Have you still not decided?" The efficient front-of-house manager at The Cellar has a trace of frustration in her voice. We've been here a good ten minutes, comfortably ensconced on a sofa, perusing the big leather-bound menus. Little does she know, we're just getting into our stride. We haven't even had The Fish Conversation yet.
The Cellar
24 East Green, Anstruther (01333 310378)
THE Bill
Dinner for two, £69.90, excluding drinks My Better Half is concerned about the future of the oceans, in particular the problems caused by industrialised over-
fishing. One problem: he loves fish. Thus we conduct The Fish Conversation in almost every restaurant we visit: How is it sourced? Where from? How sustainably? (The best answer so far came from a barmaid at a hotel in the Lake District who, when asked where the scampi came from, candidly replied: "From the freezer".)
We've got the front-of-house manager on to the subject of the halibut ("net caught, landed at Aberdeen or Pittenweem") when The Cellar's proprietor and chef, Peter Jukes, sits himself down in a chair opposite. He adds the magic words "sustainably sourced". Hey presto, Better Half knows what he's having.
Our order finally placed, it's with palpable relief that the staff whisk us off to our corner table. Housed in the cellar (no surprises there) of a 17th-century listed building a street away from the harbour in Anstruther, The Cellar is cosy, rustic and unpretentious with wooden tables, exposed stone walls and a blazing log fire.
Peter and Susan Jukes opened their restaurant here 26 years ago when most people in Scotland didn't know a bisque from a bouillabaisse, and the idea of an upscale restaurant in a fishing town cooking fine, simple food from fresh local produce was positively ground-breaking.
Now, in an environment where almost every eaterie aspires to those values, while trying to outdo one another with feats of culinary daring, The Cellar holds its own by changing very little. With fashionable restaurants coming and going every season, The Cellar is the food equivalent of the dependable Dior dress at the back of the wardrobe which looks good year after year.
There are certain drawbacks to that kind of dependability. The menu doesn't change a lot, and it isn't exactly flexible, a solid à la carte (£34.95 for two courses, £39.95 for three). An excellent value midweek menu (£19.95 for two courses, £24.95 for three) runs during the winter months.
One might wish for a greater range of choices, and a greater variety of wines by the glass would be particularly welcome – with some difficulty I managed to elicit that there are "two whites" and that they are "both quite dry" – but that would be missing the point of The Cellar. The point is always the food.
My East Neuk smoked fish stew (try saying that after a couple of glasses of chablis) is a world apart from what normally passes for Cullen skink. It's light and tangy rather than creamy, with tenderly cooked slices of fish and al dente veg.
Better Half's fish soup, a dark crayfish bisque, is rich and meaty with a whiff of the open sea about it. While I was otherwise engaged, he struck a deal with the chef who has added three mussels. Lightly cooked to perfection, I'm told, and not for sharing.
For main course, I was tempted by the warm salad of seared diver-caught scallops, prawns and mussels, flavoured with herb and garlic butter, but after a chilly day out in the East Neuk I found myself unable to order anything with the word "salad" in the title.
My seared caramelised Shetland salmon with crushed new potatoes flavoured with olives, garlic, oregano and mint, with tomato and chilli dressing, is a complex dish by Cellar standards, but salmon is a robust fish capable of defending itself against strong flavours.
It's just as well, because this is a plate full of potential conflict: the fish's dark, salty seared crust, the tart olives, sweet tomato and zingy chilli. My glass of many-flavoured sauvignon blanc (£6.50) turned out to be a well rounded accompaniment. While the fish was well cooked and the various tensions did balance out to create a hearty dish, it is somehow a little less than the sum of its many parts.
Better Half's grilled fillet of prime East Coast halibut with greens, pine nuts, smoked bacon and a pot of sauce hollandaise, on the other hand, is a fish from the realm of the gods. This is the chef's personal recommendation, and it's not hard to see why. It is wonderfully cooked, balanced somewhere between melt-in-the-mouth and meaty, with a subtle lemony crust.
It's simply served with a spoonful of delicately flavoured mash, the hollandaise served in a little pot on the side so it doesn't smother the dish. Apart from the pine nuts – which felt as though they may have been added to make a classic dish look more contemporary – it was a perfect ensemble.
To finish, we both opt for the cheese selection from Iain Mellis (£2.50 supplement) and a glass of ambiently warm tawny port (£5) to go with it. There are no surprises here: a rich nutty farmhouse cheddar, a perfectly aged brie de meaux and a creamy Strathdon blue. I'm a recent convert to blue cheese, but soon I was defending my plate from Better Half's encroaching knife.
It was simply too good not to finish, though it contained as much cheese as I might normally eat in a week. "I'll dream tonight," I say as I scoop up the last crumbs of cheddar.
In fact, that plate of cheese sums up something about The Cellar, a restaurant which does what it does without fireworks or pretensions. And, I surmise, as I spend the rest of the night dreaming Technicolor Strathdon-blue dreams, you could do a lot worse than that. If it ain't broke, why fix it? sm
The full article contains 1013 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
