Well the team at the Larder House in Southbourne have done it again with another excellent themed food and drinks night - June 18, 2016.

On walking through the door, we stood on a ship's deck that was actually swaying underfoot as you walked across. Made for an interesting first few minutes as you got your first cup of grog and headed into the main body of the restaurant for sure footing. Who the hell puts the effort in building a boat inside their restaurant?

Peter Holland, from the Floating Rum Shack, has been instrumental in raising awareness of rum, and sugar cane based spirits by holding monthly rum tasting nights up in the Library of Liquor. He does this on a national level and even global level via his website, and we are lucky to have him move down to the local area. From the little I have learnt so far, I know that there is a whole spectrum of rums, far removed from the Barcardi and Lambs, that I never knew about. The quality sipping rums do actually rank up there with whiskies from what I have tried.

After our canapés it was through to the courtyard for our starter and main course.

Joel Whitmore from Diageo made an introduction to the next section of the night against a backdrop of Ron Zapaca barrels and billowing smoke to talk about the "art of slow" and taking your time. Funnily enough the rum we wer going to try had been through the "sloera" ageing process :-)

We had a lovely and smooth Ron Zapaca 23 to go with our terrine, a decent slug at that.

The main course had cuts from a whole lamb that had been spatchcocked and slow roasted overnight down on Southbourne beach. Yup the Larder House team camped out down on the beach, overseeing the cooking and having a ball with some Johnny Walker Black from what I could see. Who wants to work in IT when you can do that! It all added to the concept of keeping it slow, slow cooking, slow ageing in barrels and taking your time over food and enjoying a drink with friends.

Another cocktail with the main course.

After dinner we were back in the main part of the restaurant, after they had stabilised the boat, for the Olympics of rum tasting. This was a mad dash over several rums from the Caribbean and a Cachaça from Brazil.

There was even a little cocktail making content on each table to make a Batida style drink. I think there were ingredients like coconut water, condensed milk, honey, lime juice, fruit compote and so on to mix up with your Cachaça. I didn't win, but got a commendation from Salvatore.

Next we went upstairs, after handing in our plane tickets, and were transported into a Tiki Bar, complete with dancing hula girl in a grass skirt. James, you are cruel.

More cocktails and desserts. Pretty full by then in terms of both food and drink, seeing as Angela wasn't drinking much as she had work the next day. Fresh watermelon was just what we needed.

It wasn't finished then. Well not for me as there was an add-on event with Jon Lister (from Speciality Brands) holding a cigar and rum session back in the courtyard, with a bottle of Diplomatico Single Vintage Rum 2001. That pairing of the dark smoky cigar with a touch of bitterness matched up with a sip of unctuous sweet rum.

And so ended a lovely evening and another stunning event by the Larder House team. I did wake up with cigar breath but not as bad as normal, probably because of the rum.