STANWELL House Hotel near the crest of the hill in Lymington High Street has undergone many manifestations since I went to a wedding reception there in the 1970s.

Currently it is a swish "boutique" hotel with seafood restaurant.

Having always had a taste for seafood, we decided to book dinner there.

The first reaction on being shown to our table was, "Oh dear, what have we let ourselves in for".

There was plenty of happy chatter in the small dining room, but the décor was not so much distressed as distressing.

For a restaurant that had only been open a couple of months, presumably after a makeover, it looked dirty. Then we realised it had been made that way intentionally, by a decorator with a roller or rags. I have to say it was well done, even the ceiling had "water marks" showing through.

Then there was the other-worldly ghoulish blue glow coming from the tiny lamps in the doorway between the bar and restaurant.

Still, Hallowe'en was but a day away . . .

With the chill of the autumn evening neither of us were in the mood for wine, despite the impressive list presented by our waiter. In fact Elena did not drink at all. I settled for a bottle of citrus-tinged Boondoggle beer from Ringwood Brewery. And a good choice for fish, it proved.

While the décor may have been the trick, the menu promised a Mediterranean treat.

We started with a shared platter of mixed olives and warm breads, the herbed pan was particularly good.

I started with a scallop and pancetta kebab which arrived with tiny slivers of roasted red peppers with soy sauce and a delicately-flavoured tomato sauce on the side.

The skewered inch cubes of pancetta were delicious, as were the lovely big juicy scallops. But where were the corals? Had the Hallowe'en gremlins got them, or couldn't chef get them to stay on the skewer?

Elena selected garlic mushrooms with parsley butter from the "Bit on the Side" section priced at £2.95. Tasty too, but too much butter maybe made them too much of a good thing.

For the main course Elena chose the fisherman's pie with minted peas and mixed leaf salad. It was voted an 8/10 hit. There was salmon and smoked fish in the individual pie, topped with tasty mashed potato. The salad included baby spinach and watercress with the merest hint of finely chopped de-seeded tomato.

I chose the Chef's Catch of the Day. In this case two fillets of stunningly fresh and tasty turbot balanced on a mound of prawn mashed potato surrounded by a ring of tender asparagus tips, copiously splashed with a buttery pesto sauce.

That was totally yummy and got an almost perfect 9 out of 10. (I can't ever give a full 10, just in case, one day, there's an utterly out-of-this-world dish to mark.) It was then home to watch an episode of Spooks, a tale about spy aircraft Aurora and more ghoulish blue lights . . . Other worldly, or what?

Total cost was £46.95.