Friday The number 7 features highly on the Bournemouth fun facts list; the historic resort town in the borough of Dorset boasts 7 miles of sandy beaches, attracts 7m visitors a year and gets an average of 7.7 hours of sunshine during the summer months…
…or not, as the case may have been when we visited mid-July (the 7th month, no less!), and it rained pretty much non-stop for the whole weekend. But hey! I don’t care what the weather man says when the weather man says it’s raining – and nothing stops The Prandial Playground on its first jaunt living up to its ‘Bath… and beyond’ remit.
We went to Bournemouth in search of, of course, good food amidst the general good times brouhaha that we expected from one of the UK’s most popular, still-thriving seaside towns – and plenty of people, it seems, go in search of good times here.
Having checked in at the original hotel we’d booked for our 2-night stay we had to check out again almost immediately, battling back through the hordes of stags and hens – the stags piling up empty pint glasses (“Happy Hour all day: 3 pints for a Tenner!”) on the huge ashtrays at the hotel’s entrance; the hens already dropping half-empty bottles of rosé-with-straws on the swirly, 1973 carpet at reception – to hand our room key back. Now I’m most certainly not in the business of putting any business out of business so I’m not going to name names, but suffice to say a full refund was swiftly issued from the hotel in question and we checked in to the gorgeous Grove Hotel around the corner on Grove Road instead – and a very lovely (and highly recommended) experience it was too!
All calm (again) on the UK south coast front, our first night dinner destination was the stylishly vibrant, pan-African restaurant Zim Braai on Poole Hill – Poole Hill’s Triangle area itself being, as we discovered, a stylishly vibrant little Bournemouth enclave in its own right, far removed (in vibe, if not distance) from the overwrought thrum of the seafront.
We stopped off for a first round of pre-dinner cocktails at chic but cosy little cocktail bar 99 Perk (think, vintage sophistication, properly grown-up cocktails and a fab disco soundtrack) just down t’road from the restaurant, and dropped in on seafood and wine specialists SOBO:FISH too: clean-line chic but properly cheerful, with an open kitchen at the heart of the matter and a menu made for deep-dive small plate seafood feasting – we will be back for more (and, as it happens, we went back for more of those cocktails at 99 Perk after dinner too).
But a distinctly further-flung beat was calling us from Zim Braai, one of two branches in Bournemouth which, in the words of multi-tasking Managing Director Andy Lennox, “incorporates the healthy eating ideals of a balanced diet with the rich flavours of African cuisine all wrapped up in an exotic, exuberant atmosphere with an award-winning service style”.
An operator who clearly puts a lot of genuine love into his operations isn’t going to lead us up any kind of garden path with such a description – and Zim Braai is a uniquely lovely experience indeed. Going from Afrikaans to English, Braai quite simply translates as ‘barbecue’ – and from the get-go, an earthy-sweet smell of woodsmoke hung in the air, tempting and teasing from the kitchen. On the menu, ostrich and buffalo steaks, Mauritian, Durban and Zimbabwean dishes and even a Monkey Gland sauce sit happily alongside chicken wings and burgers guaranteeing that there’s something for everyone here, all served up in an upbeat but intimate environment tastefully decorated with all manner of authentic theme-specific eclectica.
To start, we shared two not-so-small-at-all plates: huge, glistening slabs of halloumi and tomato drenched in (I’m guessing? Sorry, didn’t take notes!) the restaurant’s Zim Churri sauce, and huge, fat, very fresh prawns equally tantalisingly-attired in a depth-charge combination of garlic, and spice, and herbs; astounding dishes, both of them. Also astounding, on multiple levels: the heft of the Mixed Grill Sharer main, which brings all the menu’s meaty classics including ostrich steak, chicken skewers, slow-cooked ribs, chicken wings, boerewors (traditional South African sausage) and chopped steak together in one massive, meaty party, accompanied by as many pots of fries/salad you can eat throughout the whole almighty, perfectly cooked, exceedingly tasty carnivorous carnival.
Zim Braai is fun to the max, but it takes very good food very seriously, educating both palate and soul without preaching, and showing you a very good time without forcing you to have a very good time.
Saturday There are three branches of Nusara Thai in and around Bournemouth: one in Christchurch, one in Poole and one in Wimborne. We rocked up to the one in Poole. We were booked in at the one in Christchurch. I apologised profusely. The staff made me feel like not knowing where I was supposed to be was perfectly normal. I felt silly. I was made to feel like a queen… and thus began our Saturday night foray around another of entrepreneur and restauranteur Andy Lennox’s Fired Up Collective.
Since its inception in 2020, the FUC has become one of the fastest growing boutique restaurant groups in the UK, establishing four new sites in just two years. “Each of our brands stand out for fantastic service, great value and amazing food all wrapped up in an infectious atmosphere,” says Andy, on the FUC website. And I’m already developing a taste for the FUC USP: Andy’s restaurants are all about local love, and genuine independence, and proper food, and fair pricing, and looking after staff who genuinely love looking after their guests – like, old school values meet the brave new world and show the pretenders how hospitality should – and can – really be done, despite the harsh vagaries of the current climate.
