EATING OUT W

ALKING through town on a Wednesday evening and all it needed was some tumblewood blowing along the virtually empty streets and the effect would have been complete.

It wasn’t just quiet, the place seemed deserted.

Yet when we walked through the doors at Jax Bar and Tapas the noise inside hit you straightaway – like the only bar in a one horse town.

Yet we’d passed other restaurants and they all looked more or less empty.

So what was it about Jax that had made it so popular?

When I mentioned it was busy even the staff said they had been taken a bit by surprise and said it was more like a Saturday than a Wednesday. There was a big group upstairs – more on them later – but downstairs was buzzing too.

Lucky we’d reserved a table then.

Service was good all night starting with a carafe of tap water complete with ice and lemon to go with the wine we’d ordered.

The menu is well laid out with everything on one page, easy to read with good descriptions of each dish and those that are gluten free marked with a gf. A new menu is launching any time now.

We were advised to get two mains and one side dish each and, not being naturally rebellious, took the advice and ordered away.

No starters as such as each dish appears as soon as it’s ready but there is a Jax Snacks section which is really starters under another name.

From that we had pimento chilli, coriander and lime houmous (£4.50) with garlic butter pitta bread. Homemade houmous, so much so you’ll even find the odd whole chickpea, livened up with the chilli flavour burst.

The spicy patatas bravas (£4.50) was just given enough spice for a kick but nothing to overpower.

Biggest dish of the evening was Mejillones en vapor, mussels in chorizo, tomato and white wine broth, garlic and parsely butter bread (£7). There were masses of mussels which turned out to be small in size in a rich, earthy tomato-based sauce with tiny chunks of chorizo and fantastic bread to dip in.

The Chimicchurri chicken, chorizo and halloumi skewers (£7) had bigger chunks of hot chorizo and grilled halloumi with perfectly cooked, tender chicken that was light on spice. It must be meant to eat at the same time as the chorizo.

Best dish of the night turned out to be the fried spicy swordfish, baby leaf spinach, roquito pearls, mango and sweet chilli salsa (£7.50), beautifully cooked fish which worked spot on with the sweet chilli.

The dish that really over-faced us was the garlic and rosemary whole baked camembert with warm crusty bread and red onion marmalade (£8).

Dig into this and it was like quicksand that could easily suck your bread in and the more you eat, the more it spread out making it look like we’d hardly touched it by the end.

An easy one to do at home for a supper if you’re brave enough to eat cheese and then try to sleep.

Desert was white chocolate and passion fruit mousse with honeycomb (£5) which isn’t as light as it sounds as this one was quite thick but with a real creamy taste and you can’t beat honeycomb to sweeten things up.

And things were certainly livening up above us as the sound of stilletos on the floor in time to the 70s/80s music could signify only one thing. They were dancing.

Quick, time to leave before Mrs Hirst got any ideas. She likes a dance does Mrs Hirst.