Skip to main content

SAPORI, LEE-ON-THE-SOLENT, HAMPSHIRE: RESTAURANT REVIEW

Restaurants in seaside towns can be a bit tricky. They cater to captive audiences, often providing limited choices. The norm is to serve basic fare at slightly inflated prices, take the money, and count on turnover rather than repeat customers to keep the till full. When our friend Sharon took us to the seaside town of Lee-On-The-Solent not far from her home in Fareham and suggested an Italian restaurant, we were not certain what to expect. We needn't have worried.

Sapori has created a nice space, brick and wood and not too crowded. Service was pleasant and timely. I chose a plate of fried cheese with pesto for a start with a calzone to follow - cheesy with spicy salami and fresh chilis. Enough to share. (I didn't.) Cathey and Sharon chose from the lunch menu of the day, two courses for about 10€. Cathey started with a plate of deep-fried whitebait with a side salad and went on to the fish cakes. Sharon had a plate full of prosciutto and mozzarella followed by pasta with mushrooms. All as advertised. All well prepared. All proper portions. All with a bit of flair but not too fussy. Solid. And with a bottle of wine and coffee at the finish, under 50€ total. Worth a return.

You can check out Sapori's website HERE. For an index of my restaurant reviews, click HERE.









Isle of Wight in the distance...

We're told that this train station was built because Victoria thought that the folks in Portsmouth didn't cheer sufficiently for her when she came to the seaside.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

RESTAURANT TEN, UZES: RESTAURANT REVIEW

Ten sits just off the market square in Uzes, one of the prettiest villages in southern France. The newly renovated space is airy and comfortable with tables of sufficient size and sufficiently spaced to provide for a pleasant dining experience. Service was cheerful, fully bilingual, and attentive without being overbearing. The food presented well to both eye and tongue. And the rate of approximately 30 € per person for a party of five included starters, mains, a dessert or two, two bottles of local wine, and coffees at the finish. Reasonable if not cheap eats.  So why am I hesitant to give an unqualified thumbs up?  It took me a while to figure it out. Uzes is a quintessentially French village in a quintessentially French region of southern France. There are those who will say that the Languedoc is just as beautiful but less crowded and less expensive than its eastern neighbors. I know. I'm one of those people. But the fact remains that for many people, villages like Uzes are t

CONGRATULATIONS, DUNCAN AND FIONA: JUNE 1, 2019

We've known Duncan since he was about 5 and were honored to be invited to all of the festivities surrounding his wedding to Fiona. The wedding was held in a magazine converted to a military museum in Gosport. Duncan's dream...a wedding in a place where they used to blow things up. I've never been around so many uniforms. Live Long and Prosper! A kiss was the price to continue... That's Duncan's sister Clair arriving on the right. Grandparents...headed for 100 and sharp as tacks. Reception in an old magazine/museum. Mom baked the cake and made the ducks to order. Not from the wedding but seemed appropriate.

Kreuz Market vs. Smitty’s Market: Texas Barbecue in Lockhart

I was born and raised in New Jersey. I didn’t taste Texas barbecue until I was twenty-two years old. What the hell do I know about barbecue? And what could I add to the millions of words that have been written on the subject? Well, I know a bit about food. I’ve managed to check out a few of the finer joints in Texas – Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse in Dallas, Joe Cotton’s in Robstown before the fire, the dear departed Williams Smokehouse in Houston, and the incomparable New Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville . So I can speak from a reasonably wide experience. This will not be a comprehensive discussion of the relative merits of Texas barbecue as opposed to the fare available in places like Memphis or the Carolinas. It’s simply a take on our recent visits to Lockhart and the relative merits of Smitty’s versus Kreuz from our point of view. I’ll get all over academic in a later post. On our way out to the ranch in Crystal City, we stopped at Smitty’s. You have to look