Froggies at Timber Batts, Bodsham, Kent

My apologies for the long gap since my last blog entry, I hope it won't be this long until my next one!

Timber Batts is a lovely old country pub between Ashford and Canterbury on the road out of Wye.  It's tucked away in the tiny village of Bodsham (no, I'd never heard of it before either!) and it's well worth the effort of finding it for yourself.  There is plenty of seating inside at an eclectic mix of tables, but if the weather permits you might want to sit outside and enjoy the rural views from the quiet garden to the side of the pub.  Froggies is, as you might expect from the name, run by a French father and son who have done well to retain the traditional English pub feel while adding their own Gallic charm to the place.  There are a number of wine case lids from some of the grand estates decorating the beams, and every shelf and sill is covered in empty wine bottles that span generations and vineyards of the world, mostly having been drunk by the owner!

We stopped in for a quick lunch (and maybe a swift half!) on the way home and were genuinely delighted with the food.  Although the lunch menu is short, it is full of good options including a home made burger (more on that later), various baguettes and sandwiches, moule frites, or simply ham egg and chips.  Something for everyone then!

I was feeling pretty hungry, so I went for the homemade burger, which comes with french fries and a small green salad on the side.  It's a good job I was hungry, because there was plenty of it and it was delicious.  The difficulty with very thick burgers is cooking them right through without letting them dry out, something the chef managed very nicely indeed.  There was a generous side order of the thinnest fries, and the salad had a light drizzle of house dressing that just helped cut through the big flavours in the burger.  The ham and chips looked very good too, the ham was lightly smoked and thinly cut, while the baguettes were big enough to feed even the hungriest mouth.

One of my favourite things to finish a meal is a café gourmand, usually a shot of espresso with two or three mini deserts just intended to give you something sweet to finish your meal, so I was delighted to find it on the menu.  It came with a couple of home made macaroons and a glass of café liegeois (espresso coffee poured over coffee ice-cream and topped with whipped cream served in this case in a shot glass).  A close second choice for me was the trio of deserts, which included an apricot tatin, panna cotta,  and a raspberry melba.  The desert for people unable to decide what to have, but delicious none the less.

Easy to find?  No.
Worth the effort?  Certainly.
Worth the price?  Yes, I think so.

Loch Fyne at Bluewater

The choice of places to eat at Bluewater shopping centre are close to infinite.  As well as all the usual fast-food rubbish and mall food-court suspects there is a Yo-Sushi, a brasserie, a Leon and a Loch Fyne restaurant that stand out as being better than the rest.  Yesterday we opted for Loch Fyne, being in the mood for some good seafood, and it turned out to be quite a good decision!

We went in past the fresh wet-fish counter, where you can buy lobster, dressed crab, crayfish, langoustine, sole, trout fillets, salmon....the list goes on.  It was all well presented and gave the restaurant area a market feel.  The fairly short menu features a wide variety of seafood dishes, from the traditional cod and chips to the ever present fish pie, mostly between around £10 and £17 with a few exceptions at either end of the scale.  There are a couple of non fish dishes too, including sausage and mash (which looked pretty good, actually!), a veggie dish and an informative wine list.  The specials board had a couple of starters and three main courses, all fresh fish caught that morning in Scotland.

We got off to a fairly slow start, given plenty of time to choose from the menu.  That said, once we had ordered, the drinks and food arrived pretty quickly and the service was friendly and relaxed.

We both decided to go for some slightly off-beat dishes (what a surprise, I hear you shout!) rather than one of the fillet or fish steak staples.  Dee had a delicious monkfish and prawn thai green curry with sticky rice and a handful of prawn crackers.  The green curry was zingy and tasty, with a good chilli kick at the end, using monkfish was a good choice because it is meaty enough to stand up to the big thai flavours that come to the fore.

I opted for prawns and scallops (scallops are my favourite thing!) on a bed of sautéed mushrooms and spinach with chilli jam and sticky rice.  The scallops were cooked perfectly, the prawns were delicious, the rice was certainly sticky!  The chilli jam?  Well, it could have been great, but it reminded me of burnt hoisin sauce more than anything else.  It was tasty, and it worked with the prawns and rice etc, but it overpowered the scallops.  Shame, because as just a prawn dish it probably would have worked.

We both managed to stick to our guns on this occasion and skip the deserts.  First time for everything, eh?  So next time you're at Bluewater and starting to get peckish, keep on walking past all the stuff you see in every high street and try some nice fresh Scottish fish for a change!