Oysters,
37 Patrick Street
Strabane
028 7138 2690
oystersrestaurant.co.uk
NOW, I’m not one to blow my own trumpet but lately I’ve really improved my cooking. Everyone says so. What’s my secret? I’ve started using adjectives! They’re great, easy to use, and so readily available! They don’t make the food taste any better, of course, but they do make it sound better.
The tomatoes? Oh, they’re slow-roasted. And these are baby vegetables, which sounds simultaneously tastier and exploitative. The scallops are lovely, aren’t they? They’re hand-dived, you know. (Personally, I’d like my scallops brought up from the sea-bed clenched in the teeth of a diver with their hands tied behind their back, like an extreme version of apple-bobbing.)
Did you fry this red squirrel? I told you we eat too much fried food! No, it’s not fried. It’s flash-fried, it’s seared, it’s pan-fried. (Note: this doesn’t work with deep-fat-fried. And don’t try hand-cooked at home. Trust me. Three hours I waited in A and E.)
Cooking adjectivally – ironically, if a word at all, an adverb – is the new black, as is charcoal-grilled.
Bear with me – I’m taking the scenic route to the point of all this. When I was a boy, if I got home from school and asked my mum what was for tea, she wouldn’t answer. I had to say dinner. Our house was the last/only ever bastion of poshness in Liverpool. My mum used her telephone voice all the time, although, bizarrely, she said cook, book, and look like a docker.
Looking back now, though, I reckon if I’d bunged an adjective (Don’t say bunged, Dominic, dearest. It’s vulgar) in front of tea – for example, High – it would have been absolutely fine. That would have made it sound all rather jolly.
Which brings me to Oysters. They don’t offer an early bird menu. Between 5 and 7pm, Monday to Friday, they serve High Tea. See, there was a point.
In fairness, it is early bird food – I don’t mean worms – but, by calling it High Tea, it suddenly sounds a touch more fun and stylish, and you don’t feel so much of a cheapskate when you rock up there. This, then, would be right up the auld queen’s (I mean, mater’s) tree-lined boulevard.
Not that Oysters is to be found on a boulevard, mind, tree-lined or otherwise. It sits on an ordinary street, and nothing about the outside shouts come in. Plenty on the inside tells you to stay, though. The service is casual, warm, and friendly, and the quality of the food and cooking is more than impressive. Everything is made on the premises, using local ingredients – some even grown by the owner himself.
The a la carte menu was available, but the three of us stuck to the High Tea. Two courses for £12.95 each is a no-brainer, especially when the food is this good.
We all settled for the starter and main. The crispy mushrooms were cooked really well – great texture combinations and a lovely, earthy taste. The tomato and basil soup was creamy and rich but not at all heavy, and the basil balanced beautifully with the tomato.
I had the salmon and cod crostini. This was absolutely fine, albeit a touch too cold, but, when you had a dip into the beetroot sauce, it suddenly became a little bit fantastic – so rich and deep and sweet.
I’ve got a minor issue with the mains. The accompanying side orders were all some form of potato. Very nice, but some vegetables would have been welcome, especially as two of the mains came with mash, anyway.
But the chicken escalope was delicious, and very much enhanced by the peppercorn sauce. I loved my haddock. It was delicately smoked, full of flavour, and cooked just right. And again, the sauce, a béarnaise, complemented and enhanced the dish.
The best was the burger, though. Made with top quality beef, and blended with the sweetest of tomatoes, grown in the owner’s poly-tunnel, this was absolutely fantastic.
Oysters is a place you could easily miss, but you really shouldn’t. Sometimes, you don’t need adjectives, because one noun does the job. It’s a gem.
THE BILL
High Tea (choice of any two courses, £12.95)
Starters:
Tomato and basil soup
Garlic mushrooms
Crostini of salmon and cod
Mains:
Smoked haddock
Prime beefburger
Escalope of Irish chicken
All served with choice of house potato, included in price
Diet Coke x 2
Sparkling water
Total: £45.45
