Great seafood bar has its diners hooked on luscious lobster delight

Mourne Cafe, Newcastle

Friday, May 02, 2008

What we had?

Mixed oils, bread and tapenade £1.95

Lobster with Thermidor sauce £14.95

Half pot of mussels £5.95

Chunky chips x 2 £5.50

Garlic bread £2.75

Apple, cinnamon and walnut cake £4.50

Raspberry and almond tart £4.50

House wine £11.95

Double espresso £1.80

Americano £1.60

TOTAL £55.45

Since the Mourne Seafood Bar first opened its doors in Dundrum a few years back, its star has been very much in the ascendant.

Not long after its successful debut, restaurant number two followed in Belfast city centre, word spread quickly, restaurant guide accolades rolled in, and the public, you might say, was hooked.

The latest project for the people behind this successful new brand name on the Ulster dining scene is a slightly different affair.

It's a caf£ in a town where there is already an over-abundance of cafes. But at night it's also a restaurant, and with the Mourne Seafood Bar's reputation weighing in behind it, my wife Karen and I thought it would be a good idea to pay a visit one night and see how they were faring.

The Mourne Cafe is located partially in a renovated house at the end of an imposing terrace of bay-windowed seafront homes and partially in a newly-constructed building.

From the portion of the restaurant that's situated in the old house, diners have a fine view of the town's new prom and across Dundrum Bay. The new section, which contains the majority of the tables, is fronted by huge glass windows that mostly afford a view of the passing traffic at a busy junction, but nevertheless serve to give the interior a light and airy feel.

The coolly functional decor within is enlivened by eccentric blood-red lightshades that look like dragon's eggs cracked open to allow the light to escape and there's original art dotted on the walls. The wide door is at street level, the tables are well spaced and there are excellent disabled toilets for diners with mobility problems.

For small parties a booking isn't normally required, so we just walked in off the street and were shown promptly to a table by well-trained staff who proved exceptionally attentive and courteous throughout the evening.

The accent of the menu is very much on informal dining. It does, after all, call itself a caf£, and much of what it offers is caf£-style food given an upmarket twist or two. However, the specials menu, which we honed in on, was more Mourne Seafood Bar than Mourne Caf£, and when I saw whole lobster being offered for £14.95 I put the menu aside and looked no further.

Karen, not best pleased that I had spotted the lobster first, opted instead for another favourite borrowed from Dundrum and Belfast — a steaming half-pot of mussels cooked in white wine, cream and garlic. This delightful tumble of fragrant shellfish came in the seafood bar's trademark blue enamel pot and proved a winner when paired up Belgian-style with chunky chips and garlic bread.

My lobster, however, was something special. A plate-filler about a pound or so in weight, it was heavy with tender meat that came easily from the shell. Plonked in the middle was a little pot of Thermidor sauce for dipping the delicately-flavoured morsels.

Ordinarily, Lobster Thermidor — so named because it was created in a famous Paris restaurant to mark the opening of a play called Thermidor in 1894 — consists of lobster meat in a creamy mustard sauce replaced in the shell and grilled with cheese on top, but my own preference is not to have that wonderful sweet flavour of lobster meat overpowered by a smothering sauce, so I was delighted to see it arrive in a pot of its own. All that was needed was a portion of chunky chips on the side and the feast was complete.

(Lest you think there was nothing on the menu but seafood, we could have gone for something like a 10oz ribeye steak with pepper sauce and chips for £13.95, although the really irresistible meat choice was the Mourne-sized mountain of ribs that a diner next to us ordered for £10.50).

The main courses were fairly substantial, so thankfully all we'd had for a starter was some bread with dipping oils and tapenade. Afterwards, however, we somehow managed to squeeze in two desserts £ a light, sharp raspberry and almond tart for Karen and a pleasant but unexciting slice of apple, cinnamon and walnut cake for me.

Despite the high standard of food on offer, it must be said that the Mourne Caf£ has had something of a rocky start in Newcastle.

When it first opened some months ago, customers had to order their food at the bar, pay for it beforehand, and collect the cutlery, canteen-style, for their table.

This policy, it seems, did not go down well and has now been abandoned in favour of traditional table service. As a result, however, the restaurant now has some work to do in rebuilding its customer base.

But given time, and a continuing high standard of food and service, I doubt that this should be too much of a problem.

And if they keep on offering those wonderful whole lobsters for just £14.95, they've ensured the return of one new regular at least.