Nusara Poole is a flagship FUC case in point: elegant without being forebodingly smart; glamorous without being snooty. It feels special. It is special. And the food is very, very special indeed.
For starters, for me, Larb Kua Salad Parcels: an utterly compelling combination that bought nuggets of soft, soft beef together with all the glorious sweet/salty/sour/bitter nudges that make Thai food so addictive, lashings of super-fresh herbs making every forkful sing. Across the table, Krob Squid was an equal triumph, the batter light and crisp, the squid beautifully tender, the oyster sauce offering a comfortably snug flavour-blanket to wrap it all up in.
For mains, my beloved Prawn Penang – my go-to Thai dish of choice that I never seem to be able to move away from – proved why I should never attempt to relocate my Thai menu choices: huge, lush prawns bathed in a thick, semi-dry, salty/sweet and slightly nutty sauce. A proper Penang is subtly complex; Nusara gets that complexity and amps it up to the max. Our second starter of sweetly meaty monkfish, steamed to perfection, gently anointed with chilli oil and served up with delicate jasmine rice, proved just how simple complexity can be when you get the balance right. Both dishes further endorsed my suspicions that, in the UK at least, we’re rarely given the opportunity to taste real Thai food; at Nusara, you can max out on that opportunity.
Sunday Check-out day… and the heavens remained open. No worries! We had Sunday lunch to look forward to at 3pm – and what drizzle doesn’t lift at the prospect of a proper pub roast?
The super-pretty Old Thatch sits on an erstwhile prosaic road junction in Stapehill, Wimborne. The pub itself has 17th century origins while the surrounding villages, highways and byways all have fascinating little histories of their own; what better way to spend a rainy Sunday morning in the locale than touring around them all, pointing out landmarks through the rain-drenched car windows and occasionally braving the weather to stand and swoon outside a picture-perfect cottage, or poke around a crumbling churchyard? And The Old Thatch sits happily at the axis of all of it… as we had, by now, come to expect from a venture powered by Andy/the Fired Up Collective’s modus operandi.
There’s a proper Country Store, Bakery and Cafe at the back of The Old Thatch celebrating locally-sourced produce, and freshly baked bread, and cakes, and gifts, and flowers, and loads of lovely stuff that you won’t find in supermarkets. There’s a spacious, partially-covered terrace on site, and a proper pizza company, and – get this! – a woodland play area (Bear Island) with space for table tennis, and boules, and regular events including yoga and live music sessions (no, not at the same time!), and the pub’s very own festival (Thatchfest) on August Bank Holiday weekend. And inside – oh, inside! Wooden beams and proper fireplaces. Party-on recesses; smoochy tables for two. Ancient windows and real wood; modern menus and real food.
We were seated at a table by a window overlooking the terrace, where we ate Posh Prawn Cocktail (and very posh it was too, what with the splash of Shanty Vodka’n’all) and Salt and Pepper Squid served with deeply umami black garlic aioli. One of us opted for the lamb roast, the other for beef sirloin, and both came piled high with all the proper Sunday roast hip-hops you could possibly wish for, including the biggest, crispest Yorkshire puds and super-silky gravy. We didn’t have room for puds but we didn’t want to leave; even if I lived around the corner, I’d still want to move in. But it was time to head back…
…home again! Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch – linked in one borough but each distinctly different in terms of overall vibe – all boast their distinctly different charms, Bournemouth itself maxing out on a mixture of party town/family friendly vibes to keep the visitor scene vibrant while the drives through/in and around parts of Poole and Christchurch reminded me of travels through the Hollywood Hills.
It’s surprising, however, that good food is hard to find in the locale, which is one of the many reasons why Andy/the FUC’s input is so invaluable; unless you’re in the mood for a suburban Indian restaurant banquet (“Tuesday Nights Only”) or a prosaic pub deal, there’s little to attract the foodie’s attention. Meanwhile, it’s astounding – quite shocking, in fact – that, apart from Sobo:Fish and the (obvious) Rick Stein restaurant in Sandbanks, fresh fish specialists are particularly thin on the ground; we’re on the coast, kids! I expected to be inundated by crab sandwiches, fresh seafood platters and proper fish’n’chips from the get-go, but the pub down the road from our hotel flaunted fishcakes made with John West salmon and the Bournemouth’s biggest seafront cafe/bar claimed to be specialists in Peri Peri chicken.
So: would I go back to Bournemouth? Ah yes – not least of all because we couldn’t make room this time around for pud at The Old Thatch…
Huge thanks to the abundant generosity from Andy Lennox, Sophie Cox and the wonderful FUC staff for helping us make this lovely trip happen.
The Prandial Playground, Bath and Beyond... 