Eating calamari on the Costa del Donny

Great squid at Clam & Cork

THEY all rave on TripAdvisor about the calamari at the Clam & Cork on Doncaster’s Fish Market. “Soft and delicate,” wrote one diner. “To die for,” said another. Even grizzled Guardian food critic Jay Rayner approved of them in their salt and pepper batter although he quibbled slightly that all the membrane hadn’t been removed.

So, of course, we had to order some.

It’s quite right. They are as tender as a baby’s bum and as delicate in quite a fiery coating. They are very simply done: The rings are kept moist then dunked to order in a bowl of seasoned flour before being deep-fried. And the membrane certainly wasn’t evident. They were perched on a chipotle mayonnaise. Very spicy, very nice for £7.50.

Prawn cocktail in a glass!

I’m not sure if the Guardian tried the oysters, Irish from Carlingford Lough. I had four (£1.50 each), well presented on plenty of ice with lots of lemon and an excellent shallot vinegar. They were sweet and briny. They would have been even better if the chef hadn’t doused them under the tap after shucking to remove any stray splinters of shell. That lost their exquisite natural juices.

The little stall, with not more than 18 seats on three sides round the kitchen and a few tables outside, opened last year. I read Rayner’s enthusiastic review a little later and wondered whether it had anything to do with the broadly similar Med at the Market which we visited in 2013, feasting on Catalan fish stew and fish kebabs. It hasn’t and that is now closed.

Monkfish on tamarind coleslaw

The Clam & Cork has been praised for its friendliness and informality and good food, as well as being an unexpected outpost of culinary excellence on what we must call the Costa Del Donny.

We went on a Wednesday, not the busiest day of the week for most of the stalls are closed (try Tuesday, Friday and Saturday) and some of the ones that would have been open were not as their owners were attending the funeral of a popular market butcher. There was loud clapping as his hearse, a coach and horses, went by during our meal.

Irish oysters from Carlingford Lough

The eaterie, squeezed in between two shellfish stalls and a fish stall proper, has a short, simple menu of small and large plates. The former listed calamari, fried monkfish, Pil Pil prawns, scallops with lime and coriander and prawn cocktail, the latter cod and chips, monkfish burger, coconut fish curry, pan roasted salmon and sea bass with a crab salad and brown crab mayonnaise. No sign of a clam, though.

Along with two generous glasses of pinot grigio we ordered two more small plates to follow. The monkfish (£7.50) was a generous portion and came in a similar batter to the calamari, this time on a coleslaw spiked with tamarind.

 

The prawn cocktail (£7.50) was nicely stocked and was served, purists will be pleased to see, in a large wine glass. It was also trendy. The traditional Marie Rose sauce had been dumped for pink grapefruit and avocado. I wasn’t offered any but was told it was good!

The bill with wine for a relaxed and pleasant lunch was £39.50 and I can quite see why the Clam and Cork is number one in Doncaster on TripAdvisor. You can’t reserve seats so choose your moment to go, perhaps for an early or late lunch. The place stays open until 4pm.

For those seeking a wider range and more inventiveness with fish then Mann’s fish bar closer to home at Sheffield’s Kommune Food Hall takes some beating. But that, as yet, hasn’t had a visit from Jay Rayner.

Not many seats but the food is good

Thanks for the calamari, Kam

Calamari reminded me of Malta

PROUST got it right with that Madeleine, didn’t he? Food is not only the stuff on your plate. A chef can devise layers of texture and flavour with a dish but sometimes, just sometimes, there is another layer of which he has no inkling: the diner’s memory.

For Proust it was a cake. For me the other night at Richard Smith’s Cricket Inn at Totley, it was two perfect rings of calamari. With one bite I was back in a seafront bar in Malta the year the Icelandic volcano blew its top.

In that bar, not far from where the famous Maltese Falcon yacht was anchored, I ate a dish of lightly battered squid, the coating so crisp, the flesh so tender, almost ethereal, that it blotted out years of chewing rubber. It was heaven on a plate. If only all calamari could be half as good!

I’ve not experienced it again until those two rings cooked up by sous chef Kam Bajorek, which he had partnered with a crouton of mashed avocado and baby octopus. They had, my wife enthused, the texture of silk.

We’d been invited as guests to a chef head to head night where each of the pub’s chefs draws a course out of a hat and cooks something up to a theme, tonight Round the World. Each diner marks his own menu card and the winner was the chef with the highest score.

Apple strudel

It’s a chance for the kitchen to show it can do more than fish and chips or burgers, the more usual orders in the dining room next door. We were in the room once used as a morgue for fatalities when digging the Totley Tunnel.

Despite my raptures for Kam’s calamari it didn’t get my highest marks. That went to executive chef Oli Parnell’s stonebass en papilotte, the eventual winner. This was an exceeding clever dish in which a portion of fish was tightly bound by ultra-thin layers of potato and pan fried. The flavour of the fish penetrated the spud and completely hid its origins, the outer layers at least.

It turns out Richard had suggested this one to Oli as it was a dish he had cooked himself 20 years before at his previous restaurant Smith’s of Sheffield, one he had taken from New York based French chef Daniel Boulud.

Winning dish – Stonebass en papilotte

Richard, who was also competing, scuppered his own chances of winning with that tip for he produced a slate of intricate cheese-based goodies, a medley of custards, candied walnuts, fruit crisps, poached pear – and cheese.

There was much to like here. I had my first taste of Brazilian fejoda cooked up by head chef Sam Parnell (he and Oli are twin brothers), a gutsy pork, sausage and beans stew, and enjoyed the light, crisp pastry of an apple strudel from another sous chef Pav.

“Just a nice, fun night,” Richard said later. Certainly – and for me a taste of the unexpected. Thanks for the invite and thanks for the calamari, Kam.

The Cricket Inn, Penny Lane, Totley, Sheffield. Tel 0114 236 5256. Web: http://www.cricketinn.co.uk

Cheesey delights at the Cricket