96. The Lobster Pot

What does the phrase ‘a party of people from across the water’ mean to you?

Probably visitors from England, or possibly guests from Scotland, but if you worked in the Lobster Pot, Strangford, it would be nothing more than another group of passengers arrived off the ferry from the other side of Strangford Lough.

By the way, if you are in Portaferry and decide to sample the famous Lobster Pot Scampi, you’d be well advised to catch that ferry, or you’ll have a 52-mile drive before you can tuck in. The winner of the Ergas 1989 Eating Out Award, the Lobster Pot fully deserves its reputation for excellence.

Settle down in one of the curved velvet seats beside a miniature lobster pot, or a stuffed buzzard, and one of the locals will take pride in telling you that this Inn, once Quoile’s basic village pub, is now visited regularly by people from as far away as North Antrim.

Yet it still remains a pub for the people of Strangford and most of the local clubs use it for their meetings. The building has been a pub since the 1920s, but in the early ’60s, Mr. Marshall, the owner at that time, changed its name to the Lobster Pot, updated it, and as they say, the rest is history.

Its visitors in the past have included Dave Allen and Phil Coulter, both of whom sampled the aforementioned scampi, the specialty of the house. There’s a lovely arrangement that lets you know how important the ferry is to the Lobster Pot, and how important the Lobster Pot is to the locals: if the ferry is going to be off for some reason or other, the captain rings up and tells the pub.

After all, there’s no point in preparing for folk from across the water if they’re stuck on the other side.