A night at Morston Hall, North Norfolk

What with one thing and another, the celebration of my 66th birthday (18 January 2009) got postponed several times. We managed to celebrate Patricia’s birthday and our wedding anniversary back at Fischers Baslow Hall, where we were married three years ago, at the beginning of May, but it was almost the end of June before we finally did my birthday.

We managed to combine five nights in the delightful Church Cottage, close to the North Norfolk coast, with one night at nearby Morston Hall. During the week we ate a great deal of deliciously fresh local seafood, mostly bought from a green-and-yellow caravan at Blakeney Quay - and mostly dressed crabs. We also ate very well at a strange establishment called Cookie’s Crab Shop at Salthouse, a few miles down the coast, and at The Anchor, a fine pub almost next door to Morston Hall, where we shared a crab salad and ate delicious home-cooked haddock and chips.

Talking of crabs, we never got parked in Cromer, supposedly the crab capital of Norfolk - but we got plenty of great ones elsewhere!

Morston Hall

This is more of a hotel/restaurant than a ’restaurant-with-rooms’. We had seen chef/proprietor Galton Blakiston cooking on TV many times and were keen to try his food. To win a Michelin star with a menu without choices sounded like a pretty staggering achievement. This was justified by everything being fresh, local and seasonal - dictated by the market.

The hotel is delightful, set in spacious and beautifully-landscaped gardens.

Our room was on the ground floor, and even had its own little patio. I have to confess that I’d chosen it from a choice of three when speaking to Tracy Blakiston on the phone, because it would give me somewhere discreet to enjoy my little Sumatran cigarillos. And it did, once I’d fashioned an ashtray out of a bit of kitchen foil left over from packing our food in the car. We loved the room, and - even more, our bathroom. This was adapted for disabled users and therefore had loads of space. And a shower to die for. Coming from me this is praise indeed. In our previous house we had a pumped power shower, and in the present one we have a Mira fed from our mains-pressure hot water. But I have to say that the one at Morston was the best I’ve ever used - lashings of hot water and all the power you could want.

We were also pleased to find that we had tea- and coffee-making facilities in the room. Some of the posher establishments we’ve stayed at don’t offer this, leaving you to rely on - and pay for - room service. Here they even left a small thermos of cold milk when they turned the bed down - at other times you just ask reception for milk.

The flat-screen TV was the one real disappointment, being fed an analogue signal in what was obviously a very poor reception area. We were there in the first week of Wimbledon, and wanted to catch up on the tennis: we did, but it was all a bit fuzzy. In such a delightful hotel a satellite-based system would be very welcome, in terms of both quality and channel-choice.

Dinner

As I mentioned, there is no choice (unless you have previously registered a special dietary requirement). The menu for our meal was as follows:

Terrine of Wild Mushrooms
with Fennel & Parsley and Foie Gras Mousse

Warm Marinaded Locally Caught Mackerel
with Garden Leaves, Grilled Bruschetta

Our Own Oak Smoked Gressingham Duck
with Ragstone Cream, Garlic Mashed Potato,
Ginger Vegetables, Wilted Watercress and Armagnac Jus

Warm Sharrington Strawberry Soufflé
with White Chocolate Ice Cream

Or

Selection of British Cheeses
with Home-made Cheese Biscuits
quince Jelly and Spelt Bread

Cafetière Coffee
and Petit Fours

I’m writing this six and a half weeks after the event, which is perhaps a little unfair, but I have to say that my memories of the meal aren’t as vivid as I’d have expected from a well-known, Michelin-starred chef. In fact, that’s precisely why I’m writing so long after the event: it really wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped, so I haven’t felt all that inspired to hit the keyboard.

I know - we’ve eaten at The Fat Duck, Sat Bains, Fischers Baslow Hall, Winteringham Fields...so maybe we’re getting a bit hard to impress. But I would cheerfully go back to any of these (with a little help from the bank!). I’m not sure I can say the same for Morston Hall.

First, we were very surprised to see how many tables were set for dinner. The Hall looks quite small, but I think I counted 60 places in the dining room where we ate, and there were others elsewhere. And, unlike at The Fat Duck, where there are almost as many waiting staff as diners, it seemed a bit short-handed and service was a little slow. You had to work quite hard to catch someone’s eye for more wine or bread, for example.

The breads, by the way, were varied and excellent: I particularly loved the spelt rolls - warm, moist and very nutty.

And don’t misunderstand me. This was a very good meal, and fair value for the £55-a-head price-tag (ours was included with the room, for which we paid, with all our extras such as aperitifs, wine and water, £396.50). It just wasn’t that memorable, and I didn’t feel that it lived up to the promises of localness and seasonality that were used to justify the absence of choice.

We drank the Wines of the Month by the glass (£5 a time). Both were from Beaujolais - an unoaked Chardonnay white and an oaked Gamay red. Both were excellent, and the red was particularly rich, deep and smooth, much heavier and more perfumed than the average Beaujolais.

The coffee was good, too - a generous cafetière of a rich blend.

Breakfast

Patricia had a continental breakfast and I, by prior arrangement, had a kipper. The kipper came alone and unadorned, and while it way okay it was nowhere near the best I have ever eaten, which was what I had been hoping for. The toasted breads were offered less than generously, the butter dish was so small that we had to ask for more, and there was only a small pot of (presumably) home-made marmalade - no choice of jams, honey or whatever. A bit meagre, we both felt - and we’d remarked on the lack of generosity with butter at dinner, too.

Picnics

Given the total lack of decent eating and drinking places we’d noticed on the way down to Norfolk - thank heaven for The Moorings at Blakeney, with its ’fantastic coffee’ (and, incidentally, its excellent food, including yet another crab salad!), which made our arrival particularly pleasurable - we decided to order two picnics at £15 each. These turned out to be delicious smoked-salmon salads followed by a truly exceptional panna cotta, accompanied by superb Norfolk apple juice. Expensive, but good value.

Overall...

...an enjoyable short stay in excellent accommodation, with a good but not exceptional meal in a very busy and rather understaffed dining room. We had come to expect a bit more friendliness and intimacy from an establishment that is first a restaurant and only second a hotel, based on our experiences at Fischers, Sat Bains and Winteringham Fields, and this was lacking. We did deal with Tracy Blakiston briefly when checking out, but she didn’t introduce herself. And we got a five-second glimpse or a surprisingly tall Galton Blakiston as he ran past us at breakfast without a sideway glance. A bit more generosity would have been nice, too - if only a little more toast, butter and conserves. Oh, and waiting staff!

In short, glad we went but we probably wouldn’t go again.