Good news for shellfish: Côte, Cambridge; 12 Oct 12

… or not, depending on your point of view. It was for me because I enjoyed oysters on Wednesday and mussels today.

Wednesday I was taken to the Fox at Willian just outside Letchworth by a business contact. It had a noticeable feel about it: definitely Hertfordshire and not Cambridgeshire. Plenty of diners spending their pensions and ladies who lunch. But it had oysters on the menu. I don’t eat oysters often but these are the best I can recall, 5 star and 10 out of 10: big and fleshy and flavorsome. Well done the Fox!

But today was Friday and I was at leisure in Cambridge. I am recovering from yet another pulled calf muscle, so it was physio mid morning, and a cold which has made me miserable all week. So I took it easy and enjoyed coffee at Cafe Nero with a little more light technology posing (using my iPAD and Skype to talk to business colleagues in Spain) and then had lunch at Côte on Bridge Street.

Côte is at 21-24 Bridge Street and there must be something wrong with the location. Before Côte it was Edwinn’s which was excellent (click here for a related post) and before that it was the Filling Station, a reasonably ghastly American diner-style restaurant and bar. But today it’s Côte and it seems to be popular and surviving.

I arrived and was met by a waiter and my natural inclination was to give him a hard time. He looked at me and I looked at him. Finally he blinked. ‘Good morning’ he said. I replied in kind. ‘Would you like lunch?’. Full marks. None of the ‘how may I help you’ rubbish. I sat at a nice table by the window.

There’s a set menu with 2 courses for under a tenner and I was attracted by the mussels for a starter and salmon for a main course. I was only mildly disappointed. I was served by Cinzia from Italy (from the south) who was excellent and clearly well-drilled in the Côte way of dealing with customers and maximising revenue from them. So when I ordered my food I was also offered olives and bread for which I would be charge extra. However water is available and free.

The mussels (moules mariniere) were excellent but it really needed a plate of bread and butter to dunk in the sauce. That’s how it’s done in Belgium which is surely the home of the best mussels. Actually even that’s not true. The best I’ve had were at the Auberge des Moules in Philippine in Zeeland in the south of the Netherlands.

There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the salmon (seared with ratatouille). It was a tad overdone and as a result it was dry but it was the same as the salmon served just about everywhere in the UK. After a few days in France and eating salmon tartare I know that salmon should really be a little underdone to be best so that when Cinzia asked if I was enjoying the salmon I answered honestly. She offered to replace it but given that it matched a sort of unofficial UK standard and wasn’t that bad I declined the offer. The good news then is that my tolerance was rewarded by a free espresso.

I spend lots of time in Spain and I’m used to eating lunch and this was as pleasant as many I’ve had there. It was also price ‘competitive’ when you compare the prices of the set menus. What made the difference was the add-on charges: bread if you want it and a standard 10% service added on. Not a big deal but by the time you add these in it does become somewhat pricey.

The afternoon was a riot of political boredom. Policy planning at the County Council. But that was a nice continuation of the relaxation of earlier in the day so that come tomorrow my cold will be gone and my calf fully healed.