The Dining Room

We had dinner at the dining room restaurant during a trip to Weymouth for the annual seafood festival. The restaurant serves a mixture of meat and seafood but since we were by the coast we were only interested in dining on seafood.
To start we shared 2 appetisers between 3 of us, the ceviche and Pil Pil tiger prawns. Both these dishes were disappointingly lacking in flavour. The Pil Pil prawns seemed rather pricey at £6.95 for 3 tiny bland prawns.
We struggled to choose 3 different mains from the menu as we only wanted seafood. After speaking to the chef owner to find out what other seafood was available we placed a special order of razor clams and squid with triple cooked chips in truffle oil. I’m so glad we talked to the chef owner as this was the best dish of the 3 mains and at first all the server could offer us were sardines!
For the other 2 mains we chose the daily special Hake and the Brill wrapped in Serano ham from the a la carte. We were not keen on these 2 main dishes both had a small portion of creamy fish on a large pile of dauphinoise potatoes. When the server described the Hake special to us he mentioned razor clams but there were none in the dish we ate. Apparently they had used up all the razor clams in the other chef’s special we ordered. Although the Hake special was missing a key ingredient they still charged us the full price of £21.50?
For dessert we chose a chocolate wasabi cheesecake and a peanut butter parfait with chocolate shavings & honeycomb. I only tried the deconstructed cheesecake but was informed by my dining companions that the peanut butter parfait tasted better, the plating certainly looked nicer.
Overall for the standard of food, pricing is on the high side at the dining room compared to central London; I am not sure how it compares to the rest of Weymouth but I suspect it is high. For 2 starters, 3 mains and 2 desserts without alcohol, the meal for 3 people came to £37 per person. I would rather have paid slightly more to dine at the 1 Michelin star restaurant ‘Sienna’ in the nearby town of Dorchester but it was unfortunate that we did not have time to plan!