The Assembly House's Richard Hughes' 2022 Norfolk food highlights

As you grow older and hopefully wiser, you realise that the best eating experiences aren’t necessarily about the food in front of you, but where you eat, why you eat it and who you eat it with. 

I realise how lucky I am to have been able to eat at some truly wonderful restaurants in 2022 and also to have shared some amazing meals with the people I love most – I am thankful that everyone involved made it through the last few turbulent years.

Food is, and has always been, about love, so the most pleasurable moments may not necessarily (although in some cases they did) involve the most impressive meals of the year, rather the most memorable.

For instance, my list should really also include the curly fries, roast dinners and toasted marshmallows eaten with my grandsons, and the chips from paper cones eaten in force eight gales on the seafront with my wife. 

Here, in no particular order, are my top 10 for this year. It makes me hungry just thinking about what lies ahead in 2023.

1. Mackerel, Aubergine and Miso, Pickled Watermelon and Sweet Chilli (tasting menu dish), The Neptune, Hunstanton: Kevin and Jacki Mangeolles have been running this wonderful Michelin-starred restaurant in an 18th century former coaching inn since 2007, gaining that glittering star just two years later in 2009. Kevin came to teach a class at The Richard Hughes Cookery School for Macmillan (we ran a set of free classes for men living with cancer this year) and it was the final push for me to book a table. I’ve wanted to visit for years, but with its emphasis on fresh fish and a vegetarian wife…I took my eldest daughter Alison just after her birthday in October and we had the incredible tasting menu. It’s hard to pick a stand-out dish, but the mackerel with aubergine, miso, pickled watermelon and sweet chilli was superb. One of my favourite fish, this that rare thing: as beautiful to eat as it was to look at.

2. Malted Chocolate Milkshake, The Waffle House, Norwich: It’s a short walk from The Assembly House to The Waffle House but that’s not the reason I love to visit this restaurant which has been welcoming Norwich diners since 1978. While I might vary the waffle I choose (it’s difficult not to have the delicious ham, cheese and mushroom with the cheese waffle with garlic butter to start, though) I never struggle to choose what I’m going to drink. Like a Malteaser in drink form, this is heaven in a glass. 

3. Rigatoni, spinach, parma ham, mint, lemon and Parmesan, The Star at Alfriston: This is a beautiful hotel in one of Sussex’s prettiest villages and it’s run by The Hotel Inspector, so you’d hope the food would be good: and it is. I have loved Alex Polizzi for years – I do have a soft spot for strong women who know hospitality – and The Star is stunning. We just visited for lunch – the menu is fairly small, but it’s great. I had the pasta – a simple bowl of rigatoni where every single element was perfect; absolutely my kind of food. 

4. Gelato Lollies, East Coast Gelato, Thornham: It’s worth the drive from Norwich for one of these fabulous handmade lollies which come in a range of flavours that include mint with dark chocolate, salted caramel with fudge pieces, white chocolate and strawberry, raspberry and marscarpone and my personal favourite, coconut. Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely love lollies and eat at least two Fabs a day, but these wonderful artisan superior-Bounty-bars-on-sticks are vying to take top lolly spot in my heart. All my family love them, please open a shop in Norwich, East Coast Gelato.

5. F&F Doughnuts, Fizz and Fromage, Hoveton: This restaurant close to the Broads has a really interesting, tasty menu with loads of choices and some really clever, unusual (and delicious!) cheese pairings like Cromwell Shropshire Blue with chocolate brownie, Gouda with crunchy caramel and chilli jam, Epoisses with confit garlic and Gorgonzola with fried corn. But it’s these whipped goat’s cheese, passion fruit curd and poppy seed doughnuts that really stole the show. I didn’t think I’d like them: I was right. I loved them.

6. Breakfast, The Control Tower Bed and Breakfast, Egmere: Claire Nugent and Nigel Morter run The Control Tower near Walsingham and it’s one of my wife and I’s most-loved places on earth. A recent Tripadvisor review from November puts it more eloquently than I could: “A conscientious couple furthering their passion with integrity and love. Carefully curated space that harkens back to an age of poise and ponderance which reflects in every aspect of the service here. Unbelievable breakfast, some of it sourced from their own gardens, with a topping of unhurried chatter and useful tips with Nigel. They did every single thing two humans possibly can to make our stay an unprecedented experience.” Quite. When I posted a photo of my breakfast (everything at the beautiful converted WW2 Control Tower is vegetarian or vegan) on my Facebook page it led to the formation of an unlikely new club: The People Who Hate Fried Egg White Society. Claire has got my fried egg weirdness down to a tee, as you can see here! 

7. Plough Pudding, The Three Horseshoes, Warham: I’d seen chef Michael Farrow’s recipe for this in a magazine and told my wife I’d love to try it. It’s a suet pastry crust filled with sausage meat, streaky bacon, onions and sage, a steamed delight of a pie which was traditionally served on Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Night. You know a vegetarian loves you when they make you a Plough Pudding, which is what she did – and it was lovely. And then, a month or so later, Michael himself got wind of my respect for his pudding so very kindly made me a special one when I visited The Three Horseshoes for Sunday lunch! What’s better than one Plough Pudding? Two!

8. Pastrami special, Chef Ron’s Kitchen, Norwich: The best £5 or so you can spend in Norwich, the pastrami-packed rolls from this Lower Goat Lane New York-style deli are exactly what I need after or during a hard shift at the stove. Pastrami, gherkins, tomato, melted cheese…I love them so much that this is what I had for my birthday lunch (yes, I was at work on my birthday!).

9. Mark Mitson’s Marmalade Bread and Butter Pudding, The Assembly House, Norwich: Bread and butter pudding is my absolute favourite classic dessert, and head of pastry Mark makes the best I’ve ever had. I ask him to add marmalade so that no one else in the kitchen wants to eat it, having fallen in love with the love-it-or-hate-it preserve during lockdown when it seemed like everyone we knew was making it. Our version, when we serve it at the House, has added chocolate chips but I prefer mine with marmalade alone, and in all senses of the word ‘alone’.

10. All the desserts, St John Bread and Wine, Commercial Street, E1: I always look at the dessert options on a menu first, which led to a very stressful evening when we visited in November, as I could cheerfully and greedily have eaten every single dessert on the menu (which, despite my sweet tooth, is a rare occurrence). Sam Matthews and Jamie Gooda, my general and front of house managers at The Assembly House, had given me a gift voucher and so it seemed wrong not to indulge…in three puddings. Apple cobbler with spiced ice cream, rum baba with quince, and chocolate baked Alaska. The baba won Battle of the Puddings. I just love them and have to be restrained from putting them on every menu I write. They remind me of two very different places – Paris bistros and Great Yarmouth kebab shops – but of that same feeling of comfort and joy.