The Alegria restaurant. Photos: Denise Crawford

Every weekend intrepid Melksbosstrand photographer Denise Crawford takes to the road, and photographs the picturesque villages of the West Coast.

Sometimes they’re not villages but bigger and grander places, but one won’t be pedantic about this. The West Coast is at heart, for many of us still a series of small seaside towns set along a wild, wild coastline. Crawford captures the simplicity and grandeur of the region. She talks to the rich and the poor. And sometimes she succumbs to culinary

delights in between all of this.

This is what happened recently in St Helena Bay where she succumbed to the delights of the Hake Au Gratin she had at the Alegria restaurant. “It was the best fish I’ve ever had,” she enthuses.

The Hake Au Gratin.