The Times
“Oh my God! Omigodomigodomigod – as the girls outside my daughter’s school squeal when they run up to their friends to show them something mundane on TikTok…” gushed Giles Coren from the train home from Weymouth – “I think I just went to the best restaurant in the world.”
Chef Mike Naidoo’s sustainable fish restaurant, upstairs from a fishmonger’s shop in the Old Fish Market on Weymouth’s quay, had just given him, he said, “one of the happiest working afternoons of my life”.
And it wasn’t just the day-boat fresh fish and seafood that was so special. The “warm, golden brioche” served alongside it was possibly even better. “I’ve never seen bread this good. I’m almost angry. Who has done this?”
Mike’s wife, as it turns out: Tija, from Slovenia, whose pastry also left Giles “reeling at the quality”. All in all, then, a “dreamy” experience – and one not to be missed at £40 for a four-course set menu.
Giles Coren - 2024-03-18The Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell was brought to “happy tears” by a revelatory plate of seafood that may be his “dish of the decade”, at a tiny spot tucked away upstairs at Hatch (which was closed for the winter) on Weymouth’s fishing harbour.
“Scallops, raw and soft and sweet, nestling with juicy little local prawns (raw), with baby tomatoes dried just a touch to bring sweetness but not too much, accompanied by a squirt of roe… The chef did nothing more than respect his perfect ingredients, milk them with a deft touch, and in doing so delivered a lesson in inspiration, simplicity and great sense.”
It was no one-off, as all seven courses on the set menu met with William’s approval, including a “clever” dish of local Portland crab using both the white meat and a pâté of the brown with the texture of chicken liver. This was “a few steps above heaven” – but still not as good as the scallops that followed.
William Sitwell - 2025-12-07
