Orford, Fish & Seafood Restaurant Guide

The Pinney family’s fishy institution “hasn’t changed for 40 years, apart from the odd tweak to the menu – and why not, when it’s as perfect as this?” A “simple setting” doesn’t detract from its charms – including the fact that “it was doing local before it became a trendy buzzword, with fish (both fresh and smoked) and oysters from down the road”; “after you’ve eaten, you can wander through this impossibly picturesque village to their shop to take more home”.

With its “great fish dishes – we had a whole brill for two served at the table with chips and hollandaise sauce, which was… ’bril’ (geddit?)” – this yearling from George Pell, formerly of L’Escargot in Soho, “has ambitions to be the new east coast superstar. Another year will tell whether they have made it”. Locally born head chef Tom Payne, 25, certainly made a good start, mightily impressing Observer critic Jay Rayner a week after his promotion to run the kitchen, with a ‘menu that is certain of its mission’. It’s certainly “a welcome addition locally – a treat”, and the “nice new bedrooms” and “well-made cocktails are a plus”. (It’s one of the few good legacies from Covid, as the team from L’Escargot shifted here during the pandemic).