'Floating food fun in the dock': Daffodil, Canning Dock, reviewed

This Daffodil has been plucked from its former role as a Mersey ferry and while still afloat, is now a restaurant, bar and theme dream. There's the Promenade Bar, for cocktails and other drinks, The Main Deck aka the restaurant and the as yet uncompleted Engine room for eventually 'live music and cultural offerings'. 

It's great fun ambling up the gang plank to the bar and fun to wander around looking across the glistening waters to Albert Dock. Tourists will love it and from the evidence of our visit lots of locals already love it. 

This no-doubt will please the men behind the initiative, Joshua Boyd and Philip Olivier. You can read how the vessel which launched on 17 April 1962 has been converted into present the foodie ferry with our story from Harley Young here. 

Novelty dining then, but fun too, with high quality in evidence in the somewhat over-complicated cooking

After the gangplank came a vodka Martini for me while my friend stuck her nose into a glass of very adequate Prosecco. The dirty Martini was less good and the service was a little sullen, which is odd for Liverpool. As an outsider I always love the sunny service in the city. 

The general boaty-ness of the occasion was boosted by the steep metal steps down to the restaurant where our Italian waitress and her Scouse colleague greeted us with smiles as wide as the Mersey. Order was restored and maintained throughout the meal. 

The head chef is Darren James-Campbell who has Armed Forces experience, Michelin-star experience and also stints at classic and well-known Liverpool ventures such as Alma de Cuba. He and the kitchen produce colourful dishes with a multitude of flavours which sometimes work well and sometimes appear to get in the way of each other. 

The starters set the the tone for the complex flavours of the meal. 

The scallops came with Lapsang Souchong infused cream, carrot puree, radish and chilli tuille (£14). This dish glistened like the dock waters outside reflecting the streetlights but while it worked out generally and the tuile on top was a clever little work of art, the scallops, though perfectly cooked and seared were shouted down. 

The pork croquettes (£12) came with two words I'd never heard before. So for the full description Mangalitza pork croquettes with Durrus puree and a smoked tomato tuile. I looked them up Mangalitza refers to a breed of Hungarian pig which I don't know why but I find amusing. Does it grunt in Hungarian? Apparently this piggy-wigwig is given a longer life before the knife falls and thus builds 'coveted intramuscular fat'. Durrus refers to an Irish cheese from West Cork made by hand. 

Confusion cleared up I must say that this was an exemplary dish, robust, solid with another dainty tuile as a decoration. Daffodil likes its tuiles, four out of the six starters sport them. 

I'm going to have to spell out the full dish descriptions of the mains. So my friend had 'poached skinless halibut fillet in zucchini ribbon coat, potato croissant, tomato and marbled emulsion'. Wow. This was an impressively scaled beast (and priced being £28) but again maybe too cluttered with flavours not all working harmoniously. The potato croissant was entertaining when dabbed in the 'emulsion', tomatoes fine, the fish when freed from its zucchini shackles was very good indeed timed to perfection but why wrap it in zucchini anyway?

My main of 'truffled honey duck breast, sweetcorn puree, sauteed beans, girolle mushrooms and duck liver juice' for £29 should have been the business. The meat was fabulous, full of those gamey, darkly enchanting duck flavours, the mushrooms were winners, the liver juice, aka gravy, was superb but the sweetcorn puree was a disaster. It simply wasn't needed, sickly sweetcorn rarely is and in this form it had the character of school dinners. I shoved the sweetcorn to one side and tucked into the rest. 

Then came the pudding in the form of a white chocolate and raspberry millefeuille at the rather steep price of £9. My friend and I spent some time attempting to pronounce millefeuille, one of those impossible vowelly French words such as 'oie' which means goose. Her attempt was rubbish. The translation of millefeuille is 'a thousand sheets' which refers to the layers of pastry which one has to say in Daffodil were superb. Not sure about the white chocolate which can be too sickly but everything else was good-looking and flaky and lush. Nautical but nice.

In some respects dining on Daffodil is a curious experience. It's a novelty of course. I remember a former railway carriage in Rochdale miles from a railway where you could dine as though one were on the Orient Express rather than on the A671 to Royton having a steak and kidney pie followed by an Irish coffee. Isn't there still the body of a Boeing 737 in Bolton somewhere where you can chow down on halal burgers? 

Definitely novelty dining then, but fun too, with high quality in evidence in the somewhat over-complicated cooking and good service too. If I were the kitchen I'd go through the dishes and take out at least one element. Still, it's worth a voyage, albeit a pricey one and a stationary one, but it's provides an 'occasion' out.

Daffodil, Canning Dock, off Strand Street, Liverpool, L3 4AN