Trip to Cornwall - Day 4 - Rick Stein

As I said, the Tuesday of our holiday was our wedding anniversary. While we were planning the holiday, I said I wanted to go to one of Rick Stein's restaurants. I like his TV shows and I love his food, with his emphasis on good seafood, so I wanted to go to one while we were in Cornwall. The main one is in Padstow which was ages away from where we were staying, so I considered going to the one in Newquay. But then when I was on the website I noticed there is a restaurant in Porthleven, which was only about twenty minutes away from where we were staying near Helston. So I booked us in for lunch.

The lunch menu doesn't have a ton of options, but it does have a set menu of three courses for £21.50 which is really reasonable. This is what Lee ended up having. I'm just saying this in case you think it would be prohibitively expensive!

We arrived in Porthleven and parked. I stopped to get Lee to take photos of my outfit and a lady passing by asked if we'd like her to take a photo of both of us, which was really lovely of her!

The restaurant is right along the harbour with gorgeous views of the harbour and the sea. The restaurant inside is really cool, light, and airy. We could have sat inside, but since it was such a gorgeous day we asked to sit outside. We managed to snag one of the umbrellas which was good because it was extremely hot and neither of us wanted to get burnt.

We were served quickly by a really lovely girl. I ordered a carafe of French rose which arrived ice cold and was honestly delicious.

For starters I had salt and pepper prawns with an Asian inspired salad. Lee had Indonesian curry with a poached egg. I loved mine and his tasted good too, and they both looked so good. For mains, I had salmon fishcakes and chips. The fishcakes were really fresh and yummy - and huge! Lee had sumac chicken with crushed potatoes. For dessert he had ginger pudding and ice cream, and I had chocolate pave which was gorgeous.

The bill came to just over £70 which is definitely more than we'd usually spend, but we had had three courses each and my wine, so I felt it was very reasonable for a treat for our anniversary. I would always tip, so when it came to that I asked our waitress if they keep all tips in house. She told me that they do, and that they get shared with kitchen staff too. I thought that was brilliant!

I would heartily recommend the restaurant, I'm really pleased we made the effort to go.

The harbour in Porthleven as the tide was out

The photo the nice person offered to take - I try to do this for strangers too!

With the town in the background

My view from the roof terrace. Weirdly, Lee shared a similar photo in his work Slack group showing off that he was here and they weren't, and a colleague of his had basically the same photo taken from the same place! Coincidence!

Lee in the sunshine

How cute are these water jugs?

My wine - honestly it was gorgeous

Salt and pepper prawns - I don't enjoy peeling fresh prawns but they are worth it for the taste

Salmon fishcakes which were perfect with a squeeze of lemon

As the water came in and all the boats started to move again

Chocolate pave. Sorry for the blue tint on these photos - I was under the umbrella by this point!

The sign outside the restaurant

We were in Porthleven until about 2.30, and then we drove up to the north coast to look at Godrevy Point. I thought we'd been on our last holiday but actually I'm not sure. We didn't stop, just drove into the car park for a little bit 

Doesn't it all look so idyllic? Looking back at these photos is making me jealous of myself! We were so lucky with the weather - it was 28 each day and we relished it.