The Suffolk Sur-Mer, 152 High St, Aldeburgh IP15 5AQ (the-suffolk.co.uk). Bar snacks: £3-£8; starters £10-£14; mains £18- 60 (for the whole lobster); desserts £9. Wines from £26 a bottle
In 2001, my mother was diagnosed with what she would come to describe as “a touch” of breast cancer. Claire would later say that in just two weeks, she went from not having breast cancer – the blissful day before diagnosis – to not having breast cancer, courtesy of a double mastectomy. “I was very fond of my boobs,” she told me later, “and I do miss them, but it was the obvious solution.” She lived on for another nine years, and died of something else entirely.
A couple of nights before the operation, my wife and I met my parents for dinner at the original Ivy, in the days when it was still good and not the cornerstone of some worrying, overcooked, flat-packed brand. Claire did not want to brood on the deep mortal shadow cast by the diagnosis. She did not want to think about what was to come. She wanted to celebrate life now and a good dinner in a great restaurant was, she felt, the best way by which to do that. On the menu that night was an offering that seemed perfectly suited to the job: lobster and chips. No, it wasn’t cheap. Lobster shouldn’t be. It was a luxe item, but one stripped of its airs and graces by the deep-fried company it was keeping. Lobster and chips. It just sounds great, doesn’t it? This was the elemental stuff of eating with your hands: of fingers slicked with juices and salt and fat; of digging around and prising and scavenging into every corner of the shell. We both ordered it and sat opposite each other, mother and son, gleefully, shamelessly, getting elbow-deep in our dinner. It was everything we needed it to be.
Lobster and chips is on the menu at The Suffolk, a restaurant with rooms a surf’s whiff away from the shingle beach in Aldeburgh. I was already minded to fall in love with the place, but that one item sealed the deal. More than a dozen years on from Claire’s death, I had to order it. This was not a mournful act. The demise of a parent when you are deep into adulthood should be sad at the time, but it is also a part of life’s story. This dinner was its own sweet celebration, aided by perfect execution. The lobster came split down the middle, the meat taken from the shell, then put back in place and swamped in garlic butter before being grilled. On the side came the chips; long, fine-edged ones, poking up from their bowl like a broad quiver full of the best, golden arrows. My dinner took me to a whole bunch of very happy places.
The Suffolk Sur-Mer, to use its full name, is a side hustle that got wildly out of control. In the summer of 2020, when restaurants were struggling with Covid restrictions, George Pell, then of London’s venerable L’Escargot, decided to open an outpost of the Soho institution by the sea. The Suffolk was a building much in need of restoration, but there was a kitchen, a dining room and, more importantly, outside space they could use. Pell, who has worked in London restaurants for more than 15 years, fell in love with both the shabby-chic of Aldeburgh and the idea of a different life. In any case, L’Escargot was entering a complex phase post-pandemic. Recently, closure notices went up; happily, it is just reopening. But Pell has moved on.
Money was raised. The building was bought. Work began. Out of it has emerged an extremely civilised, thoroughly relaxed space. It even has a roof terrace looking out to sea for when the sun shines, or even for when it doesn’t, and the Suffolk waters take on their very particular grey-brown hue. The dining room is dressed in shades of cream, and parquet. There are soft banquettes designed with lots of sitting in mind.
Most importantly there is a menu that is certain of its mission, with only the occasional wanton flourish. It is also great value. It’s not cheap. Aldeburgh is known for many things. Cheapness isn’t one of them. Still, in London these days it’s possible to pay £70 for a dozen rock oysters. At the Suffolk a dozen are £24. Make sure to order a few things from the clever bar menu, including leaves of endive, shaped like edible canoes, filled with chopped prawn, picked crab and chilli. Get the seaweed “poppadoms”, which are sheets of toasted nori glued with egg white to sheets of filo pastry, piled with sesame seeds, deep-fried, then topped with whorls of oyster mayonnaise.
Perfect spears of Suffolk asparagus come with a frothy hollandaise enriched with brown crab meat. Smoked mussel soup, with a heavy chilli kick, is the colour of an old brown leather wingback chair and boasts rich tones of Havana cigar. Mop away with sourdough from Harvey & Co in Woodbridge. Main courses include a whole 2kg seabass for four people to share, with chips and hollandaise for £100, or slabs of halibut with a Pernod cream sauce. Today’s specials include an accurately cooked skate wing swamped in a deep curry butter sauce, along with capers.
For greens, there is half a hispi cabbage. Of course it’s been charred. It’s 2023. What else are you going to do with a hispi? There’s a layer of grated parmesan across the top, which is just beginning to melt, and as a nod to the nearby beach, a sprinkling of “seaweed salt”. Desserts make sense: a bit of cheesecake, a chocolate delice, some local cheeses, and a lemon posset, which is what we have. Cream. Lemon. Sugar. That will do nicely. The wine list will not surprise you. It is heavily French and uses comforting, flirty words like Chablis and Sancerre. A well-made whisky sour might have kicked things off. A splash of Sauternes may have finished things.
In between there was just the strong sense that nothing bad could happen; not while I was fixed here on this comfortable banquette, with the early summer light draining from the sky outside, and the lobster giving itself up to me piece by garlicky piece. Yes, I know it’s all a bit of a self-pleasuring, middle-class Sunday supplement fantasy, one acted out at that place where the land and sea pull and tug against each other, and the usual formalities are abandoned. But I am middle-class and this is a Sunday supplement. It works for me. And for what it’s worth, my old mum would have loved it, too.
News bites
Shipping-container, street-food market operator Stack, which is based in the English northwest, has submitted plans to open a venue inside the Empress Ballroom in Whitley Bay on Tyneside. The company already has a Stack in Seaburn, Sunderland, and approval for further venues in Durham and Bishop Auckland. Their business model includes a stage for live entertainment and a rooftop bar as well as standard street food operators. For more information, visit stackseaburn.com.
Following my recent account of a Japanese restaurant in Salford where the dishes are delivered by robot waiters, comes news of a new sushi restaurant delivering food by monorail. CHŪŌ, which opens next month in London’s Shoreditch, says their system is distinct from conveyor-belt restaurants like Yo! Sushi, in that every dish is made to order. There will be a mixture of counter and table siting and a menu of around 40 dishes. Details are few and far and few between, but if this sounds like your thing, follow them on Instagram @chuosushi.
Various restaurant and hospitality industry bodies, including UKHospitality, the British Beer and Pub Association and the British Institute of Innkeeping, have again called on the Migration Advisory Committee to add chefs to the so-called shortage occupation list. This would enable businesses to recruit more from abroad, to fill chronic vacancies which are currently believed to be running at more than 20%. “While the sector continues to invest significantly in growing its own talent,” UK Hospitality chief executive Katie Nicholls has said, “There needs to be changes to our immigration system to enable businesses to fill essential skills gaps.”
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
