outside the fishermen's homes, but they are damned if they'll let you eat one in comfort. Eventually we found a dismal back-street café, where they served limp white bread crab sandwiches and where every table held a notice warning parents that their children mustn't be too noisy.
Thank god then for the village of Blakeney a few miles up the coast and, in particular, for the White Horse Hotel which, rightly, holds the lovely little brown crabs of Norfolk's coastal waters in high regard. The White Horse has all the bases covered. There's the bar and glassed-over courtyard for snacks and fuller meals and out back, in the old stables, a restaurant that serves up something altogether more developed. I ate crab in both places and in both, despite the difference in treatment, it was terrific.
On the first visit Pat and I tried the restaurant, a simple, almost Spartan space of lemon-painted, old, brick walls. The main menu - starters at £5 to £6, main courses around £12 - is supplemented each evening by a list of specials. From the latter I chose the cocktail of local crab in a Thai mayonnaise to start. The flavours of lime, lemon grass and chilli, sparingly used, simply pointed up the sweetness of the white meat.
Pat began with a warm tart of smoked cod, leek and Parmesan. The pastry was crisp, the filling smoky and unctuous without being overwhelmingly fishy. I decided to stick with the local fish for my main course and chose the Portuguese influenced fillet of hake with a casserole of chorizo, potatoes and green peppers. The hake was soft and flaky and managed to hold its own against the pungent casserole broth and the strong flavour of the chunks of chorizo. Pat's rack of English lamb, served pink, with an earthy pile of wild-mushroom mash proved that the kitchen is equally at ease with meat.
There's a short, but well thought out wine list from which we chose what has to be the find of the season, a bottle of a light red Lebanese wine from the Bekaa valley winery that has produced the superb Château Musar. Hochar père et fils, priced here at £15.95, is the baby brother of the great Musar, lighter and less complex, but more than worth the money. With a dense treacle tart and a crème brûlée to finish, our bill came to £70, which seems fair for well-sourced ingredients and cooking of this standard.
But you don't need to spend that much to experience the simple intelligence of the kitchen here. The next day we returned as a family for lunch in the courtyard: dressed crab, a rustling bowl of crisp whitebait, and a sandwich of crisp back bacon better than any I could make at home. (This is not a boast; it's just that bacon sandwiches always seem to be made better at home by anybody than in restaurants.) For the smallest member of our party, they also served up a really smart dishful of quality tagliatelle dressed with nothing more than great olive oil and grated cheese. All this with drinks and service was less than £25. It was a lunch that swiftly banished the dismal memories of poor old Cromer.
