The Grain Store, Weybourne

Made in Norfolk

There’s an easy appeal to the novel, to restaurants that promise the chance to experience something for the first time. That might be unusual pairings of flavour and texture across a fine dining tasting menu; a deep dive into an unfamiliar cuisine, little seen in your neighbourhood until now; or niche ingredients given their time in the limelight.

The Grain Store offers none of that. Instead, its promises are simple: excellent produce, often local, prepared simply and familiarly. Neither the restaurant nor its menu offer many surprises, occasionally to its detriment. But when you’re sitting at the heart of some of the country’s best seafood, what’s the point in overcomplicating things?

Attached to The Maltings, a compact but seemingly luxurious hotel in the village of Weybourne, The Grain Store is a bright, airy space stretched over two floors of a former barn. It’s modern though, and handsome about it, with none of the kitsch effect you might fear from a barn-based restaurant serving Michelin-adjacent food (The Grain Store is listed in the guide, though not starred, which is how I found it).

The menu is simple enough, the sort you can now expect to see in elevated gastropubs up and down the country, but these basics are done well. There’s a heaving bone-in ribeye to share, served with a sharp peppercorn sauce; a beef carpaccio dressed simply with rocket and parmesan; a variant on a niçoise salad served with the choice of lobster, smoked salmon, or a whole dressed crab. It’s all very British, and just occasionally a bit European, though there’s a begrudging recognition of culinary history beyond the continent in a heaving mound of pulled lamb with tzatziki and baba ghanoush. This is speckled with blackened pumpkin seeds and glistening pomegranate ones, a sharp crunch to contrast the tender lamb, and is only let down by the rather passable flatbreads that ring the plate.

Outside of that brief excursion to the Mediterranean, The Grain Store is quite firmly situated on the Norfolk coast. The almost comically plump oysters, accompanied by a potent seaweed hot sauce, are apparently from Norfolk, as is the bread, the cheese, the seafood platter, the potatoes, and the pork. The salad leaves and greens seem to come from Eves Hill, a farm you’ll find in — you guessed it! — Norfolk. Even my cocktail, a sweet but lemon-heavy take on the French 75, is given an inevitable rebrand into the Norfolk 75. At this point it’s getting a little on the nose.

The smoked salmon is even more specific: it’s from Brancaster Staithe, just a few miles down the coast, and arrives in thick-cut ribbons draped over a tangy Russian salad, a few blobs of Flubber-green parsley emulsion for company. These are quite extraordinary pieces of fish, smoked subtly enough to leave the fish itself at the forefront, but potent enough to stand up to the sharp salad. It’s an exceptionally well-balanced plate.

While the menu mostly plays things safe, it does branch out every once in a while. That local pork collar is barbecued, finished with a brandy and orange glaze, and served with a wedge of savoy cabbage and a sweetcorn relish. Strangely, here the kitchen nails the delicate balancing act of sweet, fruity flavours across the dish, but fumbles the basics, the collar cooked just a little too long, a touch tough where it should be tender.

Still, there’s encouragement to be had here. The menu may be cautious, conservative even, but that’s clearly not for lack of skill or spark, and I would trust this team to deliver on its more interesting ideas when they appear. And in the meantime, there’ll always be those oysters, that salmon, and even those greens. They’re from Norfolk, don’t you know?