Webbe's at the Fish Café, Rye, East Sussex

Rye Scallop Festival week always means the local restaurants make a special effort and put on a special menu. We took our time getting there, rolling through the beautiful Kent and Sussex country lanes in the sunshine. As we drove out of Tenterden towards Smallhythe we were accompanied for several hundred yards by a green woodpecker who kept pace with us across the fields, flashing bright green, red and gold in the sunlight, surely a good omen!

Having had a look at Webbe's website (www.webbesrestaurants.co.uk) before our visit today I was really looking forward to the seven course scallop tasting menu for a long lunch. Imagine my disappointment when we discovered that it was only available in the evening. Not the best start then. Fortunately for all concerned there were a number of scallop starters available, as well as a stunning sounding main course scallop dish.

The restaurant itself is in a sympathetically converted four story brick building that dates from 1907. Although it isn't on the main High Street, Webbe's is close enough to the centre of town, but being a bit off the beaten track it gives you the feeling that you've stumbled across a bit of a hidden gem. Lunch is served in a small, open plan dining room on the ground floor. Much of the cooking and all of the dish assembly happens in the corner of the room in full view of the diners, which gives one a certain confidence in the chefs. There is an eclectic mix of art on the walls, including a fantastic block of polished black stone that is packed with fossilised mussel shells.

Our waitress didn't smile much, but was very polite and efficient indeed. As I may have mentioned before, I like it when a waiter or waitress is professional enough not to have to write your order down, and not to have to ask who is having what when they bring dishes out. Not only did they manage this, but it was particularly impressive as there were only two waitresses and the maitre d' covering around fourteen or fifteen tables, some of which seated six or eight. The maitre d' was quick to come and explain the thinking behind not offering the tasting menu after I expressed my disappointment that we wouldn't be able to order it. But we'd gone all that way to eat scallops, and we were damn well going to order some off the lunch menu anyway!

Starters cost from £6 to around £8, and there was a lot of variety for a lunch menu. As well as half a dozen scallop dishes, there were half a dozen other interesting sounding dishes to choose from including a warm locally made goats cheese with beetroot salad that looked stunning. In the continuing quest to find new dishes we both ordered something to start that we wouldn't normally think about. I had scallop, potato and watercress chowder. (I never order soup, but I'll make an exception for chowders!) I should have thought to hang on to some of the delicious home made bread we had been served with to dip in it, but i hadn't. The chowder was delightful. Simple, big on flavour and texture, and full of big chunks of scallop and baby new potato.

As good as the chowder was, it just couldn't compete with Dee's dish of three of the biggest scallops I'd ever seen, served on a slice of fried black pudding and caramelised apple with a cider reduction. It was beautifully presented and unbelievably tasty. The flavours just combined to give a sweet start, really good "mouth-feel", and a slightly earthy finish from the black pudding that cut through the sweet scallop meat to perfection. A really well balanced dish, a delight to eat. Neither of us are particularly fans of black pudding, and I can be a bit funny about fruit in savoury dishes so this is high praise indeed!

I'm sure there were other main courses we could have ordered, but I didn't look beyond the very top item. Can you guess what it was? Well done, no surprises, more scallops! We both ordered the same thing, pan fried scallops with pancetta, mashed potato, watercress and silver skin onions. Five massive scallops nicely arranged around a piped cone of mashed potato on a bed of cress and onions. When the plate arrived in front of me I thought I was in for something really special. To be fair, it wasn't bad, it just needed....something. The mash was made with some white pepper, and that was the dominant flavour. Everything else was quite a delicate taste, and although the saltiness of the wafer thin and nicely crispy pancetta complimented the sweetness of the scallops, the whole dish needed a little seasoning or another dominant element of some kind. Don't get me wrong, everything was perfectly cooked and precisely presented, and a light sprinkle of salt made a vast improvement, it's just a shame at this level of cuisine that it was needed.

To Dee's delight there was a pear and blackberry crumble with custard and vanilla ice cream on the desert menu, so she didn't have to think too long and hard before she was ready to order. The crumble arrived piping hot in a little Le Crueset style dish, with a little jug of home made custard and a ball of delightful home made ice cream. The fruit was soft but not overcooked, sweet but not too sugary, and the whole thing worked perfectly presented as it was on an olive wood board.

I chose the citrus mousse with blood orange sorbet, which was lovely...but it wasn't a mousse. It was a lemon creme brûlée. A very good one, but not what I was expecting at all. The highlight was the sorbet, which is making my mouth water as I type this! Absolutely delicious.

