I often write about food. I like to eat.
This time we planned a weekend break purely around eating in a certain village in Cornwall, South-West England. We received as a wedding gift, a voucher, to use for food or accommodation, in Rick Stein's little empire in Padstow, Cornwall. Rick Stein is somewhat of a celebrity chef over here who specialises in seafood and asian cooking. He has about 3 or 4 restaurants/cafes and a number of accommodation options, all in the little fishing village.
We needed to decide how to spend our voucher. I never really feel I get value for money from hotel rooms, and given that the cheapest room was 135 quid and required a 2 night minimum stay, along with the title of this article, you can probably guess what we chose. Yep, we decided to camp and blow the whole thing on food. The camp ground was not owned by Rick Stein.
We tried to book a Saturday night table for two about a month beforehand, but we keep on forgetting this is England, and that's not enough time. The place was booked out. So we opted for a Saturday lunch. This actually suited us better. A nice long lunch on a sunny Summer day.
The entire meal was fantastic and one of the best eating experiences I've had. Here's the list. We started out with some fresh oysters that were accompanied with some spicy chorizo. For first courses Bella had a rich and creamy Ragout full of seafood and I had some Cornish crab and wakame salad. For mains, Bella had roasted Turbot (a fish) with a hollandaise sauce and I had lobster thermidore (a french classic full of butter, wine and creamy goodness). All accompanied with a bottle of Gros Manseng Sauvignon from the south-west of France. Dessert was a chocolate fondant, which we really didn't need, but was superb as well. We also squeezed breakfast the next morning (we didn't need dinner after that lunch) and a few souvenirs from the gift shop out of the voucher. More food pictures below in album.
Apart from eating, we also had a bit of a look around this part of England. We had hired a car so we drove around the tiny country lanes, visiting the tiny villages and beaches, and exploring the bigger towns like Newquay. The beaches were quite impressive. Nice sand, breaking waves, clear water and plenty of willing people testing our their surfing abilities, mostly novices. Quite strange, but no shortage of people willing to overcome the bracing water to attempt a sport that appears so strange (well, to an Englishman, at least).
Cornwall was great as well, but this weekend was all about the food. Thanks to the extended Stevens family for such a great gift.
