Source, Smoke and Sea - Woodbridge and Orford - One

Escaping the busy streets and bus diversions of London for a change, Mel (the girlfriend) and I headed out on the train to Woodbridge, Suffolk, to remind ourself what that green stuff is again. Woodbridge was not by any means a random choice, and the day trip to visit Orford and its two smokehouses was cemented into the schedule. If Orford rings a bell then it may be because of Nigel Slater's article in the Observer many months ago.

Woodbridge is a bit of a weekend boaty place, around an hour and a half on the train from the city with a change in Ipswich. According to the helpful taxi driver who took us to the hotel, "the food's great here. Loads of pubs, AND we've got a Prezzo!" How could we top that?

After a bit of searching in the Good Food Guide, we decided upon The Crown, which in appearance was a clean cut wine bar with a restaurant on the side. We happily quaffed a bottle of pre-dinner white before going through for an impressive meal. Mel started with some lovely crab cakes, whilst I went for the breadcrumbed lamb's sweetbreads, followed by some extremely tender medallions of beef, and hake on a chorizo and chickpea stew. Both Mel's steak and my hake were lovely, even though we were perhaps a little drunk before sitting to eat.

After a necessary morning-after fry up at our pleasant, and helpfully tended, hotel (Grove House), we hopped on the rollercoaster-like 71 bus to Orford. Orford was an instantaneous mix of salt, smoke and bitter cold with a 13th Century keep thrown in for good measure. As two young twenty-somethings we didn't appear to fit in with the typical school holiday or English Heritage crowd, but we managed to keep ourselves busy for a few hours, largely by stockpiling our food supplies from the two smokehouses: Richardson's and Pinney's. With the former being the subject of Nigel Slater's affections, the two local rivals were fronted in very different ways. Pinney's 21st Century company was swish, nicely packaged, and made up of a shop on the front (manned by a seemingly clueless lady who looked thoroughly bored) and their Oysterage Cafe which served up simple sea-fare (we had some griddled prawns and a fish pie). Richardson's - pictured below - was a back-alley shed with smoke pouring from every orifice, and tended by Steve whose affectionate teasing has likely been passed down, along with the traditional oak smoking technique, from generation to generation.

Bags full of smoky wares (consisting of mackerel, eel, Cheddar, Stilton, sausages, garlic and bacon - all smoked and all dirt cheap), we took a coffee by the fire at Ruth Watson's lovely Crown and Castle, before heading home on the local rollercoaster. The night was to end with Adnams, Aspalls and a nice fish and chips at the local boozer.

I was planning to complete this blog in one go, however, the following morning was to provide some unexpected culinary highlights which I'll have to cover in detail in another post.