Give three cheers for neighbourhood restaurants the kind of place where, even if they don’t know your name, they treat you like an old friend.
One such is The Ship in Kinghorn. On our visit, it seemed we were the only non-regulars in the place but the welcome was no less warm for that.
The unassuming pub exterior conceals a contemporary and comfortable restaurant, which already had a lively buzz when we arrived for our early-evening booking. The room very quickly filled up but the helpful serving staff proved it is perfectly possible to be efficient and cheerful, finding a solution to a booking confusion for another party of diners with such good humour that they managed to keep them and everyone else in the restaurant on side.
The menu is divided into clear sections, with traditional dishes such as fish and chips and lasagne all priced at £10.90 and more complex main courses like guinea fowl, pork escalope and sea bass coming in at about £13. The price can vary, as Karen Robb and her team pride themselves on using fresh ingredients and so are dependent on what the market can supply on a particular day. There are also a few individually-priced main courses.
My husband chose the cullen skink as a starter (£6). Though he said the consistency was thinner than he expected, it was full of flavour and he was delighted with the bowl of creamy, smoked fish and potato soup. On a similarly piscine theme, I went for the smoked haddock fishcake, while my son opted for the southern fried chicken (both £5.90). The dishes both came with salad and a sweet chilli sauce an accompaniment that I can’t help feel worked better with the latter. The dishes were crisp and tasty and piping hot, however.
For our main courses, my husband and I chose fillet steak he went for the straightforward grilled version with a Diane sauce (£22.50), while I chose the tournedos Rossini (£23). Both were generous hunks of tender meat, perfectly cooked as we had requested. The Diane sauce came in a little jug on the side, allowing the diner to pour on the required amount. My tournedos was perched atop a crisp crouton, which had soaked up just enough of the meat juices, and sat between two healthy dollops of rich liver pate. The dish came with potatoes and a pretty standard selection of vegetables mangetout, broccoli and carrots.
My son’s lasagne was almost a three-course meal on a single plate.
The large portion of the pasta dish was served with both chips and garlic bread, as well as salad and coleslaw.
After that little or not so little lot, there was no way he was up for a pudding, though the choice was tempting and included walnut meringues, creme brule and iced raspberry cranachan, all priced at £4.75.
The richness of my main course, delicious though it was, also precluded a pudding for me, so it was left to my husband to fly the three-course flag with the cheese board (£5.50).
Again, the helpings were generous and the selection was broad enough to meet most tastes, though the choice could not have been described as particularly imaginative.
We also selected a Chateauneuf-du-Pape (£29) from the wine list.
The current proprietor returned to the Ship two and a half years ago after a spell away and since then, the building has been transformed, with the former bar now the restaurant, allowing the creation of a separate room for functions.
While the management clearly has ambitious plans for the future, there are some things that need no improvement. All in all, the restaurant is already a delightful place to spend a convivial evening with friends you don’t even have to take your own and the food is pretty good, too.
Rating: 39/50
Price: Main courses from £10.90.