The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The Suffolk A spirited seaside stay
Mark C O’Flaherty is spooked by how well this Aldeburgh hotel and restaurant chimes with the town’s history
I’m drawn to the weird more than the beautiful. Yet there’s a stretch of Suffolk coastline that’s both. Aldeburgh is one of those little seaside towns full of retirees and escapees from the capital, neat and pretty, with an ordered queue of couples outside a classic fish-andchip shop, ready to take their battered cod back to houses as expensive as anything in a London postcode. The sculptor Maggi Hambling was born here, and in 2003 erected a giant steel scallop shell in tribute to another local celebrity, Benjamin Britten. It also serves as a pretty good symbol for the nearby Suffolk, an old boozer that has had fortunes spent on it to become a seafood restaurant with rooms.
“They’ve really changed it here,” I heard a woman at the next table say to her dining companion. “Definitely going for a Michelin star.” Just then, the waiter came up to break bad news: “The only thing we don’t have today is… scallops.” No matter – I had half a dozen snails drenched in garlic butter, just as sculptural in their own way.
Aldeburgh was gloriously sunny the afternoon I went – perfect for a preprandial stroll, crunching slowly over pebbles on the beach, noting the often-eccentric architecture of the seafront houses. Walking farther, towards the Napoleonic-era Martello Tower, I got to Slaughden and the bend of the river Alde, which leads into marshland and to Iken, once considered plagued with ghosts and demons so troublesome that Saint Botolph made it his life’s mission to exorcise them, back in the 7th century.
Centuries later, in the mid-1920s, the author M R James used Aldeburgh as the thinly disguised location for his ghost story, A Warning to the Curious, contained in the book of the same name. The plot consists of an archaeologist stumbling across one of the three lost mythical crowns of East Anglia, after which he is stalked by its ghostly guardian. The church and graveyard in the story are real, and I made a point of visiting them. On my walk back north, heading in the direction of the Sizewell B nuclear reactor (attached, bizarrely, to a holiday park), I stopped for a pint at the White Hart, and Googled a few more things about
Aldeburgh. In 1642, there were reports of a phantom battle taking place in the sky; in the 19th century, locals repeatedly reported the sound of bells from sunken churches pealing beneath the sea.
The Suffolk was opened in 1811 as the East Suffolk Hotel. There’s history and spirit here, though the place is bright and cheery. The interiors have a breezy, seaside-style tongue-and-groove look, with wooden dining chairs and some luxe upholstery in the bedrooms – slightly antique in style, but with that new-carpet smell and Bloomsburypatterned lampshades. Body products are gorgeous, by Haeckels – known for foraging materials from the beach at
Margate. I don’t know what bladderwrack is, but it smells nice. Bedrooms have those vintage-style pastel Roberts radios with Bluetooth. You get the idea.
My dinner was made more enjoyable by the surprise appearance of restaurant critic Jay Rayner, who routinely hates anywhere I like. I last saw him at Moor Hall, while I was having one of the best dinners of my life – he clearly didn’t feel the same and savaged it. More entertaining was the fact that two women in different parties at the Suffolk had been seated at tables next to each other, both wearing a certain rather ubiquitous dress from Zara, but in different colours. “One of you did that deliberately and I love it,” I said to the staff at the bar before I went to bed.
My supper was, overall, lush. You can’t do a seafood restaurant on the cheap, but prices here are reasonable. I had asparagus with crab hollandaise (£11) and a £32 Dover sole with butter and capers and a side of carrots with hazelnuts. There’s an impressive wine list (the Montrachet is heaven but costs £110 a bottle – an £11 glass of Picpoul is a solid alternative). The cocktails, including a martini with oyster liquor, are quirky but not gimmicky.
I’ve eaten at some wonderful seafood places, but they’re often too casual (all that battering) or too Mayfair (£100+ plateaux de fruits de mer). A counter place in Sydney called Saint Peter hits the sweet spot, and I wish there was a branch in London. It’s as innovative as it is casual. The Suffolk isn’t trying to be innovative. It’s fun and chic, using great produce, in a town with a lot of history. As a new addition to a relatively tourist-free seafront, it won’t frighten the locals, but it should definitely scare up new business from out-of-towners.
Doubles from £180, including breakfast. There are no fully accessible rooms