Restaurants Jamespembroke

CRAB HOUSE CAFÉ, WEYMOUTH, DORSET OLDROYD, ISLINGTON, LONDON

To celebrate the end of a hectic summer, we went for a tour of West Dorset.

We started at Tolpuddle, hoping to learn about the martyrs. What a dreary place. Arguably, Britain’s worst museum tells the martyrs’ tale through the lens of the Molesworth Muddled School of History. We learned very little about the aptly named martyr George Loveless; so we moved on to Athelhampton House, where, as if part of some benign penance, the owner was astride his digger, toiling away. Then we just caught closing time at the Dorset County Museum, architecturally a mini Pitt Rivers, complete with Thomas Hardy’s reconstructed study. We could have spent hours there but were ushered out.

So, on to Weymouth, to the Crab House Café, which is situated at the beginning of the causeway to the Isle of Portland, which, complete with borstal, used to frighten me as a child; more so as an adult. Portland has its own rules, most famously the ‘Portland Custom’: so worried were islanders about continuing their master race that they allowed for pre-marital sex until a woman was ‘proven’ (pregnant), at which point she instantly married. Hardy alludes to it in The Well-beloved.

Situated alongside the Fleet Lagoon and Chesil Beach, it’s the sort of seafood shack one dreams of. Nigel Bloxham, Dorset’s very own Henry Root, who has been in wet fish for thirty years, has got it spot on. Outside, among the lobster pots, are wooden tables looking out to the sunset over Portland; the wide-ranging menu is changed twice daily, and the oysters are lifted from the lagoon; the main courses start at £14 and a bottle of Chenin Blanc can be had for a pound more. The chef is robust in his treatment of all this abundance: oysters are served with wasabi and there are excellent

fish bhajis. I had brill, poached on a bed of garlic mussels, and chervil cream linguini, but they are happy to serve everything plain, right down to offering a hammer to bash up half a crab.

The waiters are full of joy and readily evangelise about the whole enterprise.

I’m afraid I did all the braying on a recent visit to Oldroyd. This minuscule one-up, one-down is not the place for three rowdy men to lunch, but it may well be the best bargain in London.

Tom Oldroyd was the chef behind the first nine Polpo restaurants, where he mastered the concept of small plates. Here he brings his expertise in portion control to offer a three-course lunch for £19. Unlike other cheap set menus, where starters are lettuce and main courses chicken or salmon, Oldroyd is generous: gravadlax to start, followed by quail and London’s best deep-fried zucchini.

We sat upstairs, drinking a bottle of Pecorino, and laughing at our own jokes and occasionally each other’s. I’d love to go there for a whispering dinner as part-atonement for wrecking the ladies’ lunch at the next-door table.

Our own Anne Robinson wants me to test restaurants for the hard of hearing. Tiny spaces like this won’t cut the mustard, but at least it’s Muzak-free.

The Crab House Café, Ferrymans Way, Portland Road, Weymouth DT4 9YU; Tel: 01305 788867; www.crabhousecafe.co.uk. Three courses and wine, £40.

Oldroyd, 344 Upper Street, London N1 0PD (opposite the Business Design Centre); Tel: 020 8617 9010; www. oldroydlondon.com. Three courses, £19.