Crab & Lobster

Asenby, Nr Thirsk

While the car park looked to be well populated the restaurant didn’t seem to have enough people in it for the amount of cars there were, unless of course everybody came in separate cars! We were given a choice of tables and my wife immediately chose the one nearest us just inside the door, a good choice too as we had a good view of the restaurant and beyond it into a much larger conservatory type room that was in the process of being laid up, presumably for that evening. I also had a view of the kitchen, well a little of it, every time someone went in. 

Besides all the ephemera there are also lots and lots of AA Rosette plates adorning the walls, I didn’t see the oldest one but given the newest is for 23/24 (that I saw) my guess is that these go back as far as the turn of the century and quite probably further back still. They were all (I think) boasting 2 Rosettes, at least the most recent ones were, so that boded well.

All the tables had table cloths, if you’ve read any of my other reviews you will see that I like table cloths, I also understand why not many places have them anymore, but if you are going to use them, please iron them!

The menu, or should I say menus, were simply printed on two separate sheets of paper, one printed both sides, that being the a la carte, the other single sided, the set price lunch menu, even this was a menu with lots of choice. While I am not that happy with huge menus, pretty much all of the items on the set menu were also present on the main menu too, so not quite as large a menu as it first appears but still big. As the smaller menu (the set menu) of the two was a fresh looking sheet of paper as opposed to the two sided one that looked like someone had already eaten off it (literally) we went for the set menu.

But as is often the way with large menus not everything was available! Not to worry, we would work around that. I ordered the Ham Hock Terrine with Pickled Vegetables and Pease Pudding, I love pease pudding, my mother always used to make it whenever she cooked a ham and of course no one’s comes close! Not even my own! Not that we got much of it at home as dad would always be in there first. As it was setting he would be scooping it out with his fingers leaving deep grooves where he had gouged it out. The terrine was okay, without any finesse, the pease pudding, okay, the pickled vegetables more of an after thought and not very well done, it was as though they had pickled raw pieces of carrot and cauliflower, a quarter of a radish, in vinegar for a few seconds, hugely disappointing. Whenever I would do these, often served with a terrine too, I would lightly blanch them first (taking the bulk of the crunch out but not all), then drain but not chill, and lightly season before dousing them in a pickling vinegar that I would have pre-made along with a little olive oil, letting them sit in that to cool and absorb it for at least 5 minutes. The pickling vinegar would consist of vinegar (white or red wine vinegar), salt, crushed pepper, ginger root, coriander and fennel seeds, crushed garlic, a few crushed juniper seeds, fresh thyme and rosemary along with possibly other ingredients I had to hand. As for the vegetables I would use whatever there was in season, such as cauliflower, broccoli, carrot, turnips, radish, peas, broad beans, asparagus, celery, fennel, whatever really. My wife had the Heritage Tomato and Avocado Bruschetta which she pronounced as “really very good if somewhat simple”.