For the Love of British Food

You don’t have to go to Scotland to visit Loch Fyne any more. A chain of restaurants bearing the name of the Scottish sea loch is now established around the UK. Now you might have thought that they would be in principally maritime locations, but their mission seems to be to bring fine seafood to the areas of the UK furthest from the sea. So we are rather lucky, where I live near Portsmouth to have a local Loch Fyne and in such a lovely location too.  

Gunwharf Quays is Portsmouth’s shopping and entertainment centre by the sea. It was built on what was originally part of the naval Dockyard and our historic ships, HMS Victory and HMS Warrior are close by and you can also see the spectacular landmark Spinnaker Tower and climb it for a fantastic view of the Solent and surrounding countryside.

Gunwharf has a wide variety of eating places but they are mostly on the fast food and casual end of the dining spectrum. Loch Fyne offers a higher standard of both food and service, but still at affordable prices. The restaurant sits close to the water in a building dating back to 1814 that was originally a naval storehouse, and later offices and teaching areas for the Naval Mining School. The clock tower on the Vulcan Building (also known as Storehouse No.10)  is once more a familiar landmark to any craft approaching Portsmouth Harbour having been more or less destroyed in WW2 but rebuilt and restored in the 1990’s The restaurant keeps the atmosphere of the old building alive with its bare brick walls and arched windows.

This website was constructed before Gunwharf Quays was built and describes more of the history of the original area and its buildings and this site also mentions the building.

If you wish to sit outside when the capricious British weather permits, there is a dining terrace with umbrellas and plenty of seating. On the day of our visit, the sun was threatening to give way to heavy showers and the wind was rather too strong for comfort, so we ate inside. 

The greeting was very friendly, we could have had a drink in the lounge which has deep and comfortable leather sofas, but decided to go straight to our table.  We had a sticky moment when we were told that the fixed price menu we expected had been withdrawn for the day due to a special event in the city and expected crowds. It was soon smoothed over, we got our fixed price deal and all was well. We were trying to keep our budget low today, but would love to return to try the a la carte menu. There is a sample two-course menu on the website,  but it does vary with what is available and fresh.

We both chose to start with Loch Fyne Bradan Rost rillettes with toast and salad. Bradan Rost refers to the style of smoking of the salmon used to make a chunky little terrine zested with lemon and a little pepper. I’m not sure about serving it with small toasted chunks of baguette, and would have preferred some thick toasted wholemeal bread, but the rillettes were delicious and just the right quantity.  We could also have chosen from mussels, a chicken terrine and a vegetarian starter. There are 5 or 6 choices for fixed-price menu main courses, including meat and vegetarian options.  David, my lunch companion chose whole plaice with a lightly garlicky butter. It was perfectly cooked and creamy, showing its freshness, I chose sea bream, a fish I have only tried once before and will definitely choose again. It was served on thinly sliced fennel and the plate dotted with salsa verde. We had side orders of new potatoes and seasonal vegetables which were a minor disappointment as the veg. were microwaved and a bit limp. We knew they had come straight out of the microwave as our server was hastily picking off bits of cling film from one of the dishes. The fennel was also a bit tasteless, but the freshness of the fish more than made up for any small problems and overall we really enjoyed our main courses.  Also available on the £12 menu were steak and a veggie dish. 

The speed and pace of service was exactly right to make for a relaxed meal without feeling we had been neglected or forgotten and in due course, our server re-appeared with a blackboard full of tempting dessert options.  I went for crème brulee which is a lovely end to a summer lunch and came with a delicate round of freshly made buttery shortbread. It was a generous portion and worth the £3. Desserts are extra if you are eating from the fixed price menu.  David chose a mini-cheeseboard which had 3 Scottish and Irish cheeses. We had to guess what they were, we weren’t told, and thought the blue might be Irish Cashel Blue, probably a Socttish produced Cheddar style hard cheese and a Camembert style soft rinded cheese. The cheddar had sadly been left uncovered in the fridge and had gone hard and discoloured on the outside. There was a generous spoonful of shallot marmalade, some apple slices and oatcakes to accompany the cheese. Possibly a touch pricey at £4.50 

With our meal, we drank a couple of glasses of house wine, trying a white and a rose which we were told were both French. Pleasant, nothing special, and not overpriced considering the exorbitant amounts we’ve been charged in Portsmouth pubs for less palatable house wines.  The main wine list is a well-chosen selection of wines to complement the mainly seafood menu with options from a wide range of locations. If we had wanted a full bottle, it would have been a choice between a Viognier, and a Bordeaux Rose. David likes Muscadet with fish which is too acidic for my palate, but he would probably have been more than happy with the one on the menu.

There is also an intriguing Argentinian Pinot Gris, which I will look out for when wine shopping, as I like the style of red from that country but don’t recall tasting a white before. The a la carte menu varies seasonally and I recommend you visit the website to take a look. Our bill came to just £43, and I can honestly say that I have been charged far more for far less appetising food and less friendly service elsewhere in Portsmouth.  

