The iconic blue and orange boat that served fresh crab rolls on a Welsh beach has found a new anchorage. It's moved to an old smugglers inn down a road that occasionally gets cut off by the tide.
Café Môr have relocated their Seaweed Boat, The Josie June, to The Old Point House on the Angle Peninsula in Pembrokeshire. The boat is still going strong - indeed you'd be hard pressed to find a better setting to savour that famous crab with a splodge of Café Môr's signature seaweed kelpchup, sold through the overarching Pembrokeshire Beach Food Company.
But somehow the team behind the distinctive brand have managed to take what they do best - great seafood and hand picked local seaweed - and take it to the next level. Now after several long months of refurbishment works at the old pub, which dates right back to the seventeenth century, the Point House restaurant is finally open for the summer, complete with Café Môr anchored in the garden! You can get more restaurant news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
Read more about Café Môr's story: 'I quit my office job because I was homesick for the sea and food of Pembrokeshire'
It's not hard to imagine smugglers hunkered down in the low ceilinged bar of the Grade II listed pub with their small wooden row boats pulled up onto the shingle. Perched just a stone's throw from the tidal East Angle Bay, the pub has been spruced up somewhat with a bright clean whitewash and classy downlights at the front. But it still has that intriguing air about it perhaps in part due to its fairly remote location and the intoxicating smell of salty seaweed from the shoreline.
As we arrived for dinner on the warmest day of the year manager Joanna Levell rushed out the low-slung door asking if we got across okay. High tide was just moments away and it was a particularly high one this evening she said. Anything over 7.4m and cars would be getting wet. In fact, the drive down a long stony track skirting the Angle inlet is part of the experience of the Old Point House. On this exceptionally still evening the water reflects the boats like glass and birds skim the water surface. Arriving at the end of the track feels like a world away.
We were just ahead of the tide and so we arrived entirely dry, we informed Joanna. Asked if we'd like to sit inside or out we plumped for the picnic tables outside so we could watch the sun setting behind the Josie June. It opens during the daytime serving light lunches and drinks but in the evenings it's all about the restaurant. It's busy - they've been fully booked every day since they opened, informs our server Annie.
They clearly need a few more staff on the team but the service from Annie was exemplary and she let us in on a few of her secrets as we consulted the menu. The oysters came from just over the water she said, pointing across to the spot they were harvested from. They're as fresh as fresh can be, she promised. So we promptly ordered one each.
It was a toss up between the homemade crab tagliatelle and the pint of prawns for my companion but when Annie said the pasta was made by hand at the pub that swung it. It was pasta for her and the whole baked mackerel for me. We asked for the homemade focaccia too, mostly because we fancied the idea of mermaid confetti and seaweed oil.
The Café Môr website describes itself as having a passion for "great seafood, hand picked local seaweed and celebrating classic Welsh dishes, with a modern twist". The menu is definitely biased towards seafood - and rightly so. With a setting like this it would be disingenuous not to. As well as crispy haddock goujons, whole roasted seabass and seaweed noodle salad, there's also roasted porchetta and spiced lamb koftas for the meat lovers. Nearly everything comes with an imaginative use of seaweed - in pickled form, kimchi form or sprinkled like confetti. It is after all, what The Pembrokeshire Beach Food Company is known for.
Our food arrives fairly promptly and all together. We start on the oysters which glisten tantalising in the dying sun. They look fat and come in a little pool of briny seawater and a crest of pickled seaweed. I don't swallow them whole, but savour my single morsel in two bites, at first metallic but then yielding to salty yet also sweet. It tastes exactly how the sea looks. It's delicious.
The bread is, well, bread. It is perhaps served purely as a vessel for the selection of condiments that arrive with every meal, whether you ask for them or not. We've got some seaweed chilli jam and some kelpchup - the former with a heavy hit of heat, the latter with quite an addictive umami taste.
The star of the show is really that head to tail mackerel which comes with a beautifully golden skin and opaque flesh which falls easily from the bone. The lemon aioli is thick and unctuous while the mangetout salad offers a welcome crunch. In hindsight I wish I'd ordered chips too, especially when I saw a towering bowl of them arrive at the table next door.
My companion informs me her homemade green tagliatelle ribbons with "crinkled twists" fills the plate with plenty of meaty chunks of Pembrokeshire crab. The slick of oil dressing helps carry the fennel frond and lemon flavours while the rock samphire balanced on top brings a crunchy element with just a hint of sweetness.
Annie cleared our plates as the sun finally disappeared behind the hill and offered us dessert. We were hardly going to decline - I'd had my eye on the chocolate pot and Barti Rum salted caramel since the moment we arrived. We ordered chocolate brownie with dulse caramel popcorn too.
It was getting a little chilly now the sun had gone so we moved inside and found a small round table next to the nineteenth century cast-iron kitchen range. Even so, we could still spy the sail boats on the now receding tide from the glass-paned window in our cosy corner. The white panelled walls lend a fresh feel to the bar so it's not gloomy, despite the overhead tar-black oak beams sunk into the ceiling. It definitely has a smuggler's feel about it and I half expect one to be nursing a tumbler of rum in the corner.
Luckily there are no smugglers, just the reappearance of Annie with dessert. The brownie is pleasingly warm and gooey albeit with the unexpected addition of raisins, and a perfect contrast to the cold vanilla ice cream. It's hardly an untested combination but the dulse caramel popcorn is a new one on me and certainly adds novelty to the dish. Seaweed can be dessert too.
The chocolate pot is rich and indulgent - a hefty portion of dark chocolate hidden beneath a layer of salted caramel laced with rum and topped with shards of chocolate-dipped honeycomb. It's certainly not for the faint-hearted.
Café Môr at the Old Point House seems to be paying off - food lovers were certainly shocked when the boat left Freshwater West after 10 years and the pub at Angle Bay came with institutional status despite having closed in 2020. Café Môr has been given a ten-year lease on the premises and has installed a bar, restaurant and a new kitchen.
The food is tasty and there's clearly no shortage of seaweed. It's all about celebrating local produce and that undoubtedly comes across in the competent cooking. But what sets this place apart is its magical location on the water's edge where boats come and go, where life slows down and where the tide rises and falls with absolute certainty. It might be a bit of a trek to get there, but it's entirely worth it.
Cafe Mor is open through July, Wednesday to Sunday, 11am to 5pm. The Old Point House is open Wednesday to Sunday, 12pm till 8pm. Check their website for opening details.
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