Fish Lovers Lunch club visit Han Court

By [rrothery]

THE Han Court Chinese restaurant at Fremington hosted the latest Fish Lovers' Lunch.

Nearly 40 regular customers of Dan Garnet's roving fishmonger's stall (Hatherleigh, Holsworthy, South Molton, Bideford) assembled in the Han Court's spacious and comfortable premises to sample the best of wholesaler Tony Rutherford's fish and seafood as cooked by proprietor Danny Ho.

We began with a fish soup that contained tasty samples of the seafood that we were to eat in the rest of the menu. This was followed by steamed fresh scallops with a chilli dip. Now, I do a scallop dish with mushrooms and cream which I reckon is pretty dam' nice. But I have no clue as to how to bring out the pure taste of the scallops in the way that Danny does.

The restaurant is proud not to use monosodium glutamate in any of its dishes, so there was no artificial trickery involved.

Lobster tails with ginger and spring onion followed. This classic Chinese treatment complemented the lobster flesh without dominating it. (It's always nice, in a Chinese restaurant, to get given a dish that no one, however skilled, could eat with chopsticks. From then on my fingers were in the dish whenever they needed to be).

Steamed turbot was again cooked with great simplicity, bringing out the marvellous taste and texture of the fish. Tony Rutherford (Bideford Fisheries Ltd) reckons there's an abundance of turbot (among other fish) out in the Bristol Channel. If only, he says, we could keep out the Continental boats with historic fishing rights that take so much of it. If only, I say, we in Devon ate more of it, we would have more right to keep other fishermen out.

Peppery squid had been dipped in egg and cornflower with salt and then deep fried. King prawns (were these from our waters? I guess not) came in a tomato and garlic sauce and then little minced prawn balls were accompanied by broccoli. Deep fried seabass with a delicate Thai sauce was the last of Danny Ho's demonstrations of how to bring out the very best from our super-fresh, locally landed fish.

We fish lovers had eaten extraordinarily well, as will you when you go to the Han Court. We paid £32.50 per head for our meal with its expensive ingredients, but on an ordinary day you would pay less than that for a set meal for two. We can't wait for the next lunch. Where to now Mr Garnet?

Han Court, Milton House, Fremington, EX31 2NX. Bookings: 01271373865.