The Seahorse: the restaurant and its recipes

By Mitch Tonks and Mat Prowse

The Seahorse restaurant, nestled on the mouth of the River Dart, champions some of the best fish and shellfish in the world from the nearby landing site and is a favourite haunt of the foodie establishment. The menu is a seafood lover's tour of Europe's great fish dishes and cooking over a charcoal fire is the restaurant's speciality. With an emphasis on freshness and the catch of the day, the food's simplicity is as deceptive as it is delicious. Cherished by critics, foodies and locals, The Seahorse is a rare gem in Britain's sea of restaurants and was named 'Best Seafood Restaurant in the UK 2013' by the Good Food Guide and 'Best UK Restaurant 2012' by Observer Food Monthly.


The Seahorse showcases over 70 spectacular dishes served at the restaurant. Celebrating the seasons and reflecting the restaurant's changing menu in tune with the harvest from the waves, it combines insightful features focusing on the restaurant's suppliers in Europe and stunning photography from Chris Terry to create a beautiful and accessible addition to any seafood lover's kitchen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jul 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781472920812

Mitch Tonks

Mitchell Tonks is an award-winning cookery writer, restaurateur and co-founder of the highly praised and award-winning FishWorks Seafood Cafs and Fishmongers. Mitchell has worked tirelessly to educate the nation in the wonderful ways of seafood through his restaurants, television appearances, books, cookery schools and demonstrations. He is author of the André-Simon-shortlisted FishWorks Seafood Café Cookbook (Absolute Press) and also the award-winning The Fishmonger's Cookbook. Mitchell Tonks continues to oversee the opening of new FishWorks restaurants in London and the South of England. When he is not busy with one of his many projects and passions, he is to be found enjoying weekends in his home town of Bath, shopping for food, meeting friends and cooking for family on his beloved black four-oven Aga.

Book preview

To life

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

Friends and Places

I Bologna

Fish

Meat

Wines

Olive Oil

Salt

Morning Fire

Fire

Antipasti

To Start

Pasta and Rice

To Follow

Side Dishes

Desserts

Stocks and Sauces

FOREWORD

The Seahorse is perfect. When it first opened my dinner there was the best meal I ate in 2009, and it remains in my top ten of all time.

In the golden light of our table, in the chocolaty bustle of what felt like the best restaurant in a small town in Brittany, we were given very good olives and smoked cod roe to accompany the cocktail of the day, which was white port and tonic. Then we had a scallop each, blasted in Mitch’s astonishing 400°C charcoal oven to a buttery beauty with the faint aniseed tang of tarragon. Then we had unbelievable local mussels, tiny and sweet, some cuttlefish in red wine, tripes Florentine, and gorgeous, juicy chicken livers threaded on skewers and grilled over a wood fire. We drank a Picpoul with those, and an Albariño, and then a bottle of Tonnix – the excellent white wine Mitch makes with Mark Hix (the clue is in the name).

Then fish. Unbelievable fish. There was a large monkfish tail which, in the white heat of Mitch’s furnace, had been rendered unlike any other monkfish I have eaten, the water having been blazed out of it with such fury that there was none of the bounciness and chew that gives it the name of ‘poor man’s lobster’. It had not curled and had developed no shine. It was complex and flesh-like, as rich as halibut or sole, but more relaxed, earthier.

The squid was even better. We shared two large ones, fresh from the bay, blasted again in the fiery forge, full of smoky flavours and the depths of the sea, lifted with chilli and citrus. And then there was also a perfect sole meunière. With these we had fried courgettes and cima di rape, and then rice pudding, exemplary tiramisu and a couple of brilliant scroppinos, which are a sort of cold posset. And to finish, terrific coffee, which makes all the difference.

By the time we staggered off, around eleven, things were just beginning to kick off: a chef or waiter was about to sing, and I thought I heard the word ‘accordion’. It’s really not what you expect in a small restaurant by the English seaside, but nothing about The Seahorse is.

Giles Coren

INTRODUCTION

Ihad been visiting Dartmouth since I was a boy as it’s a place that draws you in with its incredible sense of warmth and magic. I recall a family lunch at a restaurant called Taylor’s where I remember thinking that I would one day like to have a restaurant here. I was neither a restaurateur, waiter nor chef at the time and my thinking was purely dreaming, but I imagined the life of running a restaurant was a good way to live. I often wonder whether that dream, although buried for many years, somehow directed my life into the world of restaurants and what I do today.

