The Company Shed
Address: 129 Coast Road, West Mersea, Essex
Telephone: 01206 382 700
Meal for two, excluding drinks: £30
I felt I had packed my briefcase particularly well for my trip to the Company Shed on the island of West Mersea, in Essex. I had a book to read, some work to be getting on with, should I summon the will, and my iPod. Oh, and a pair of crab crackers, a prong for picking out the white meat, a knife and fork, some kitchen roll and a jar of mayonnaise (Hellmann's, natch). I didn't believe I had ever been so well prepared for a restaurant expedition.
In truth I was a little overprepared, though from everything I'd heard it didn't seem worth taking the chance. The Company Shed, really just a black-painted, wooden slat-board shed, grew out of an oyster-farming business off the Essex coast near Colchester, where the glorious bivalves have been raised since Roman times. Richard Haward runs the oyster end of the business - as his family has been doing since William Haward first sailed his oysters to Billingsgate in 1792 - and his wife Heather runs the shed. It is essentially a wet-fish shop, with a few tables and a kitchen out the back where they rustle up a couple of hot seafood dishes. You can't book, and you have to bring your own bread and wine, though they charge no corkage. They do, however, supply crab crackers, picks, knives, forks and kitchen paper plonked on the table on a big roll. They don't have mayonnaise, so I felt quite smug about that one. You can't eat crab without mayo. It's against the law. My law, so don't argue.
It could be said that part of my job is to find hidden gems. There is no doubting that the Company Shed is a gem - it is marvellously ramshackle and eccentric - but it can hardly be described as unknown, at least by locals. At the end of my 30-minute cab ride from Colchester station I found myself in a large crowd on the pavement outside, waiting my turn. And I had arrived at only just gone 12.15. The place was packed: a lot of tables full of silver-haired elders of the tribe, a few families with young kids, one large Chinese party up to its armpits in crab claws. Screwtop bottles of wine, barely out of their supermarket bags, stood on every table, and the place clattered with the busy deconstruction of top seafood.
Put your name down on the blackboard and then wait outside until you are called, which, for me, took a little over 45 minutes. You know, of course, that I would rather snog Dick Cheney than have to queue, but in this case it was worth it.
Now there's an 'r' in the month you will once again be able to eat the local oysters. Haward grows Colchester Natives, which I'm sure are terrific, but I was there in the dog days of August and had to make do with the Gigas rocks. At a mere 60p each to taste the sea, it really was no sacrifice. I've seen rocks in London at £1.50 each or more. One of the hot dishes - fat seared scallops complete with coral, dressed with shards of crisp bacon and with a tomato salad - was both simple, right and, at £5.50, startlingly cheap. Again, in London, I've seen three scallops like this knocked off at £15. Mind you, in those places you do tend to get tablecloths. And napkins. And waiters. And mayonnaise.
The star of the show, though, is the cold seafood platter, at £8.50 a head: half a brown crab per person, boiled on site straight out of the filtration tanks they share with the lobsters. There are fine soft slices of locally cured smoked salmon, shell-on prawns, shell-off shrimps, tiddly cockles, and smoked mackerel, both peppered and not. And that just about does it. Seafood, a plate, your fingers and the waters of the creek just outside, on a low-lying piece of land that is dedicated to the way of the boat.
As I was finishing my lunch I found out just how low-lying the land was. The people sitting next to me explained that, at high tide, the island of West Mersea is often cut off, as the waters roll in to cover the causeway that links it to the mainland. I asked when the next high tide would be. They glanced at their watches. Oh, right about now, they said. So I won't be able to get off? Not for a while, they said. I advise you to check the times of the high tide before going to the Company Shed. Me? I wandered down the road to a cafe and bought a toffee ice cream made with local goat's milk. I sat on a bench, watched the boats come and go, and gave myself to the rhythms of the waters that had just helped supply my lunch.
· Word of Mouth, The Observer's food blog, is at www.observer.co.uk/foodblog
