Even though he had visited Cornwall several times, John had never visited Padstow, so Lynne wanted to show it to him
She has spent many happy days there, walking along the cliffs and then finding a good pub to have a good beer with mates....
We love his cooking programmes and his recipes have become standards in our home
So we walked into town trying to find the Rick Stein Fish and Chips restaurant
We wandered around for ages, up hills and down many streets being misled (again) by our satnav
Eventually, we found Stein's Patisserie, selling all sorts of tempting things;
we asked them how to find the restaurant we wanted
They were very helpful, but we were not pleased by the answer
Just our luck. It was back along the quayside, near where we had parked the car!
Still, it meant we had seen quite a lot of Padstow
The Seafood Bar & Fishmongers looked good, but we had set our sights on fish and chips
Lots of beers, wines and cider for sale as well as soft drinks and water
(aka Portwenn, where Doc Martin and the movie Fisherman’s Friends have been filmed)
Prices above the 'bar'. We ordered one hake and one cod in batter with chips
And two local India Pale Ales, which came in the bottle! No glasses or cups
They apparently have gone green, so if you hate drinking beer out of a bottle, as we do, take your own glasses
John did manage to nick one last plastic cup from the counter (which, of course, being green ourselves, we recycled later)
The fish is all cooked in beef dripping; our SA doctor and “fishatarians” might have a fit at that, but it was very good batter
We could see seats to the right of the kitchen, but we were not permitted to sit there
"No", we were told, "that is separate, you have to eat round the back of the building in the open air"
We had obviously missed the fact that the take away and the sit down sections are separate,
even though they share a kitchen
It would have cost us £1 extra each to sit down in comfort
And rules is rules..., even though we’d offered to pay the extra pound
Thank heavens it wasn’t raining. Around the back of the building,
there are some picnic tables and we managed to find seats, eventually
We halved the fish, so each of us had a taste of each fish;
it was superbly fresh and pearly, just as it should be and had great flavour
The crisp batter is a little greasy and we got nice and messy, eating with our fingers
The chips could be crisper; we did ask for them to be crisp,
but they were not, and being packed beneath the steaming fish softens them more
(aka Portwenn, where Doc Martin and the movie Fisherman’s Friends have been filmed)
Lynne is a fan of Doc Martin, but that was not the purpose of our visit to this beautiful fishing village
A good friend of hers, Nick Farmer, had lived there with his mother for years. Nick, sadly, died last year
The view from the car park is superb; you can see a long way up the coast
The big house on the right was a BnB in Fisherman's Friends
We had to head 'home' back to Mevagissey via Bodmin, having made our own pilgrimage to remember a good friend
All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus
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