In 1998 I opened my first restaurant in Bath. I had no previous experience except a love of food and the joy of gathering friends and family together around the table. It was through cooking at the restaurant that I met Mat, who was the head chef at Bath’s then finest restaurant, The Olive Tree, working under the guidance of Stephen Ross, a highly respected chef and hotelier. Mat was classically trained and I was young and bursting with enthusiasm and food ideas; I loved it. You couldn’t have found two chefs so different. We became very good friends and Mat asked me over a beer one day if he could work with me – that was the start of our journey together as chefs and best friends.

My first small restaurant grew to 13 with 10 in London, so Mat and I lived two lives, one at home and the other in the restaurants or in the car, often sleeping where we worked. We shared a real understanding of each other and the restaurants achieved many awards through the dedication of the wonderful team of people that ran them. We travelled around Europe when we could for inspiration and found that the simplest of plates brought us the most pleasure – fried crabs in Venice, grilled squid in Barcelona and white beans and rosemary cooked until just soft and creamy and seasoned with thick green olive oil. It was these simple but stunning plates of food and the sense of occasion we loved the most, as well as the joy of just capturing an ingredient at its best and allowing old recipes to be themselves without intrusion from the modern hand. We felt that we had discovered something new every time. Of course, we hadn’t, we were just experiencing dishes and ingredients in the way that they have always been cooked and prepared. It was bringing to life the writing of my favourite authors, such as Hazan, Artusi and Andrews. This sort of food was our kind of food; food that respected the use of ingredients at their best where flavour is the hallmark of ripeness. We learned that many ingredients and dishes should be left just as they are, as well as the skill in capturing the peak moment in different ingredients, whether it was fish or vegetables, before they fade. It was all about understanding original flavours and then perfecting the execution. For example, eating risotto and the deep rich flavours of cacciucco (Italian fish stew) taught us how to make these dishes, as the experience and our memory for tastes were our guide. One day in our local bar, while in the midst of expansion, we started thinking over a beer, ‘One day let’s cook fish over a fire by the sea, and cook the food we like to eat’. We nodded to a dream that we didn’t think about again until 2006. By then, my business had changed; people who had supported me and been by my side throughout that journey had left. The company had got too big and it wasn’t what I wanted it to be; I could feel change fast approaching. I opened an email one morning and there it was: ‘Pizza restaurant for sale, Dartmouth’. I remembered with a smile my earlier dream in life and deleted it, but for two weeks after I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

That was the birth of The Seahorse. One of my oldest friends Mark Ely and his wife Sasha were living in Dartmouth. Mark is a charismatic man and a brilliant musician. He’s a people person with a warm personality, and a perfect maître d’hôtel. Even better, he has a natural love of food so I asked him if he wanted to be involved with the new restaurant and run the front of house. He did. I called Mat and asked him to come down and within a few weeks he had relocated his family to Devon and our long-time dream was born.

We have the best fish in the world landed outside our front door so seafood was to be the heart of what we did. We loved the open fires of Northern Spain and Italy where we had enjoyed the flavours that the fire brings to seafood and decided that we would cook over an open charcoal fire, too. We pushed ahead and in the tiny space we created a kitchen that worked for us with the fire at the heart of it. In the dining room we weren’t swayed by current design trends; this was going to be a timeless room for eating in, a place that gives you a natural welcome all of its own, a place where people would gather to share food long after we were gone. So the seats needed to be comfortable and sprung, the walls neutral and the lighting glowing not white. The space was small so all the furniture had to be handmade in walnut so it would age well and be practical to carve fish and serve bread and antipasti from. Our office was a cupboard, the gap between us and next door was our wood and charcoal store and linen was stored behind a removable banquette. Ideally, we wanted more space for guests and storage but the restaurant was small so that was that!

