Who is this piquant Cornish ingenue? She’s so spicy and curious.
Like the cocktails, it turns out the food in the UK is delicious! Has it always been that way? IDK. The only thing I could afford to eat in the UK was bagels and sandwiches from the TESCO when I traveled to London previously.
“Good Food” might be a bit of a thing in Cornwall.
There were hardly any stereotypical boiled meats, and many eateries had vegan options and even hot sauce availability! We, of course, made sure to hit up the classics, but the food in Cornwall is so much more than chip shops and sausage rolls.
This was our first trip to Kernow, the word for Cornwall in native Cornish, and we’ll likely return because it’s gorgeous, and the food was friggin’ fantastic!
Our first venture out for foods was to find the ubiquitous cream tea for which the Cornwall region is known, a scone split down the middle and loaded up with strawberry jam and *drools* clotted cream.
And like any good food, there is a point of contention.
My UK school chums had warned me, “When you eat a cream tea in Cornwall, always jam first.” AKA, the proper way. And since you’re probably a smart cookie (or biscuit if you’re a Brit), you’ve likely put together that there is an improper way. And there is! Well, improper for Cornwall, and that’s the Devon way. You see, the beast-people of neighboring Devon put the cream on their scone first!
We ended up eating most mornings at the Muddy Beach Cafe. We tried everything on the menu, and the view somehow made the tea taste better.
I didn’t dare try the Devon method while in #jamfirst territory, but I’d imagine it doesn’t change the taste. That said, I’m officially declaring, “...as for me and my family, we are jam on the bottom for life!” I can only hope this doesn’t end in a fist fight, which there seems to be a lot of in the UK.
If visiting Falmouth like we were, you must try startlingly fresh seafood!
Both my husband and I are oyster maniacs. We love slurping down those little slimy buggers. They make you feel young and robust, i.e., horny, and it’s essential to feel that way on vacation. That hotel bed ain’t gonna bounce itself.
So even though we both became horrifically sick on our last vacation from eating raw oysters, that didn’t stop us from ordering them again on this trip!
I am so glad we didn’t learn our lesson because we would have missed out on the chance to load up on Falmouth’s native oyster. You can read about them here.
Our first plate was at a delightful hole-in-the-wall, The Seafood Bar, run by Verdant Brewing Co.
The food is seasonal. The menu focuses on availability. Every dish we tried shot our tastebuds to the moon! I would have eaten at this joint every day, but I only have so much room in my middle-aged tummy. We are already splitting all our food like grandparents, for chrissakes!
For our “big special dinner,” we checked out Hooked on the Rocks, a Michelin star restaurant overlooking Swanpool beach.
This fancy but not too fancy restaurant is like a rich person who doesn’t want you to know they spent $400 on a t-shirt. It’s a casual dogs on the patio-type place with an impressive seasonal menu. A word of caution if you choose to sit outside; despite it being a heatwave in July, we still needed blankets on the patio.
It's England, not Hawaii.
We ate yet another plate of oysters at the Gylly Beach Cafe after working up an appetite by wandering the shore and poking at tidepools.
The cafe features the picturesque coastline of Gyllyngvase Beach and a sand-on-the-floor atmosphere. I recommend sitting inside to get an easy view of the folks outside defending their meals against hungry seagulls. They are aggressive.
No fry is safe.
You will not believe this, but we ate the most delicious hot sauce in a Cornish fishing village.
We stumbled into Bango Kitchen on our last day in town. Technically in Penryn, Bango Kitchen continues the region’s commitment to sustainable food culture but gives it a Pan-Asian twist.
The food was exciting and flavorful, but having a week without hot sauce was starting to get to us.
Back in Cleveland, we are ~those~ people with a hot sauce collection for all occasions.
Thankfully, Bango Kitchen has a top-notch secret spicy sauce for which I’m still trying to figure out a copy-cat version. Does it maybe have carrots in it? Kind of sriracha? I couldn’t tell you, but Ben and I ate the entire bottle on our table. The food didn’t need the sauce to taste delicious but drinking it from the bottle seemed uncouth.
To wrap this up, here’s a photo of the worst meal we had on our trip. I suppose I was tempting fate by ordering sweet and sour soup at the local pub. I guess you can’t win them all.
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