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Fishes, Market Place, Burnham Market, Norfolk, PE31 8HE

Fishes, Market Place, Burnham Market, Norfolk, PE31 8HE

Market Place, Burnham Market, Norfolk, PE31 8HE

In a word ‘Disappointing’. In two words ‘Disappointing’ and ‘Expensive’. We had visited Fishes a few years ago and had a thoroughly good time, a first class meal, and had recommended it to many people as a result. We had been looking forward to returning, and finally had the chance. But two years down the line, the prices have gone up, the enjoyment levels down, and the accountants seem to have taken over.

Things started in irritating fashion. We had tried to book for 8pm but were told we could only have a table at 7pm or 9pm. Fair enough, a good restaurant staggers bookings so as not to overwhelm the kitchen, and I had left it to the day before to book. So we plumped for 9pm and had a drink in the Hoste Arms beforehand. Given the choice of times, I was expecting a full restaurant on a busy Friday night. But it was less than half full. Maybe our fellow diners had all booked for 8pm, but it was slightly annoying nonetheless. Particularly as I’d bet a fiver that if we’d walked in off the street at 8pm without a booking, we would have been seated without question.

On arrival, and before we’d even had a chance to announce ourselves, we were told by a passing waitress to “hang on a minute” and were left at the front desk shuffling our feet while they attended to more important matters than the arrival of new customers. Not the warmest of welcomes. Once we were seated, and as custom dictates, we were given menus to look over. And very nice they looked too. To start with, we were tempted by a terrine of foie gras, smoked eel, and piquello peppers served with toasted brioche, along with a plate of six local Brancaster oysters with shallot vinegar and lemon. Unfortunately the starters arrived before the bottle of wine we had ordered (a Constantia Uitsig 2005 Sauvignon Blanc at £25), and so we sat looking at our dishes until the wine arrived. Lucky the starters were cold. The terrine was fine although the smoked eel wasn’t particularly evident and, given the distinctive ingredients, the dish was surprisingly uncharacterful and lacking in something. The oysters however were great specimens - splendidly plump and full of flavour. The only note of criticism is that every single one of them contained shards of shell which it wouldn’t have taken too much bother for the kitchen to pick out before serving them.

For mains we both went for a dish of Roast Turbot ‘meurette’ with puy lentils, button onions, button mushrooms, lardons, persillade and a red wine sauce. Turbot is one of my all-time favourite fish and I will order it practically whenever it is on a menu and finances allow (at Fishes it comes with a supplement of £6 per head, but then it’s a pricey fish). So it’s all the more disappointing when it doesn’t delight, as was the case here. The ‘meurette’ element of the accompanying ingredients was as it should be, a dark concentrated essence of red wine, stock, and vegetables, with proper depth and flavour. But the fish was strangely lacking. Whereas I had been hoping for (and with the supplement, thought I was paying for) a nice fat fillet of Turbot, the cut on my plate was mean spirited, with about half of it’s weight consisting of bone and cartilage. It felt, and looked, like an offcut, and required good knife and fork skills to get into). To top it off, it was a few minutes shy of being fully cooked and the flesh closest to the bone had to be cut off rather then pulled away. This fish had also obviously been cooked entirely separately from the other ingredients, and was insipid in comparison.

Dessert menus followed and we felt like going for the plate of local cheeses. But 20 minutes later its appeal had waned and when the waitress finally arrived to take our order, all we were in the mood for was the bill. At which point, with the prospect of a tip looming, the waitress suddenly made a half-hearted effort to get chatty and attempt a smile.

The bill is the root of my problem with Fishes. Two courses are £33, three courses £38. With the supplement for the Turbot we paid just under £40 for two courses. The whole bill came to £110, excluding (pretty average) service. I am perfectly prepared to pay top dollar for top nosh, so long as there is an element of that rather old fashioned concept ‘value for money’ in there somewhere. But we came away from Fishes feeling like fleeced tourists. The food was ‘fine’. The service ‘okay’. The experience ‘reasonable’. But for that sort of money it is not unreasonable to expect a little more. Like proper service and memorable food. The best dish we had was the oysters, and we could have got them for a pound a pop down the road at the fishmongers. Also, at those sort of prices one might expect table cloths, decent cutlery, crockery, glassware, and maybe some frippery like an amuse bouche, or even a smile or two. We got none of those things but did get rather too loud music coming from the kitchen. The overall feeling was of dining at an okay bistro on a night when the best chef and staff are off. Yet somehow at the end of the meal we were presented with a bill for a Michelin starred meal we didn’t have.

Maybe Burnham Market is paying for its nickname of ‘Chelsea-on-Sea’ and Fishes has become too accustomed for its own good to the rich pickings of undemanding customers with deep pockets. Maybe it just needs a good kick up the backside. But we came away feeling that the care, attention to detail, and effort that had been palpable two years previously, had all but vanished.


www.fishesrestaurant.co.uk