The Seafood Restaurant

We have been dining here for decades & we often visit for celebratory meals, when staying in Cornwall. Nowadays, it won't be Rick Stein cooking your food, but one of the Stein family's team. The food is always great quality & cooked to perfection. Currently, there are 3 food menus to choose from. The pricy A La Carte menu; a set 3 course lunch menu for £40 & a "greatest hits" set menu for £75, showcasing 4 courses from its 50 years of trading. It opened in 1975. Drinks are obviously extra & a service charge of 12.5% is always added to the bill. We opted for the (great value,) 3 course lunch menu. If you wanted to order from the £75 (4 course) menu, everyone at your table must also have that option. For those of you who watched Rick's older cookery series on BBC2, look out for the bronze statue of Rick's beloved, late dog, Chalky, by the entrance door. Chalky was a great little character & a great travel companion for Rick. You will need to park in one of the 3 council car parks as no street parking is available nearby.

The restaurant itself is beautiful and we received a warm welcome on arrival. The food service wasnt incredible, ive been for a tasting menu at a high end chefs restaurant and the experience wasnt as good as that sadly. The waiters were all friendly and polite but food wasnt explained very well on the menu or specials, no drink pairing was recommended with any of the dishes either. we all had starters and a fruits de mer in the middle of the table which came with dips and sides, it would've been lovely for the waiter on our table to offer us help with how to enjoy this platter and which dips went with which seafood, it would create more of a dining experience as it was some of the tables first time having this dish. For starter i had the sardines which came with a delicious garlic and coarsely chopped green herbs topping which was very tasty. For main i had the steak which was cooked to perfection, cooked medium rare and it just melted in my mouth. The only downside was if this restaurant wants to compete with the top restaurants there needs to be more care when presenting food to the table and the service provided during the meal, our waiter was pleasant enough and interacted with us in general about our evening just not enough about the food presented to us or how to get the most out of our meal. Maybe a taster menu level of service is more what i was expecting than general dining but having heard great things about the restaurant previously maybe we just built it up in our heads too much. I had some lovely mocktails throughout the meal, i cannot consume alcohol due to medicine i take, recommended by Daniel M our waiter which i let him suprise me with and they were excellent, easily the best part of service of the meal were these drinks. For desert i had 3 scoops of ice cream, 2 pistachio and one chocolate, the toasted pistachio biscuit that came with it was a nice touch. The ice cream sadly didnt have much flavour. It was still an enjoyable evening and we had a giggle with Daniel during our meal and he was very friendly and he wasn't the only one serving at our table of presenting our food, And on leaving the restaurant the team were excellent allowing us to take some menus home as gifts. It was just the attention to detail with the menu and service of the food that was slightly lacking for an renowned high end establishment.

Excellent front of house and lovely service, I am grateful for being accommodated so well. Front tables facing the harbour are romantic, but even the main room was surprisingly comfortable and the bar good. Food was standard though, for example only 1 whole fish option and the broccoli steamed to death. I also don’t like being upsold a side or wine that isn’t actually what I wanted - it’s a minor detail but simply unnecessary.