Postcard from Norfolk - Seeseafood

 The Ship, at Brancaster, is one of my favourite pubs.  The staff are friendly, the parking ample, the beer good and the food great.  They make a great flat white coffee, they have conversations with one another about how to make a great flat white coffee, and at the end of the evening the bar staff get up on the bar.  They aren’t doing a dance or anything, they are holding the credit car machine aloft, trying to get a signal.  Maybe in a county as flat as Norfolk, a couple of feet makes all the difference.

Getting a signal was clearly a problem the day when their ‘phone wasn’t being answered, this resulted in taking a punt on getting lunch.  Bad call, no room at the inn.

No problem, onward to the White Horse at Brancaster, which is reliable, spacious, has a great bar menu and more than ample parking.

The White Horse also has something new on the menu.  The seafood platter.

Oh.  My.  God.

This is what bliss tastes like.  This is the desert island meal.  This is the Death Row meal.  This is so very, very good that you want to accost everyone else in the bar and ask them why they are not eating it, while simultaneously resenting anyone else ordering this because they might tell others about it, and reduce the number of seafood platters in future.

It was better than beer.

That’s right.

It should have been no surprise.  The White Horse does exceptional food.  This is a pub that is on the salt marsh and, when the tide is in, is so close to the water you can just about row up to the bar.  This is a pub that has pools full of mussels just outside its back door.  This is a pub, in short, that does seafood.

Presumably they know a chap who does platters and the chef thought, ‘hey ho!  I’ve got an idea!’.

Let’s be quite clear, I was ready to enjoy lunch at the White Horse as only a man who has been disappointed not finding a table and then found an excellent alternative can be.  I was simply not prepared for just how great that alternative was.

The Ship is still one of my favourite pubs in Norfolk, the reasons now extend to that time they were full and we went to the White Horse instead, and discovered the seafood platter.

Now we don’t need to worry about where to go for lunch for the rest of the holiday.  The only conundrum is how many times during the remainder of the holiday it is seemly to go to the White Horse and order the seafood platter.  I’m thinking ‘as often as possible and far more than is decent’.

Postcard from Norfolk -- Pub Grub

Dinner at 'The Ship' in Brancaster.  Note the bacon garnish.  There is no meal that cannot be improved through the simple addition of bacon.  In this case, liver.  A classic pairing.

It’s Friday night and at ‘The Ship’ in Brancaster every table is full of what could be described as ‘types’, although certainly not stereotypes, because these types are making enough noise for a full on surroundsound experience.

Which is no bad thing.  The background chatter is the aural equivalent of a flickering fire, making the room cosy.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that there is the actual equiavalent of a flickering fire – a flickering fire – and that the lighting is just right, and that there are just the right number of tables spaced just so, that just being so that you are not banging elbows, conversations or opinions with the people next to you. 

This is not London.  This is a proper pub where food and drink and atmosphere are taken seriously.  That’s probably why it’s so popular.

On the table to my right a pair of mums and dads are having a dinner of weekend portions of wine garnished with a huge portion of fish and chips.  It’s good to see that having young children has not cut into their typical Friday night pattern of sodding off early from the office, flying up the M Way in their Volvo or Bald Man’s Wagon and being elbow deep in vino by six o’ clock.  The adults tuck into their wine (red for the men, white for the ladies) with nearly as much gusto as the kids tuck into their chips (dipping them in mayonnaise, ketchup is for chavs and soccer matches).

At the table next to them sit what might as well be their parents and grandparents.  The chaps are wearing white checked shirts, dark navy pullovers and a complexion that goes beyond ‘ruddy’ to a red normally associated with a warning sign.  In this case I would say the warningsign in question is: ‘you are one glass of claret away from going face down in your starter’.

Trouser of choice, corduroy.  Wellie of choice, Hunter.  Child’s name of choice, Toby, and that’s just the little girls.