East Mersea Restaurant Guide

“It’s always fun to eat the freshest seafood” at this waterside Mersea Island institution, which lives up to its name, and has a long menu of cold dishes ready to eat and a shorter menu of freshly cooked items (including potatoes sauteed in butter, but not chips). The business has developed over more than 40 years, since Heather & Richard Howard, a seventh-generation oyster fisherman, bought the Tollesbury and Mersea Native Oyster Fishery Company’s former purification shed, built in 1876; it’s now run by their daughter Caz. Top Tip – you can BYOB for a £6 corkage charge, but these days they sell three white wines from the nearby Mersea Island Vineyard by the glass or bottle, along with local beers and a couple of imported reds.

Upping sticks from Broadstairs in Kent, Ben & Sophie Crittenden opened this transplanted venue on Mersea Island with just 20 covers in summer 2024, with Ben as chef and Sophie front of house. They serve a £100 per person tasting menu, and initial feedback is of “lovely, perfectly seasoned food in a rural setting providing an excellent overall experience”. In her February 2025 review, The Guardian’s Grace Dent also declared herself a fan, applauding “punchily flavoured pieces of art” ending with a final dish “quite unlike anything I‘ve ever been served”. One reporter did have “a few minor gripes: the main dish of Wagyu Beef could have benefitted from a carbohydrate and some vegetables… that said we will be back and it will be soon!”