Restaurant Review - St Petroc's Bistro

Restaurant Name: St Petroc's Bistro

Location: Padstow, Cornwall, UK

Visited: June 2010, Lunch

Part of the Rick Stein empire in Cornwall, St Petroc's Bistro delivers a seasonal menu in an attractive restaurant in bustling Padstow. His chief restaurant, the Seafood Restaurant is the one to visit but with long booking times and no children allowed, St Petroc's was the next best option.

I have fond memories of Padstow having spent time during summer holidays there cycling from nearby Trevone many years ago. If you haven't visited, Padstow is a charming tourist destination with a quaint harbour offering high speedboat rides, and some great crab fishing. With this recent visit to Padstow, it hasn't changed too much, except for Rick Stein having opened a number of additional sites such as Fish & Chips and a new deli.

So to the restaurant review in question. We had booked a table for 8 plus 2 children. Too large a table (in my opinion) to truly experience what this and any other restaurant has to offer. When you have a large party, the intimacy is lost and with so many voices, the food is no longer the raison d'etre. This also reflects the service offering at a lot of restaurants as they seem to believe that the guests are happy amongst themselves. The service therefore was average at best. Food was somewhat delayed between courses, and the attentive service that this restaurant/level was supposed to be delivering was not forthcoming. The atmosphere was noisy (this could have been our table of course ...) and compared to my previous visit to this restaurant, there was no finesse in the delivery.

Perhaps (and some might say) crucially, the food I ate was delicious; fresh, presentable, and put a smile on your face. For me, when food does this, they restaurant has success. I started with curried crab on sliced tomatoes served with one of the best Rocket salads i have tasted. The ingredients used were well sourced. The crab was fresh and sweet, and not too delicate and combined gracefully with the fresh tomatoes. Other guests had local asparagus with hollandaise - done right, this dish often fails to impress, and this was no exception. The hollandaise, all be it for me a little creamy, was very good. For mains I had whole pan fried lemon sole with bearnaise, as did most of the table. Again, the ingredients were perfect and cooked simply - often the best way. This was let down only by the most horrendous side salad I have tasted - to say it was salty was an understatement. The lemon sole though was superb. The side order of fries were also good though possibly a little oily.

For desserts we had fruit (and on this occasion a birthday cake for my wife) which was nice but not memorable. This however was not a reflection on the food in general, and nothing a good dollop of clotted cream couldn't sort out.

In summary, the food was great and perhaps had we been a smaller table, the experience would have been that much better for reasons aforementioned. I would return and would highly recommend - but only if you cannot get into Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant of course ...