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Tales Of Cornwall: Why good seafood is simply divine

Brian Viner
Friday 15 August 2003 00:00 BST
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If you can characterise a medieval pilgrimage as a journey undertaken once a year involving uncommon zeal, intense devotion and genuine hardship, then our annual dinner at the Holy Sepulchre of Rick Stein in Padstow, otherwise known as the Seafood Restaurant, perfectly fits the bill.

And what a bill! This year, with service, it came to just over £160 for the two of us, and it wasn't as if we, as it were, pushed the boat out. Admittedly I had the hot shellfish starter at a knee-buckling £18, but other than that we kept things pretty sensible.

Still, I never begrudge handing over my debit card at the Seafood Restaurant, which I first visited when Stein was only a winkle in a TV producer's eye. I'm like a Manchester United supporter who feels the need to point out that he followed the club in the less fashionable era of Arthur Albiston and Ashley Grimes.

We eat there - yes, religiously - every August, having made our reservation the previous December. And every August the cooking, the service, the ambience, reaffirm my faith. Occasionally, like the Virgin Mary at any decent pilgrimage site, Stein himself puts in an appearance. But unlike the Virgin Mary he doesn't shimmer. He's a reticent, rather shy cove, about whom many of the good folk of Padstow remain oddly ambivalent, resenting his success at the same time, in many cases, as cashing in on it.

For those of us who visit but once a year, by contrast, Stein is unequivocally a Good Thing, not just for the empire he has created, but for the ripple effect he has initiated. Acting on the old shoeshop principle, which held that the best place to open a Saxone was next to a Freeman, Hardy & Willis, several other restaurateurs have set up classy joints in Padstow. The phenomenon has even spread to the tiny village of St Merryn nearby, where Ripley's is run by a former Seafood Restaurant chef, Paul Ripley. We haven't been, but I have heard that, as befits a Mr Ripley, the fellow has talent.

Our most exciting discovery this summer has been the Beach Hut, at Watergate Bay near Newquay. It's been there for a few years steadily acquiring such an illustrious reputation that The Independent 12 months or so ago declared it one of the world's best beach restaurants, but we didn't make it until last week. And of course, The Independent never gets it wrong. The Beach Hut has the laid-back charm, engaging service and top-notch grub of similar operations in Australia or California, but without the jet-lag. When the sun shines on Watergate Bay, as it has these past 10 days, there seems no point whatever in crossing oceans. One day, the Beach Hut might even displace the Seafood Restaurant as the focus of our pilgrimage, but for now, with the taste of that hot shellfish starter still on my lips, that seems like heretical talk.

For real stress-busting, try a bucket and spade

Never mind expensive detoxing treatments, to rid body and soul of stress the thing to acquire is a £1.95 fishing net and a £2.25 bucket. The rock pools of Constantine Bay are full of lawyers, stockbrokers and captains of industry - metaphorical big fish in literal small ponds - carefully parting fronds of seaweed in search of those ever-elusive Cornish crabs. You see them muttering to themselves, all their cares and worries condensed into the quest for a crab bigger than the one they caught the day before. Sometimes they have kids with them, but very often not.

And as if an afternoon's rock-pooling were not relaxation enough, an enterprising young woman called Gabrielle has now set up a massage service in the first house on the lane up from the beach. She has had the inevitable inquiries about "extras", but it is all strictly above board. Gabrielle charges £25 for an hour's treatment, and on Monday I indulged. A full-body massage, and in my bucket four crabs, numerous shrimps and a little wriggly fish... by 5pm I made the Dalai Lama look like a geezer in need of an anger-management course.

Nocturnal manoeuvres

Staying at the same hotel year after year means that you make firm friends with fellow-regulars. But it is an odd kind of friendship. You eat, drink, laugh, swim and lie in the sun with them, and then you don't see them for 50 weeks. Sometimes, however, a holiday friendship transcends these boundaries, and so it is with my mate Mark Johnson, whom I met here at the Treglos Hotel six years ago. We now stay in regular contact until it is time to pack the bucket and spades again.

Not least of Mark's qualities is a deft touch with an anecdote, and he tells a marvellous story about Henry, the night porter here in the days before we started coming. Henry was a fabulous old character, sadly now on duty behind the celestial front desk. One night, after a good deal of wine had been taken, Mark asked Henry if he had seen active service during the Second World War. "Far East," grunted Henry. "Special Operations. Used to parachute us behind the lines and we took out the Japs one by one. Crept up behind them and slit their throats." He demonstrated with a corkscrew.

"You'd never manage to creep up on me without me hearing you," said Mark, winding him up.

"We'll see about that," said Henry.

And thus it was that a couple of nights later, Mark woke up alongside his wife Sara at about 5am to find Henry the night porter looming over him, slowly drawing a finger across his throat. "Gotcha," he muttered, then silently receded into the night.

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