I know it's a little thing, and some of you will think I'm being picky, but the white plate my desert came on had a grey ring around the inside where it was worn from being stacked with other plates a lot. I'm not suggesting it was dirty, it certainly wasn't, but if you look closely at the photo you can clearly see it. Not very appetising. Now that I look closely at the photos of the starters and main courses I can see that the whole set of crockery is overdue for replacement.

So, over all impression? Pretty good. The food came to £58, which included a vast amount of enormous scallops, so I think it was very good value for money. The wine list was very good, if a little pricey, and the service was good. I think the status as our favourite restaurant in Rye is still The Landgate Bistro's to lose next week, if I'm honest, but I'd like to come back here and eat in the more formal setting of the upstairs dining room before I make my mind up. Would I recommend it to a friend? Yes. No hesitation. It wasn't perfect, but it was very good, and at that price I think it was a bargain.

Rye Scallop Festival

I know I go on about scallops a lot, but they are just about my favourite thing to eat. Every year there is a week long scallop festival in Rye, East Sussex, and each year we go for lunch at least once during the week. Those of you who know Rye will already be aware that there are a number of really good places to eat in the town, and over the last few years we have tried quite a few of them.

A couple of years ago we had lunch in The George Hotel on the High Street, one of our favourite pubs in the country. They offer local real ales in a very traditional feeling setting, on a cold wet day there are few better places to be than sat in front of the roaring open fire in a wing-backed leather armchair eating warmer dishes from the special lunchtime menu like chorizo and lentil stew in the bar of the George. The scallop dishes were very tasty, but the scallops themselves seemed small and a bit disappointing. Shame, because over all this place is worth the journey on its own.

For the last couple of festivals we have made a point of visiting The Landgate Bistro specifically to have the scallop starter. You get three huge scallops, each presented a different way and served with a different fortified wine. You get one of each of - scallop wrapped in home-cured bacon served with a sherry and shallot sauce, scallop marinated in lime sauce and coriander, honey glazed scallop with roasted pepper sauce, a glass of ruby port, a tawny port and a measure of Madeira. Occasionally they do a mystery dish, the object being to guess the 8 ingredients. They give you scallops, salt & pepper to get your list going, but that's all! The Landgate Bistro has been named as the best restaurant in Rye for the second year running by the Good Food Guide and once you have eaten there it is easy to see why. It's a small, intimate place, a little off the beaten track, serving consistently good quality food at reasonable prices.

This year we will be trying Webbe's The Fish Café (which comes very highly recommended) for he first time. For the festival this year they will be offering a seven (yes, seven!!!) course scallop tasting menu for £39 a head...I can't wait! Webbe's is exactly the sort of place I should like, it ticks all my boxes. The owners opened their first restaurant based on the principles of using fresh, local ingredients, striving for perfection in menu design and presentation, and creating the sort of restaurant that they themselves would enjoy visiting. They now own three places, including one right on the front at Hastings that uses fish landed from the boats right there next to the restaurant. Doesn't get any fresher than that!

Our Rye Scallop Festival Festival 2012 will start at Webbe's on the first weekend and end at The Langate on the last. If we could get down there during the week then we would, and if you can then I urge you to go. Try something new, or at least somewhere new, you might find a new favourite!

My birthday day out in London.

Saturday was my birthday, so Dee took me up to London for lunch, shopping and a good mooch round the West End. We caught the high speed train to St Pancras, then jumped a tube to Piccadilly Circus. At this point I still wasn't sure where we were going or what was in store as Dee had done a great job of keeping me in the dark. We walked round the corner into Haymarket, then turned right into the start of Jermyn Street. Jermyn St is probably best known for its tailors and shirt makers, but there are a number of cute little arcades, shoemakers and cafés as well. Well worth a stroll along if you're in the area and fancy seeing how the other half live!

At the far end of Jermyn St is Franco's, a very upmarket Italian bistro and café where Dee had booked us a table for lunch. We were greeted just inside the door by the hostess, who knew it was my birthday from the booking and made just the right amount of fuss of us as she showed us to our table in the main dining room. The restaurant has a very light, modern take on the 1920's look, with beautifully dressed tables and plenty of space for diners. Much of this space is achieved by the careful and clever seating arrangement, where no diners are required to sit facing a wall. We were sat against one side wall on a table that was a generous size for two, and would have been a cozy fit for four, but because we were sat next to each other we were both looking into the room, rather than opposite each other as is usually the case.