Opening day came and I can recall cutting fish with Mat and enjoying our first morning grappa together – it was wonderful. I remember an early lunch with a full dining room. Joyce Molyneaux, who in the 70’s would have been our neighbour, was sat on table 7. She had ran and cooked in the Carved Angel, a restaurant that has left a huge mark on our culinary scene. It’s a place people still talk fondly of today, recounting every dish they had. She is a person we love but whose food we have never tasted, so it was a joy to be cooking for her and to get her nod of approval. She ate red mullet if I recall. The room was alive with chatter and noise, a sound that you can only tune into in the finest of dining rooms. We were proud and we realised that everything had come together just how we had wanted it to in spite of the days being long and tiring.

After the opening day, the real work sets in, as you need to establish a rhythm in a restaurant, a heartbeat, a little engine which gets started every day and runs like clockwork until the last guest has left, the last glass polished and the door finally locked for a few hours before the whole show starts again.

Restaurants are mostly about people and a little about the food. Both the people that work there and the guests that eat there create the magic that can happen in a restaurant. The people that work with us are special people, they have to care about the detail as much as we do and bring the vision of what we want to life. This means being able to cope with just about everything you can imagine. Restaurants are about controlling the ensuing chaos every day brings – a busy room, a late wine delivery during service, a broken tap, the awkward man who doesn’t like his table and wants to sit on the one by the window that’s booked later for an anniversary, and owners that like to have a lot of fun! I said earlier that Mark was a musician and often he would swap his jacket for his guitar and sing after lunch. This is when the magic really happened. People who earlier had been quietly dining were now, with our encouragement, and of course the wine, dancing on chairs and tables while the staff just glided round them pouring more drinks and seeing to their every need as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. This became the norm when we felt like it and the place was alive most nights.

The rhythm of the restaurant was gaining momentum and the daily rituals happening. This is for us the key to running a good place, everything has to be done and everything has a place. The day starts with endless deliveries of fish and last-minute phone calls from fish merchants with something special from the market. Do we buy it? Have we enough fish? Who’s in today that might like the 2kg crawfish we have just been offered? We decide over a grappa and espresso and then tweak yesterday’s menu to today’s once we know what’s arriving; we work to the best of the day’s landings. The restaurant sets up around us – the step is polished, the bread is baked, the fish checked and cut and the day’s bookings reviewed – any VIPs, special dietary requirements, celebrations or other messages we need to share are discussed then the day’s menu is finalised and the first show of the day begins. When the last lunch guests have left, we lay for dinner. Lunch is different to dinner, as we like tablecloths for the evening, as it’s more celebratory. Chairs and tables are arranged and then we eat together. We like to eat at tables 1 and 2 and have our own tablecloth that’s different to the restaurant’s. This becomes our space to relax together for an hour, where we eat well and taste any wine that needs tasting. The second show begins and ends well into the night. The last guests are transported away from the inland island that is Dartmouth by our private launch across the river to their homes or their moored boat…

We run the restaurant because we want to, it’s our way of life and we are lucky that the people that work with us make it theirs too; we enjoy it. We like to welcome people, cook for them and share our food, wine and stories with them – we get great pleasure from seeing other people enjoying themselves.

Mitch Tonks and Mat Prowse

FRIENDS and PLACES that INSPIRED our RESTAURANT

When you decide to open a restaurant you have to do the research! This involves getting out to wherever inspires you and getting stuck in with often week-long regular marathons of food, wine and generous hospitality from the many friends you make along the way. It’s a tough job, and we really mean that, but it has to be done. Without it you are in the dark. You have to experience and then work backwards. For us it has all been about Italy and the Mediterranean shores. To really make good risotto or Lobster Caldereta for example, you have to have eaten them prepared at their best, so you can get a picture in your mind of what the finished dish should be. It’s the same when you walk into a room. You can’t put your finger on it but you will know it’s a great room when you find one – the noise of people eating, the rising conversation, the clatter of knives and forks and just the right light: it’s atmosphere. The places mentioned throughout the book have, over the years, become special to us and the people are now dear friends who we consider part of our restaurant now and for years to come. We look forward to our regular visits to them and the sense of celebration we feel when they step into our dining room.

I BOLOGNA, BARBERA AND TARTUFO

IBologna is a restaurant in the middle of the commune of Rocchetto Tanaro in Piedmont, which we discovered nearly 15 years ago. As ever it was a chance meeting that led us there and since then the restaurant and its people have been a constant source of inspiration, without which The Seahorse would not be what it is today.