HIX Oyster and Fish House - West Dorset

A great place to visit, especially if you like food with views! Stunning outlook over the bay. Friendly and professional service. Welcomed nicely. A good choice on the menu, and the cooking is full of flavour and well presented. Fish is obviously the choice to go for! Highly recommend

We've been great fans of Chef Hix and all his doings over the years, and I'm glad to report that Mark and his brigade are on top form at his Lyme Regis mothership. We enjoyed seasonal asparagus and scrumpy-battered oysters followed by a fillet of the much-undervalued pollock and a scrummy prawn burger. A treacle tart was rightly not resisted and was delicious.

The Oyster House hosted our daughter’s reception at the end of April. From the minute we entered the restaurant and saw how beautifully and tastefully the staff had set out our wedding decorations we knew this was going to be an amazing event and it surpassed expectations. The quality of the food canapés and main meal was outstanding; the subtle attentiveness of staff was so appreciated they made the whole experience into a magical gastronomic delight. Everybody commented how wonderful the chefs, waiting staff and of course the superb location was. Thank you so much to everyone.

Our waitress with the stars on her fingernails is a great asset to the place. Spontaneous and good-humoured, she created a good atmosphere and we came to chat with other guests. The food was really good but don’t come here if you want big portions or a bargain. Fresh fish (they would have to try hard to serve it otherwise, given the proximity to the harbour), well cooked. The hollandaise sauce was not as good as ours, though. And as a Belgian I thought that the chocolate mousse was too pricey for its taste. We had a good evening but one time is enough.

There were 12 of us, which is always a challenge for a restaurant but we gave 2 months notice. Bad impression on entry with a a greeter whose whole body language was negative offering us menu cards which were already on the table which the maitre d' loudly reminded her of. The restaurant was stifling hot and we had to ask for windows to be opened weird? Service was shambolic 90 minutes to get the first course 2 1/2 hours to have 2 courses we gave up after that. The Maitre d' looked harassed although well meaning, the greeter became unacceptably rude while the situation was saved by a young man who would be a credit to any restaurant. The food well many of us had the Frito Misto which turned out to comprise one type of fish after a little back and forth the maitre d' accepted that what was served wasn't as described and did not charge us generally the cooking was just so so (strangely tasteless scallops for example) although the whole bream was as one would expect in a Mark Hix restaurant the only thing sadly. Something currently just isn't right with this restaurant given its proud pedigree.