We had a glass of limoncello each to warm us up a bit while we chose from the menu (which had a slightly retro feel and look to it, although the dishes themselves were modern takes on Italian classics). Without having discussed it first, it turned out that both of us had decided to order things we wouldn't usually choose. And yes, before you ask, there were scallops on the menu and no, I didn't order them! I figure we'll have our fill of scallops at the Rye Scallop Festival at the end of the month. Prices ranged from around £8 to £20 for starters and from £16 to £30 for main courses which in Kent would be quite pricey, but here in the West End of London is remarkably good for high quality food. There was a very well balanced selection of dishes to choose from for each course, with seafood very much in evidence along side pigeon, beef, veal and lamb dishes. The waiting staff were almost all Italian, which is usually a good sign, and they were clearly keen for us to enjoy our meals. We ordered our starters, a lobster, cous cous and black truffle dish for me and beef carpaccio for Dee, and chose a bottle of 2006 Barbera to wash everything down with from a very good wine list indeed. My dish was packed with chunks of lobster and had plenty of black truffle shavings on top, like all the best Italian dishes the flavours were simple and elegant. Dee's beef just melted in the mouth, and the pepper flavours from the rocket salad and the truffle shavings were balanced by parmesan shavings and really high quality, wafer thin slices of lean beef.

We both went for really traditional main courses, pasta for Dee and risotto for me. Dee followed my lead from the starter and had lobster linguini. Like all good Italian restaurants, Franco's makes all its pasta fresh every day and it really shows. The linguini was cooked to perfection, just the right side of al-dente with enough bite left in it to give good mouth-feel, and packed with flavour. There was no shortage of lobster meat here either, and with a little very light tomato and pepper sauce to pull everything together the whole dish was perfect. My Atlantic prawn and lime risotto was absolutely delicious too, but was a very different type of dish indeed. If I'm absolutely honest, I couldn't pick out the lime at all, although it is possible that the lime is just there to stop the dish becoming too stodgy and if that's the case then it certainly worked. There were very few pieces of prawn, but the prawn flavour ran deep through each mouthful and was strong on the finish. It was one of those dishes that you're disappointed that there isn't more when you get to the end, even though the portion size was generous. As is often the case with risotto, it wasn't much to look at but is certainly made up for that in taste and texture.

By now the restaurant was about three quarters full and the atmosphere was building nicely. There were several tables of Italian diners (another good sign!) and some young family groups as well as several other tables of two. There were plenty of members of staff around, so the dining room filling up had no impact on our service and each passing waiter glanced towards us and our table to make sure we were ok. Dee ordered tiramisu to finish, which turned out to be about the size of half a house brick but light as a feather. The coffee liqueur in the sponge base was far from overpowering, and the sheer volume of cream meant that Dee was unable to finish it. After a long and agonising internal debate, I chose the chocolate torta caprese with home made pistachio ice cream for desert over affogato (a shot of espresso poured over vanilla ice cream), which turned out to be a mistake. Torta caprese is a sort of dry, dense sponge cake, a bit like a dry brownie. This one was a little too dry for me and the tiny ball of ice cream did little to change that despite being delicious because the whole thing was smothered in icing sugar so thick that I had to tap it off each fork full before I could eat it. Such a shame, because up to that point the food had been excellent. The presentation was spot on throughout, with my torta served on a glass dish decorated with piped chocolate saying "Happy birthday", a lovely little touch.

We ordered tea for Dee, a strong cappuccino for me, and a plate of petit fours to finish off. Tea in restaurants is such a hit and miss affair that Dee's expectations weren't high, particularly as the Italians are better known for coffee, so it came as a lovely surprise when the pot of tea that arrived was just right. This cheered me right up, because if the tea was that good I had high hopes of a really good cappuccino and I wasn't disappointed. Strong, rich, full of flavour, what a way to end a meal. Another slight stumble though, as the petit fours did not arrive with the drinks. We reminded the waiter, who was most apologetic and rushed off to sort some out for us. We finished our drinks, and still no petit fours. The maitre d' was quite embarrassed, particularly as it was her that took the order in the first place. So much so that she made sure they weren't on the bill, but put a selection in a little box for us to take home.

All in all, we had a wonderful lunch that was packed full of simple flavours and interesting textures excellently prepared. The presentation was excellent, the restaurant itself was delightful (and if you eat from the set lunch menu, very reasonably priced indeed!) and but for one or two tiny things, our meal would have been perfect. As it was, it was the best Italian meal I have had outside of Italy itself, and better than many I have had inside.