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The Jolly Roger, Gosport
Gosport's mayor, Councillor Derek Kimber, decked himself out in his chain of office recently to formally open the new restaurant extension at the Punch Tavern-owned Jolly Roger.
Around 180,000 worth of improvements had been spent on the wooden blue-painted building overlooking the Solent at Priddy's Hard.
Diners pass through the rather dark recesses of the main part of the brick, beam and patterned-carpeted pub to reach the light-filled small restaurant, with seating on the sea-facing terrace also part of the deal here.
Eight tables form part of the extension. On a sunny summer's day, these were taken up with alacrity over the ones in the pub, seafaring pictures mixed with food photography adding character alongside a mirror in the minimalist space.
A very large specials board with no less than seven fish choices and 10 meat and vegetarian dishes hangs on the wall, with several additional menus also vying for attention.
Just a sandwich, panini, baguette or jacket potato? They'll do it. Omelettes, children's portions, Full English, scampi and chips? You've got it. Tapas, home-made soup or pate anyone?
Or maybe some spare ribs, chicken Napolitani, stir-fried vegetables and noodles or sausage and mash? It's yours.
Sunday lunch with a plethora of dishes including home-made steak and kidney pie and roasts? Roll up, roll up.
The main restaurant menu (keep up!) goes down the traditional path: prawn cocktail (5.95); devilled whitebait; scallops with black pudding (7.45); deep-fried brie followed by cod with a Mornay sauce (11.95); beer-battered cod; Aylesbury duckling with an apricot Grand Marnier sauce (14.95); ribeye and sirloin also to be had. Mushroom Stroganoff is one vegetarian dish.
Back to that very large specials board, the Portuguese manager and his wife (he tells me she's the chef) plundering the breadth and depth of the ocean to include fish for a Portuguese fish stew (9.95), home-made fish pie, grilled salmon with a prawn sauce, black bream sauced with saffron and cream. Plaice, monkfish, red snapper, sea bass and sardines which no self-respecting Portuguese chef would be without are also featured. Meat dishes included a lamb curry and a beef lasagne.
Now, are you as puzzled as I am after reading this manifesto which threatens to out-do any Maastricht Treaty of a list?
Unless there are a whole slew of chefs, it would be impossible to create all these dishes from scratch.
My hunch: a microwave and pre-prepped dishes possibly the way around serving so much to so many, 80 seats in total.
A fish stew hit high and low spots: the tomato-based sauce needed something more, while the garlic bread was the best I've tasted in recent years.
Salmon, an odd addition to fish stew, was the most tenderly cooked of a fish trio, an unidentified stolid white fish and an overcooked scallop. New Zealand green lip mussels should remain firmly in the southern hemisphere, these tasteless bivalves not even coming a close second to Europe's sweet succulent mussels.
Potatoes added a further zip to the dish, the stew not needing a side dish of broccoli and carrots.
Desserts, at 4.75, were of the Best Of British pud types: treacle sponge, ginger syrup cheesecake, profiteroles, banoffee pie and strawberries with baileys brillie (sic).
One strawberry decorated a plate containing the brule, the excellent top disguising a rather gloopy, watery dessert.
Like Delia's 'here's one I made earlier'... much earlier.
Service is rather formal for a pub but that's fine, the gravitas of the Portuguese manager a welcome one as he instills good practices in his young staff.
And he's charming too, always a great addition for any pub/restaurant.
But if the Jolly Roger wishes to be taken seriously as a restaurant it needs to slim down its menu so it can show off the chef's skills in style. Otherwise, why bother to have gone to the trouble of inviting the mayor to cut the ribbon on an expensive extension?
My bill came to just over 17 not including a tip.
The Jolly Roger, 156 Priory Road, Hardway, Gosport PO12 4LQ. (023) 9258 2584.
Open: Midday-2.30pm for lunch (3pm Sun) and 6pm-9.30pm for dinner seven days a week.
Food: ***
Service: ****
Atmosphere: ***
Disabled access: Steps up to restaurant. Disabled toilet.
How to get there: Follow the signs for Gosport on the M27, turn left on to Elson Road then left on to Priory Road, the pub at the end of this dead-end road by the piers. Car park.
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Wednesday 23 May 2012
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