The Sun Over the Sea isn’t easy to find, but it’s worth seeking out: it must be the best-kept-secret restaurant in town. It’s not in any travel guides I've seen, and annoyingly sometimes when you get there you find that it is closed. Yet you still go back just to check. It’s that kind of place.
Why is it so special? It’s hard too say. Perhaps it is its cheapness and simplicity: the small menu with little choice, grilled fish or meat, or the house stew, made of whatever is to hand from the market or the allotments that day, a house wine that takes a couple of gulps to get used to, the cheap chairs, the checked tablecloths that are sometimes a little soiled. Perhaps you will put a napkin underneath an uneven table leg. The house cat can be demanding, and the chicken in the yard whose eggs make the omelettes and crème caramels so yellow, can kick up a fuss. There’s always a rumour that the health inspectors will close it down.
There is no booking, in fact I’m not sure they even have a phone. But the owners, Hav and his wife Ev, from somewhere in central Asia, I think, are amiable, unhurried hosts, who will occasionally, on a whim, plonk a free decanter of wine down on your table. It’s hard not to feel happy when you are there, and I inevitably end up having great conversations with whomever I’m with. It’s a small place, largely candlelit (I can’t quite remember; my memory of it, though warm, is always hazy, perhaps because of the wine) and nothing is intrusive.
It’s a strange name: The Sun Over the Sea. Some people say it’s because that’s how Hav’s mother, back home in wherever, describes him. Other literary wags suggest it might be a reference to George Orwell’s famous pub, The Moon Under Water. Whatever, it doesn’t seem to be listed anywhere. The best way to come across it is by accident. A couple of times I have set out to find it, convinced I knew where it was, and I have become completely lost. Yet I will go back and look for it again.
• If you've been to The Sun Over the Sea – or think you have – do write on this blog and share your experience. And of course, if you want to keep it a best-kept secret, you don't have to say where it is, just how good it is and why...
