Creel Inn Stonehaven
The other day at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, I found myself looking at a painting that Joan Eardley had done of Catterline, the cliff-top fishing village south of Stonehaven.
Bang on cue, the gallery added its own apt sound effects. It sounded like the whole building was about to be blown down. Indeed, the outside courtyard was closed due to high winds. Here's another modern tower that seems to amplify any prevailing wind.
It set the scene for Eardley's wind-swept depiction of the village, which looked much the same when I visited its well-known Creel Inn, which sits on a precipitous slope at the end of the village. Our attention was first drawn to a bright yellow field opposite, not sown with the omnipresent oilseed rape, but nodding daffodils. I bet Eardley would have enjoyed painting that vista.
Then we realised that the whole of Catterline - not that there's a lot to it - was one snaking queue of cars trying to park at the Creel Inn.
This restaurant obviously pulls diners in from all around, and yet it looks rather unprepossessing, like thousands of other undistinguished pubs in Scotland that have been extended, bit by bit, over time.
I went excited at the prospect of eating local seafood, and left bemused and disappointed.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't understand why this place is so popular. It is in a time warp. There were warning signs. Any restaurant that makes a feature out of liqueur coffee in this day and age does not have its finger on the pulse. Ditto the Taste of Tartan embarassments such as steak with haggis and Drambuie. Dare I deduce that the clientele is not hugely adventurous?
You might ignore all that unquaintly retro stuff because the Creel Inn says all the right things otherwise, dangling the promise of locally-caught seafood and cooking that reflects the seasons. There are hints to the contrary. Why serve baked Camembert, or tropical tiger prawns in Catterline? Ultimately, I felt that I had paid a lot for uninspired, indifferent food that I might find anywhere in the UK.
This is a restaurant that shows little sign of any major upgrading or investment. The toilets are the most run-down I have seen in years. Dark, lowroofed, I suppose you could say the place is cosy. But don't expect views, you'll be lucky to catch a flash of the sea, despite the location. Indicative of the time-stood-still mood, the house speciality, crab soup, arrived cramped in utilitarian bowls more suited to a motorway cafeteria. The crab comes from the bay, so it must be good, but you'd never know it from this glutinous dish that tasted pretty much like dressed crab in a starch or flour-thickened gloop.
Our other starter, selected because so little else on the menu appealed, was an oversweet red onion tart with pastry that didn't taste convincingly home-made, topped with a slice of workaday French-style rinded goat cheese.
Homing in on the Creel's specialities, we had also ordered the crab soufflé, which turned out to be a claggy disaster that stuck to the roof of the mouth, as though a spoonful of crab meat had been baked with many times that amount of breadcrumbs.
The crustacean's sweet flavour was but a rare memory in this dish, and it was served with an extraneous collection of no fewer than eight items - sun-dried tomatoes, red onions, rocket, carrot or sweet potato crisps, physalis (more traditional, seasonal food), tomato relish, parsley and cucumber - plus a soup bowl of truly ghastly blanched vegetables, featuring waterlogged carrots, cauliflower, sugarsnaps and grain mustard mash.
Sizing up the menu, my instinct to play safe was confirmed by the battered haddock. The fish was fresh and the chips were adequate, of a cooking level you'd expect in any half-decent pub.
A sucker for milk puddings, I had to try the "old-fashioned" rice pudding. But this was a flop. The rice was mushy. It had too much sugar and too many sultanas, producing a cloying mass exacerbated by a sickly sweet bramble compote. An apple sponge, served irritatingly with parsimonious zig-zags of custard and bramble, was marginally better.
Maybe I'm going against the flow, but this place just doesn't do it for me.