Friday, November 04, 2005

Porthcawl "Coast" - yes it's a restaurant

Decent food is hard to find in Porthcawl - where we visited last week, but we were impressed with the cuisine in "Coast" a sleek and modern restaurant in the town.

Porthcawl is a big tourist destination in South Wales, but on a blustery, rainy Friday lunchtime in late October it is not exactly rammed with people, and neither was the restaurant. This isn't usually much of a good omen, but after ordering in their rather too spacious bar area at the front, we were led to our table and served with our choices.

I had picked the smoked mackerel - which was beautifully presented, perched (no pun intended) on the garlic mash and surrounded by a poached egg, dill and hollandaise sauce. It was a sort of brunch like dish, but was very tasty. It would great for a hangover, but I didn't have one, so even better. My wife had the Chicken and Leek pie, which is a great pub favourite and the children had pitta pizza and lasagne. Of these the only real disappointment was the lasagne, which was a strangely constructed, and seemingly devoid of its customary white sauce. Our host had the Vegetable Soup, which was comfort food for the rainy season.

So, all in all we had a decently cooked set of restaurant and pub classics, in a contemporary setting. That beats most of the competition in the local area.

Saturday was the Cowbridge food festival: our cup runneth over - watch this plate.

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