Never underestimate my commitment to this job. To give you the most accurate appraisal of the restaurant at the Moonfleet Manor Hotel, on the Dorset coast just to the west of Weymouth, I did not merely eat there the once. I did not eat there twice nor even three times. No. I ate there on five - count them - five different occasions in 10 days. Impressive, huh!
Okay. I confess. The 10 days were the family summer holiday and Moonfleet Manor, a glorious place designed specifically for people with young kids (full-on baby listening in every room, hot and cold running milk, a sandpit the size of Shropshire), was where it was taken; I didn't have an enormous amount of choice in the matter. That aside, it was still a useful exercise. Every restaurant has its purpose and how well it succeeds will depend on how well it understands what that purpose is.
There is little doubt, from a quick glance at the menu at Moonfleet's restaurant - a drizzle of balsamic here, a herb crust there - that it is keen to drag in a non-resident crowd looking for that special night out. At the same time it must serve old lags like me in for a longer stretch. Most restaurants deserve to be reviewed on the basis of one visit because that is how most of us experience them; Moonfleet deserves to be tried five times because that is how a lot of its punters will experience it.
And, after a marathon day entertaining the kids, it can be a sublime experience. The long, white-washed dining room at Moonfleet overlooks the Fleet Lagoon, a stretch of water a dozen miles long which was cut off from the sea aeons ago by a massive drift of shingle called Chesil Beach. At sunset on a summer's evening it turns from red to gold and back again as the light fades. Parents, their offspring now abed, would sit each night staring at the scenery with a mix of awe and blessed relief.
Chef Tony Smith has, wisely, taken his inspiration from the view. There's a lot of fish on the menu. A starter of crisp crabcake on an orange saffron butter sauce, for example, could have stood as an advertisement for the quality of the seafood available in this part of the country. If there was anything other than sweet, fibrous crab in the cake it was hiding out of embarrassment. Main courses of roast cod, grilled talapia (a new one on me; it's a bit like bream) and scallops also made a serious virtue of local produce. There were always bells and whistles with each of these dishes - garlicky crushed potatoes with the talapia, an aromatic mussel and ginger broth with the scallops - but the point was always the fish at their heart.
Non-fish dishes were equally accomplished. A double act of a duck pté and duck rilette to start came with a delicate mound of sweet Muscat jelly. A main course of boned pot-roasted quail was stuffed with wild mushrooms and laid upon a gooey risotto cake. Duck breast, with a seriously crispy skin, was accompanied by a lush meaty jus. There is a fine list of rich puddings of the mandarin crème brlée and chocolate mousse variety and an equally well thought out wine list, almost entirely taken from the New World.
It reads, I'm sure, like ambitious stuff and it is, sometimes overly so. Occasionally there was the feeling the kitchen was trying just a little too hard. Tony Smith appears, for example, to have a thing about wilting rocket. There is no point wilting rocket. You might as well wilt grass for all the flavour it is left with. Likewise, a herb-crusted fillet of beef always came up dry however hard we asked for it to be served rare.
These are the minor niggles. The real problem is the numerical one. Orange saffron butter sauce and its ilk is lovely once a week. I could probably give it a good seeing to twice from one Sunday to the next. But every other day is just a bit much, even for a professional, battle-hardened stomach like mine. Moonfleet is aware of the problem. In the summer months, when guests tend to stay for longer than just a weekend, they lay on a couple of barbecues and a buffet each week. (All three were simple and straightforward which was exactly what we wanted from them.)
But even so that still left us studying Chef Smith's glorious creations every other day. The menu just cries out for a few simple grilled fish options, for bangers and mash or dressed crab or steak and chips; for the opportunity once in a while to merely feed the soul. One of the problems, I'm sure, is pricing. For non-residents three courses à la carte is charged at a pretty reasonable £26.50, but nobody would want to pay that for bangers and mash.
Residents, on the other hand, get it thrown in as part of a dinner, bed and breakfast deal which, even at the very top end (around £255 a night for two adults), works out at pretty good value. Such is the sturdy circle that Moonfleet is trying to square. Still, my job isn't the economics of the business. It's the eating, which I think I did admirably. All five times. Now I'm going for a long lie down, at least until dinner time.
• Moonfleet Manor Hotel, Fleet, near Weymouth, Dorset (01305 786 948). Dinner for two non-residents, including wine and service, is around £70.
Contact Jay Rayner at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
