Review: Tanroagan, Isle of Man

The Isle of Man is one of the most unusual parts of the British Isles. It is as much of a backwater as you can find on these busy islands and that’s a pleasure in many ways. Manx folklore abounds with tales of fairies and monsters, and every damp woodland or ruined chapel has some local fairy associated with it. We roamed mouldering castles, verdant glens and rugged coastline for two days with scarcely another soul in sight and often felt pretty close to bumping into the moddey dhoo, the mooinjer veggey or the fenodyree, to name but three of the Manx fairies. It’s a fey and fascinating place, made more so by the weather which has ranged from cheery sunshine to eerie fog within an hour. I’d recommend a short break over here, though you may struggle to fill an entire week unless you really like hiking.

Of course, in other ways being a backwater eddying along a couple of decades behind the UK can be detrimental, and certainly seemed to be in the case of eating out.

We had supper one evening at the best Chinese restaurant on the island (as proclaimed by more than one apparently independent adjudicator) and it was execrable in every way, from the wallpaper paste consistency of the hot and sour soup to the nasty beef and aubergine hotpot; bits of aubergine cooked down to lumps of snot with strips of black skin hanging off in a gloopy sauce oddly reminiscent of the hot and sour soup. We also tried the renowned Manx kippers, and found them to be just the kind of ho-hum kippers I remember

having for tea as a kid and nothing whatsoever like the gorgeous specimens from the Black Mountain Smokery that we breakfasted on at the Felin Fach Griffin a while back. We tried our luck on a new and rather expensive restaurant in the hills, only to be served the kind of stolidly unexciting food that classy restaurants felt safe charging top dollar for thirty years ago. They’ve obviously also only just discovered Italian coffee on the island, as every cappuccino I tried came as a mug (yes, a mug) of scalding hot milk with a trace of burnt coffee and a scurf of foam on the surface.

So it was a pleasure to enjoy one decent meal, at a little fish restaurant called Tanroagan just off the north quay of the main town of Douglas. The restaurant is tucked down a side road and is a cosy little hole-in-the-wall with just a handful of tables. Rustic décor with blue, yellow and white is just about spot-on for a friendly informal seafood joint. Service was patchy, hilarious considering there were two servers and only one other table seated when we arrived. This seems to be a theme on Man: our B&B had a detailed list of recommendations almost all of which said something along the lines of “good food, service patchy”. Of course, they also recommended the horrible Chinese.

I digress. Back in Tanroagan our starter was a tian of smoked haddock brandade topped with a crisp fried poached egg and surrounded by a ring of delicate hollandaise. The brandade was super, either very good smoked haddock or the chef had salted it a while before making the dish.

For the main course I couldn’t resist sharing a whole pan-roasted turbot. In hindsight this isn’t the best way to review a fish restaurant; rather like enjoying a simple steak, you can’t do much more than judge whether the chef has cooked it to the right degree. In this case he had, and it was a clean and meaty piece of fish. On a plate, with a lemon. Chips were pretty good, and the side of veg was suitably summery, tossed in a little hollandaise to enrich.

Back home I wouldn’t call this meal a bargain, nor would I laud it as a truly great fish restaurant. But given the competition we tried on our three night stay, I’d definitely say Tanroagan should be on your short-list of restaurants for any trip to the Isle of Man. They even made a perfectly acceptable espresso to round off our supper.