Upstairs at No 1, 1 New Street, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 9HP (01263 512 316). Meal for two, including drinks and service £40-£70
Of all the restaurants serving the food of Mexico, Greece, Japan, France, Italy and Spain in Cromer, Upstairs at No 1 has to be the best. Granted, it’s not a huge field, and thank God for that. Wanderlust is an admirable trait in a 20-something backpacker off to explore the world, armed only with a credit card and a broad-spectrum antibiotic; in a brasserie on the edge of England, not so much.
An interest in other culinary traditions is fine. But there’s curiosity and then there’s compulsive promiscuity: a desire to do anything for anyone in the hope they might end up liking you. For example, the “pub classics” section of the menu at a well-known pub chain which will remain nameless to protect the guilty – yes, I have eaten in one; no, it was not OK – includes teriyaki noodles and chicken tikka masala, alongside the “British steak and kidney pudding” as against, presumably, the Lithuanian one.
Of course, you could weaponise this and dismiss me as a shameless snob, but that would be missing the point. Real snobbery is an attempt to maintain your own status by sneering at something you don’t understand. It is not snobbery to have standards, or to be suspicious of overly complicated menus, or to think a cheap pub dish of teriyaki noodles and a pint of Foster’s is the definition of hell fashioned from calories.
The menu Upstairs at No 1 is genuinely troubling. Who the hell can do ramen alongside tacos alongside a fish-finger sandwich? The answer is, they can. Then again, reputations are at stake. The large blue-painted building, on a corner site looking down on the famed pier, is operated by Galton Blackiston, who has the much garlanded Morston Hall a few miles up the Norfolk coast. In an area like this, word gets around. You can’t just phone it in. So he doesn’t. Downstairs at No 1 is a classic chippie, with a takeaway operation and a comfortable sit-down, wipe-clean restaurant. It has a standard menu of cod or haddock and chips at £12.45, which is what passes for reasonable in these parts, where second homes are rife and the good connections to London have done their worst.
But it’s in the brightly lit, pastel-coloured dining room upstairs, under head chef Jimmy Preston, that things get interesting. For the bargains, look to the worryingly named “light bites” menu. Each dish is £6.50 or you can order three for £18, which would be more than enough for one. A generous bowl of battered “popcorn” cockles are served with a spiced salt and a sprightly chilli vinegar. It is food for meditatively picking at, which leaves you licking your finger tips. There’s a polenta-crusted fritto misto of prawns, squid and whitebait dusted with paprika. Alongside is a forceful aïoli the yellow of a seaside sun, which will give you a garlic breath capable of scaring the neighbours.
Curiously, the most thrilling of these more traditional things are their mushy pea “fritters”. The dense, sweet-salty peas have been chilled, sliced up, then breaded and deep fried until the centre has started to slip back towards liquid. What makes it is “Tracy’s mint jelly” on the side. I don’t know who Tracy is, but I like her way with mint jelly. It has a salty edge that lifts the whole affair from its origins as mere chip shop also-ran.
After that, things get ambitious. Fancy a “Baja fish taco”, with pea mole, pickled chilli and lime mayonnaise? The coarse-ground blue-corn tortillas are as good as any I’ve had in this country. They are nutty and insistent. (There’s a joke here about the Norfolk branch of Ukip but I can’t be bothered to make it.) The perfectly fried fish comes topped with those pickled chillies. The dish isn’t an existential threat to the kitchens of Mexico, but it’s a damn fine mouthful or six. From Greece there is bubbled and blistered flat bread, dressed with feta, mint and strands of lamb shawarma. Spain gives us a sensitively cooked piece of hake with romesco, that one-size-fits-all Iberian condiment of almonds, garlic, paprika and oil, alongside chorizo. Somebody has been on their holidays and taken a lot of notes.
It’s the same story with the main courses. Yes, of course they can make a fish-finger sandwich. It’s a giant of a thing, boasting one huge goujon in a soft roll, with a cone of impeccable chips and their hand-chopped tartare sauce. They know how to fry fish. But they also serve crunchy green asparagus under a brown shrimp butter. A firm piece of cod sits on a butter bean and chorizo stew. The fish of the day is a whole lemon sole, precisely trimmed and grilled so it slips off the bone as if it didn’t really want to be there in the first place. And all this fish comes with the sustainability ratings you could wish for.
Most ambitious is their ramen. The worst you can say is that it’s trying a little too hard, perhaps to justify the £15.95 price tag. On the side are pieces of pork crackling – I’m not sure why, but I’ll never complain about pork crackling. There’s also a dish of chilli oil, as if they know it should be in the bowl but can’t quite bring themselves to throw it in, in case not everyone in Cromer is game.
There is a deep soy broth. There are two huge seared prawns, a large ring of glazed pork belly and two sizable deep-fried wontons, stuffed with spiced minced pork. There is a soft-yolked egg. The noodles are a little overcooked, but only just. The nearest it comes to a crime is being slightly overstacked. I suspect it’s the best bowl of ramen for many miles in any direction.
That’s the point. Cromer has fabulous brown crabs, but sophisticated, modern, restless, hungry people cannot live by dressed crab alone. Upstairs at No 1 offers most things to many people who would otherwise have to make a massive effort to get it. The wine is as cheerful as the service and the view at dusk, as the draining sky leaks away into a gunmetal sea, is swoon-worthy. All menu anxieties quickly slip away. There is dessert, the likes of vanilla rice pudding or caramelised brioche with ice cream and salted pecans, but we are done. Sometimes, it seems, a surfeit of culinary curiosity can be a very good thing.
Jay’s news bites
A new study by booking service OpenTable has found that Glasgow restaurant goers are the most generous tippers in the UK, leaving an average of £5.33. London diners, who used to hold the top spot, have reduced their tips by 12% to an average of £5.01. Nottingham comes bottom at just £3.22.
I’ve mentioned it before, but make no apologies for doing so again. It’s May which means the wonderful East Pier smokehouse, in St Monan’s on the Fife coast, is now open from Wednesday to Sunday. They’ll do you a whole hot smoked seabass for £14.50, lobster, crab cakes or Cullen skink. All that, and a dining room perched high above the churning sea. They go seven days a week from June (eastpier.co.uk).
Edinburgh chef Tom Kitchin and his wife and business partner Michaela are branching out into the hotel business. They are taking over the Golf Inn Hotel in Gullane, East Lothian and renaming it the Bonnie Badger. Perhaps they love badgers. It will have 12 rooms and a 60-cover dining room.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
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