Sophie loves Rick Stein. Really loves Rick Stein. Loves him on Saturday Kitchen when he is enjoying his breakfast wine, loves him on his evening shows when he is chugging on his wine wherever he is in the world. She has all the cookbooks and went to Mr Falafel after seeing it on Rick’s show, where, somewhat ironically, she bumped into Rick Stein himself eating a falafel wrap. He posed for a picture and she sent it to me whilst I was working, and I knew that her asking for a photo with him was a big deal given she won’t answer the phone to an unknown number. I see the appeal; the man is a national treasure, an accidental hero who oozes charisma, the one you turn to when you are sad or happy or tired or newly married. When we were planning our little honeymoon trip around the UK of course we were going to Padstow. Sophie had to see Rick again
So I am sorry wifey. Really sorry for what I am about to say. The reality is The Seafood Restaurant isn’t very good. In fact it’s not good at all. It’s a place of worship for Rick Stein followers, a church in that the main man isn’t there when you visit him. We ordered an aperitif that never arrived, then some wine that turned up after the second course as the wrong bottle. Prior to this there are two meagre slices of slightly stale bread with butter and a pappy salt cod brandade. Appetisers of a crab cakes that weren’t bound together properly, and a courgette flower that they can’t be arsed to stuff, but is at least sympathetically battered and fried, before bludgeoning it with a soy dressing that might have seemed edgy when they opened fifty years ago but now just feels half-arsed. They simply do not cut the standard of the price tag.
Lemon sole with shrimp butter was as tasty as the meal got, the fish cooked lightly and the butter properly punchy, whilst I had a risotto that was chalky in texture and simply not very pleasant. I cook a way better version at home. It wouldn’t be the last time they had issues with rice here, either. Indonesian seafood curry is classic, generic curry fair for the type of people who order korma, but with well cooked prawns and sea bass. On the side is rice that has the brittle top layer of a bowl that has been cooked by microwave, and a green bean salad where the garlic has burnt. I tell them. They shrug it off. Another main of chicken was cooked well enough, with a really excellent sauce cut with madeira and some tasteless morels. New potatoes on the side are so instantly forgettable it took my pictures to jog the memory. Rice pudding has more undercooked rice, though a treacle tart is nice enough if you overlook the thick pastry.
I do something I very rarely do and email them, detailing how the meal was never worth £200 and the room never worth £400, with the small proportions, dodgy flush, and crimes against kedgeree in the morning. They offer a bottle of Ricks champagne the next time we book, which is never going to happen given the four hour commute and inexcusably poor food. I guess I’ll stick to watching him on TV, pretending that this never happened. I’m called to remember a text message from a chef friend who visited a three star restaurant and sent through a flurry of pictures with the simple message of “the place is a museum, it needs putting down”. Comparing this with some of the incredible food that we ate after in Cornwall, I’m now inclined to say the same about The Seafood Restaurant.
4/10
