From cheap shacks to fine dining, Cornwall’s food scene outpaces the beaches

It’s hard to forget a bad meal. But it’s harder to remember a good one, unless it’s really very good indeed.

Six weeks after the event, I can still taste the crab risotto eaten overlooking the sea. Rich and sweet with a slightly acidic tang and every now and again, a juicy hunk of claw meat, it sticks in my mind for the right reasons.

Between mouthfuls were slugs of spicy margarita – syrupy and slightly smoky with a not-too-hot kick and cooled by chunks of ice that clinked amid the happy hubbub of the dining room.

Outside, the turquoise-clear sea could have been lapping a Greek island, except that it was a brisk 15°C and this was the Channel. Earlier I’d swum off neighbouring Gyllyngvase beach until my hands throbbed.

Beach House Falmouth overlooks Swanpool beach

So, this blissful lunch at Beach House Falmouth was all the more memorable. The restaurant sits high on the rocks overlooking Swanpool Bay.

It’s the fourth in Tamara Costin and William Speed’s collection, which starts with the original Beach House, near Salcombe in Devon and runs along the South West coast via the School House on Devon’s Fleet Estate and the riverside Harbour House pub in the village of Flushing, opposite Falmouth.

“The hospitality scene is really good down here,” Tamara told me. “There are lots of pop-ups where people do one thing, but they do it really well, like the bagel guys [Dough an Dowr, a pizza and bagel truck] on Gyllyngvase beach.”

Cornwall might be first and foremost a beach holiday for many visitors, but there’s a strong argument for looking beyond the sand and pretty coves at its energetic food scene.

Rain or shine, there’s always an interesting place to eat the fantastic local produce (so good, in fact that 80 per cent of the fish caught in Cornwall is exported to Europe).

Down on the Lizard peninsula there’s family-run Flora – a café, bakery and restaurant on the vast Trelowarren Estate that uses produce from “small growers, farmers, fisherfolk and foragers”.

Up near the border with Devon, “soil-centric” Crocadon Farm works collaboratively with suppliers for its fine dining restaurant. The Sunday lunch “feast” might include Looe bass or farm-raised mutton, while its sourdough bakery draws visitors from near and far.

Fundamental to all is a pride in local produce – and that fizzes in the air at Beach House Falmouth. Staff were eager to tell me about the fish that had just been landed, as well as the crab, scallops and lobster from Falmouth Bay.

Staff at Beach House Falmouth are passionate about local food

The restaurant, just off the South West Coast Path, is already a big hit. The tables are usually booked at weekends and are likely to get busier still when The Salt Path – the film of Raynor Winn’s 2018 memoir about walking the coast path with her husband Moth – hits cinemas this month.

The bright and breezy interior is somewhere between New England beach shack and Amalfi coast boutique hotel with Campari-red accents, glazed tiles, mid-century-style chairs and wide-ranging sea views.

Outside, a converted horse box serves £2 coffees, cocktails and a short menu to passers-by who sit on the Greek island-type white terraces, under festoon lights.

After lunch I took a half-hour stroll along the South West Coast Path to the quiet cove at Maenporth. Sunshine had brought out other walkers, joggers, dog-walkers and cyclists, but it wasn’t busy.

Seafood at Beach House Falmouth

Capricious weather is a problem for anyone working in tourism in places like Cornwall, where the visitor economy is the county’s biggest sector.

Faced with higher prices and typically wetter, colder weather than Spain, for example, many holidaymakers have been tempted abroad recently.

But that trend is turning as a result of the good weather so far this spring. While visits were 10-15 per cent down at the start of last summer, there is now a “cautious optimism” that people are feeling more confident to book, according to Visit Cornwall’s new chair, Jon Hyatt.

On one of the first sunny days of spring, I’d arrived on the Roseland peninsula to seek out The Hidden Hut, overlooking Porthcurnick beach, for lunch. Simon Stallard – who cooked for G7 leaders on the beach in 2021 – opened this now-legendary venue 15 years ago. With a passion for local ingredients and wood-fired cooking, the former management consultant also organises summer “feast nights”, but the Hut pulls a steady crowd throughout the seasons.

A feast night at The Hidden Hut (Photo: Ed Schofield)

More recently, Stallard and his partner Gemma Glass renovated a centuries-old pub, The Standard Inn, in the nearby village of Gerrans.

That evening, I joined a mix of local families, young couples and holidaymakers from France – clearly delighted by their choice of remote restaurant.

The menu included cured mackerel with ajo blanco, grapes and smoked almonds, Cornish hake with asparagus and hollandaise, and artichoke and truffle ravioli with wild garlic and peas. Another one for the memory bank.

At the southern end of the Roseland peninsula, on a coastal walk to St Mawes Castle – a suitably rotund fortress built for Henry VIII – the roadside was blanketed with the delicate white flowers of wild garlic, so picked a bunch to take with me to Falmouth.

After taking the antiquated chain ferry across the River Fal, I arrived in my holiday apartment, Port at The Liner, a modern development in Falmouth, to find the fridge stocked with a Cornish Food Box I’d ordered through rental company Beach Retreats, which specialises in places right by the beach.

The sea-view from Port, The Liner, in Falmouth (Photo: Beach Retreats)

In the bright white kitchen, I chopped the wild garlic to cook with live rope-grown Cornish mussels, line-caught local mackerel and locally grown vegetables, glancing out to watch the waves roll on to Gyllyngvase beach.

That night, a full moon flood-lit the shimmering sea. After enjoying the mussels and mackerel, I went out to the balcony to breathe in the sea air, listening to the waves and the hoot of an owl.

“It’s surprising just how many places [in the South West] don’t sell good, fresh fish,” Tamara Costin had told me. “That’s partly why we do what we do.”

But having eaten nothing but great, local produce during my stay, much of it from within a 20-mile radius, it was clear that Cornwall is so much more than its pretty coves. It’s the food that really sings here and is reason to make the journey, whatever the weather.

Getting thereFalmouth is served by GWR trains from Truro, where you can connect

to services towards Penzance, Plymouth and London Paddington.