We noted that there was a wheelchair lift which is necessary as there are steps up from the entrance to the dining level. I didn’t spot a sign to an accessible cloakroom, but I’m sure there is one as UK law now demands. Some restaurants are not welcoming to families with young children, but a couple and their toddler were happily eating close to us, with their baby-buggy by the table. I would be happy to visit another Loch Fyne restaurant any time, and would be confident that the good food and service we enjoyed would be repeated at any location in their chain.The restaurant chain’s website is excellent, you can see all the locations and see the latest seasonal menus.

On a special edition of BBC TV’s Money programme, TV food guru Greg Wallace took a close look at how the recession is affecting the nation’s food shopping.

The topics he introduced included what the supermarkets are doing to keep us shopping with them, the struggle for independent shops to continue trading, and the trend towards value ranges and away from higher priced branded foods and organics.

To help illustrate the trends, he introduced Nina, a mother of two young children with their own decided preferences for certain foods.

Nina normally shops online with Tesco for convenience. She was asked to do a week’s shopping still online with Tesco, but shopping entirely from their value ranges, another week shopping in independent outlets in her local town centre and yet another buying as much frozen food.

There were comments from managers of Sainsburys, Iceland and the Co-op, plus some independent food suppliers including an organic farmer who is also a spokesman for the Soil Association.

Greg Wallace asked him about the possibility of changing the message about organic food to concentrate on just one aspect rather than a range of benefits but the Soil Association’s representative was very clear that they would not be doing that. He said that organic food directly benefited the environment in which it was produced, indirectly through lower energy usage which had less impact on climate change, it led to better animal welfare standards and the food was healthier for the consumer because there were no pesticides or artificial fertilisers used in  vegetable and fruit production and no potentially harmful residues in animal products of medications used on livestock.

Nina’s family were happy with some cheaper items and hardly noticed the difference with certain things like a value-range tomato ketchup, but she said that some value items - were such poor quality she could not give them to her children and had had to throw them out uneaten, so that was not a saving.

She said that she had enjoyed the shopping experience in the independent local shops but it hadn’t been convenient or very quick and she had to do her weekly shop in two parts to be able to carry home heavy bags. She did say that the fruit and veg particularly were excellent quality that week.

The Co-op manager highlighted that in spite of the recession, the sales of fairly traded food had actually increased and that it need not be more expensive. Top UK chocolate brand Cadbury’s Dairy Milk will be made from fair-trade cocoa from this summer at no extra cost.

The programme also looked at the value supermarket chains Aldi and Lidl, but found that many people who gave them a try when they first opened,  have reverted to their normal supermarket because they can’t get the branded foods their family likes, particularly things like breakfast cereals and biscuits.

I’ve tried my local Aldi and found some good bargains, particularly for ‘deli’ items like cold meats, bacon, ready-made salads and also for household goods.

One thing that did not come out very clearly, except that people are eating out less, is whether the British public are actually watching all the celebrity chef shows that we have on TV and making more of an effort to cook meals from scratch. You don’t have to spend hours in the kitchen and you can save time and money by cooking several things together to re-heat or eat cold later in the week. Read some of my other blog posts for suggestions.

In the supermarkets, the shelves are as full as ever of every kind of fresh chilled complete meals and short cuts like cook-in sauces. What has been a shock for some people, and perhaps is having an effect is that people are trying not to waste so much food and only buy what they know they will eat.

For myself, I still really look forward to my fortnightly organic veg box, although I might be a bit more careful to choose things that I know I will eat before they go off, or find ways to cook and save them.

The taste is just so much better and it is probably fresher than supermarket produce too, as some of it comes from a farm only a few miles away near Winchester.

I almost stopped eating out when I split with my husband in 2006, although occasionally I get a mystery shop assignment which gives me a free meal, albeit not always in the sort of places I would have chosen before.  I would rather save money by cutting down on evenings out and drinking and not buying treats like clothes, magazines, books and CD’s than reduce the quality of what I eat. 

I’m quite proud of the fact that I’ve bought 3 pairs of jeans recently on ebay for less than the price of one pair in my favourite chain store and that included the postage costs. And I’m not too snotty to wear charity shop clothes either.

I’m going to cheaper shops like Wilkinsons and Aldi for household items like laundry detergent, toilet rolls and personal toiletries even though it is less convenient. The fact that I walked across town to Superdrug rather than paid Waitrose prices for shower gel, shampoo and toothpaste is good for my health as well as my pocket and they still stock my favourite brands.

By virtue of the fact that one of my local post offices is now located there (in Emsworth, Hampshire), I’ve been doing rather more shopping in the Co-op in the last year and I do appreciate their dedication to fair trade and the quality of fresh food is excellent.

In a later BBC radio bulletin this evening, I heard that a local health authority in the North of England was ‘bribing’ smokers to give up by offering them vouchers for free food. Well done them - teach them how to cook it properly too and it will be an even better and more successful idea.

If you are in the UK., you can catch this program on Iplayer for the next couple of weeks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lk4cd#synopsis