Once in a while, I hit the jackpot. The restaurant stumbled upon while scouting for somewhere that’s independently run, beloved by the local community, unknown to virtually everyone else, has great service, is brilliant value and — here’s the clincher — cooks fantastic food. The restaurant critic’s manna from heaven. It doesn’t often.
And so to the Creel in Dunbar, which I found through the traditional research method known as panic-googling. I was on the hunt for somewhere to go for weekday lunch in East Lothian, now well established as a foodie hotspot. There’s a lot out there among the seaside towns and fields of wheat and barley: viennoiserie, artisan coffee roasters, distilleries, wild-foraged botanical spirits, the freshest fish and chips, posh farm shops, ex-MasterChef contestants cooking in historic golf hotels and East Coast Organics, from which I get my fortnightly vegetable box for a song. Basically, there are almost as many top ten foodie East Lothian lists through which to trawl one’s cyber net as there are golf courses. And yet on not a single one do I find the Creel.
When I do, from the website it looks a bit, well, stuffy. Panelled room. Linen tablecloths. Heavy floral curtains. Model boats in the windows and pithiviers on the sample menu. Look, we’re all guilty of hasty judgments. Or, to confess my worst weakness, getting all judgey over fonts. Well, judgments are often wrong. (Though a Papyrus font is never right.)
The Creel, which is not stuffy — nor Papyrus-fonted — at all but that lovely, rare combination of formal and warm, sits on Dunbar’s working harbour front. A key herring and whaling port in the 17th century, it’s now used by a commercial fleet mostly landing shellfish. Close by is Scotland’s oldest working brewery, Belhaven, and a community bakery started up after the last of Dunbar’s traditional bakers, Smiths, closed in 2008. What might have been the end of an era became the start of a new one. Three years after the Dunbar Community Bakery opened the John Muir Way followed, both in their own ways revitalising this historic old town. Pride and community spirit, then, are alive and kicking in sunny Dunbar.
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All of which is evident in the Creel, owned by its proud proprietor Jack Findlay, with a sister and brother team in the kitchen: head chef Miss A Ramsay, and sous chef Mr M Ramsay. Obviously their names are printed just so on the back of the menu in a curly italic French bistro-style font of which I highly approve. Below? A message of thanks to local suppliers J Gilmour butchers and Anderson and Sons in Tranent, and Welch’s in Newhaven.
The Creel occupies a thick-walled cosy corner building that was once an old fishermen’s inn. When Jemma, who lives in Longniddry, and I choose our Belhaven beer and cheese bread — which Jemma says reminds her of her granny’s — Findlay explains it’s from the community bakery. “We could make our own,” he adds, “but it means a lot to people.” He gestures around the room filling with diners. “Most of our customers are shareholders.”
It’s true that the Creel is on the pricey side for dinner but how about £23.50 for a two-course lunch? Apologies, luncheon. Plus the portions are generous, but not to the point of belly-clutching, and the food is wonderful. A starter of mushroom and truffle pâté is as mushroomy as the best mushroom soup, light, earthy, not too truffle-laden, proof that beige food can be anything but beige. I trowel it onto crostini, then blob on sweet, wintry spiced cranberry chutney. Everything homemade and delicious.
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Jemma’s starter is pure elegance. Beetroot-cured gravlax, blushing pink, not over-sweet or gluey, just delicate and itself. Each element on the plate is beautiful but also doing a job: orange emulsion brings floral sweetness, mustard seed caviar and micro greens for peppery bite, pickled cucumber and radish for garden freshness and crunch. We pour water from giant cobalt fish jugs that go glug-glug-glug when you set them down again. I order a glass of the house red. What a whale of a time we’re having.
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Our mains are equally impressive. Jemma’s mackerel has been expertly butterflied and comes with a salty, chilli kick of devilled butter, a sublime homemade tartare, fennel salad and a separate dish of supremely waxy, fudgey new potatoes. My East Lothian roe deer cottage pie bears rich and glossy mince, cooked slow with moussaka spices like cinnamon and clove which, of course, pairs beautifully with venison, topped with cheddar mash. Such a simple, clever idea. And as graceful as a pie for lunch gets.
Dessert is a banana, honey and ginger parfait slightly lacking in flavour depth. To be clear, it’s still delicious. Meanwhile Findlay works the tables, pouring fresh filter coffee — none of that flat white nonsense here — offering refills (free of course), and generally making us all feel very happy indeed. The Ramsays are chefs who know how to make classic flavour combinations sing and the Creel’s food is as sophisticated yet unpretentious as the ambience in which it is served. What a find.
@chitgrrlwriter
The Creel, 25 Lamer St, Dunbar; thecreeldunbar.co.uk
How it rated
Food 9
Service 9
Atmosphere 8
We ate
The lunch menu for £23.50 each
Chestnut mushroom and truffle pâté, toasted crostini, cranberry and mulled wine chutney
Beetroot-cured gravlax, mustard caviar, cucumber, orange emulsion, pickled radish
Butterflied mackerel, devilled butter, fennel salad, parsley potatoes
East Lothian roe deer cottage pie, cheddar mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables
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Dessert
Banana, honey and ginger parfait, homemade toast granola, berry compote, banana crisp, £8.95
We drank
Fever-Tree tonic water, £2.95
125ml Cabernet Sauvignon (house), £4.25
Filter coffee for two, £6.50
Total for two
£69.65
