Estbek House Hotel at Sandsend

Eating out is pretty sharp, too. The Fox and Hounds at Goldsborough continues to excel. Woodlands Eat doubles as deli and classy brasserie. Even the beach cafs Sandside and Witsend are everything you'd want in a wooden seaside hut.

And on a bend on the bridge is Estbek House Hotel, a lovely Georgian restaurant with rooms that was once home to the manager of the local alum works. In the 18th century the lucrative alum trade, used as a fixative for dyes, thrived here. It left scars on the grey shale cliffs still visible today in the barren moonscape above the village.

You enter by the basement, where two chefs, clad in black aprons and head scarves are at work in the open plan kitchen next to the bar where we take our drinks. The menu is substantial. Nine starters, a dozen mains and plenty of locally landed seafood: scallops, monkfish, turbot, lobster: all of it wild and fresh, says the menu.

More evidence of local sourcing is in their use of a goat's cheese from Littlebeck, near Whitby, which we are assured is unavailable anywhere else.

Some dishes are marked "Highly Recommended". There is no attribution so presumably the recommendation comes from the Estbek kitchen. It is a baffling bit of restaurantese. Are their other dishes only "Mildly Recommended"?

But little on the menu is understated. Estbek's seafood pie trumpets "Lobster, Cod, Crayfish tails and Brown Shrimp all served in a seafood stack and topped with sliced and seared King Scallop and accompanied with a light white wine sauce with new potatoes and seasonal vegetable wrap and oven roasted vine tomatoes".

The wines are another big deal with piles of business cards advertising their home delivery Cellar Collection. The list runs to 100 pages of overwhelmingly Australian and New Zealand wines with full tasting notes. There may have been some but we couldn't find any bottles under 20 and the list gave no help in identifying wine by the glass until the manager sorted us out with two glasses of Pewsey Vale Riesling at 6 each.

Dining is upstairs in two beautifully oak panelled rooms at the front of the house. Tables are dressed in snowy cloths with heavy cutlery and good glassware. Operatic arias drift out of the speakers. All is calm and elegant.

We begin with a complimentary shot glass of chilled carrot and ginger soup followed by some of their "Highly Recommended" sardines which were nicely boned and butterflied then fried with garlic and parsley but hardly worth singling out as a signature dish.

I go vegetarian since the Estbek has taken the trouble to offer three non-meat starters and two mains. The blue cheese and port pat is neatly served in a miniature Kilner jar with toasted brioche and sliced pear with walnuts. Traditionally, port and Stilton go well but here, mixed in together, the piquancy of the blue goat's cheese and the spiciness of the port combined to produce something too harsh for the sweet pear to neutralise.

My veggie main was a lemon and chick pea potato cake topped with their goat's cheese and served on sliced beetroot. The two large potato patties were no beauties but they had a hearty, rustic charm, the kind of dish you might find on a reasonably ambitious pub menu. It was served with a salad of leaves, halved cherry tomatoes and finely diced red onion. But what was most startling about this dish was the price. Using some of the cheapest ingredients on the planet it came in at an eye-watering 19.95.

That was the cheapest main course. The Estbek is not letting anyone out lightly. Turbot weighs in at 21.95, their posh seafood pie is 21.95, fillet steak 25.95 and a whole lobster thermidor peaks at 32. Bread and butter is charged at 95p per person.

The turbot that followed was excellent – accurately cooked and served with nothing more complicated than a lemon butter sauce. It deserved better than a bland dish of vegetables: potatoes, carrots, green beans and broccoli that was no better for being fussily wrapped in a slice of courgette.

With an escalating bill in mind, we passed on the assiette of desserts at 8.95 and the cheeseboard that starts at 8.95 and rises to 17 for eight cheeses and settled instead for the 6.50 puds: white chocolate crme brle with raspberries, and plum soup with ginger sorbet. Both were satisfying and accomplished

with the poached and pured plums and the not-too-sweet sorbet simply delicious.

Our bill came to 96 for two. With a bottle of wine instead of our Riesling and a glass of dessert wine it would have topped the 100 mark. Notwithstanding a perfectly pleasant meal, the lovely setting and the price of fish, it's a lot even for well-heeled Sandsend. These are big city prices without being justified by big city ground rents or big city chefs. It's good, but not that good.

Estbek House,

East Row, Sandsend, Whitby,

North Yorkshire YO21 3SU.

01947 893625.

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.estbekhouse.co.uk

Open: Mon-Sun 6pm-9pm

Price: Dinner for two with a bottle of wine, coffee and service about 100.

YP MAG 25/9/10