Perfect weekends are something to think about. Before, during and after, they are respite: proof that, every now and again, things can be just so, the cards can fall into place. I’ve been thinking about perfect weekends a bit lately, as most of mine for the past year have involved cutting tiles, sawing wood, and slicing bootlaces of skin from my fingers, all in the pursuit of a renovated flat. Having to navigate a stray fridge to get into bed isn’t as relaxing as it sounds. It turns out my place is the stubborn sort, resistant to change; I win only by getting nasty with the power tools. There is a gangster movie in this somewhere.
Time to get away. And so to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, which soothed — albeit it not immediately (what is it about rail replacement services that makes one lust for the swift mercy of death?) But under usual circs, the trip would take a little over two hours, done smartly; via Ipswich is the way. When you get there, Aldeburgh is an old Tudor seaside village, which sounds a little dry until you realise it’s full of old spies.
It’s also not really a seaside village at all. Oh, sure, it’s right on the coast, it has its own beach. But it’s not the seaside; there are no arcades or bucket and spade shops. There are no kiss-me-quick hats (but then — were there ever really any kiss-me-quick hats?) Aldeburgh is decidedly rather nice, with buildings all unlike each other, and fishermen’s huts and beach look-outs and sculptures the colours of sunsets dotted along the pebble. It is not an especially complex formula. You arrive and think about buying here, among the blue and peach houses. The locals would discourage this. At night the place hushes, except inside the pubs.
Except inside the pubs, and except inside The Suffolk. This is a restaurant with rooms — not quite a hotel, but not quite not a hotel — brought about by George Pell. For Londoners he is a name tethered to L’Escargot, or Home House. But he untied his mooring lines and first drifted here in 2020. Are there such things as daydream catchers? It seems so; another life beckoned. He moved properly the year after, found an old coaching house, fixed her up and fitted her out. The opening in full came in the winter of 2022 which seems a suspiciously Pell move; your regularly-scheduled hoteliers would choose the summertime, instead. From the front his building — which apparently is actually called The Suffolk-Sur-Mer, though I’m convinced this only to indulge the seashell logo — looks in good, genteel proportion; inside moves with its own angles and crevices, following its own riddles. They are a fine match, the building and its owner.
You are coming for rooms without tellies, for cream-coloured panelling, for sea air sweeping in under the sashes, for bathrooms with cork floors and big baths for splashing about in. There is a record player in the bar and seats everywhere about the place, because you come to sit, and not to think, but to not think.
For the energetic, eating and drinking is offered and, I suppose, arguably the point. The menu is one beautifully done, designed like everything else by Pell’s brother Matthew. It is as seductive and simple as the place itself. The Suffolk is somewhere for oysters bathing besides lemon wedges in piles of sea salt, Tabasco lazing like a lifeguard. The sharp-minded will have their Martinis arrive at this point too, colder and more ferocious than the sea outside. Their speciality is spiked winningly with oyster liquor. This is a dining room for snails bobbing in butter and garlic and parsley, for great lobsters with their meat puffed up like buoys.
You are understanding, I take it: this is somewhere for treats; not challenging treats, but the good old-fashioned ones, done extremely well, priced reasonably (a dozen oysters, for instance, £24; a whole lobster at £60). The standard is high thanks to the evident talent of head chef Tom Payne. Fish restaurants, they’re either good or they’re not. I do not need to explain what the fresh flesh of white fish drenched in butter tastes like. Nor the wine you need with it: you might have Chablis or Mersault, or Montrachet; you will not to stray. Pell knows this.
Are there such things as daydream catchers? It seems so; another life beckoned
But there are other comforts, like pheasant in a mushroom and truffle sauce, or hogget, or a venison ragu. Make that a Suffolk venison ragu — or, in fact, a Suffolk anything. What Pell has so smartly done is find what’s good locally. This is done elsewhere of course, but being so close to the sea, the fit is especially neat; the closest producer they work with is listed as being 200 yards away; the furthest is 19 miles. Even the chef is local. The Suffolk is accountable. There is a sense of place here.
I suspect, in fact, that what Pell is presenting is the very sense of place that pulled him here to begin with. Perhaps he spikes drinks with it; after breakfast, the first train was about 11 or so. We did not take it. We tottered to the front, and then to the wood-panelled White Hart for a goodbye half. Before long we found ourselves back sat on the shingles, with a bottle of vintage Veuve, sharing half-damp cigarettes that kept getting their flame taken in the wind. The afternoon went to smoke and bubbles. “I wish it weren’t time to go,” I said. “I think this might have been the perfect weekend.”
