Fish Supper

This story is a big higgledy-piggledy. Yesterday, the weather was absolutely glorious, so when we were out in town we impulsively decided to have a lovely lunch at a Fish Works restaurant. An expensive choice no doubt, but we had high hopes. Unfortunately the whole experience was inept and unsatisfactory, we certainly won't be going again. First, the waiter introduced us to a boggling array of menus - some handed to us, some chalked on a board right behind our heads, some explained to us with a tray of fish shoved in our faces, and the option to order anything to be cooked from the downstairs shop. A bit overwhelmed, we asked for a few minutes to which the water said he recommended I should be drinking champagne. Excuse me? I ordered what I fancied to drink, to be told 20 minutes later that they didn't have any in. We finally came up with an order and looked forward to our food. One hour, two glasses of water, some bread and salsa verde later, the waiter returned to tell us that there had been 'confusion' with our order and so it hadn't gone to the chef. As he said this, and I thought about the 12.5% service charge suddenly everything lept out at me - the people at the next table who'd unwittingly ordered a £56 sea bass, the bashed up side plates, the scuffed decor. We took the opportunity to cancel our order and GET OUT OF THERE (not before paying for our water and bread!). I felt like I was visiting a restaurant from Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen nightmares and not a rather full-of-itself cafe. It was sad really, as we'd wasted a couple of hours of a lovely Saturday afternoon. However, I knew I could do better. We stopped off at Waitrose on the way home and got some lovely smoked salmon, oysters, scallops, mussels, sea bass and crusty bread. We'd bought some fresh greens earlier at the farmer's market. We laid our own al fresco table in the garden:

Had our starters (salmon, oysters and scallops), then I had mussels and TLM had his sea bass.

We had chocolate banana bread for pudding (recipe to come)

And as we settled down to finish our wine, a hot air balloon drifted over our house.

So our Saturday redeemed itself, despite the Fish Works's best efforts to thwart it.