Cafe Review - The Courtyard Deli, Falmouth

It was a really hot day in August and I sat outside in the 'courtyard' of the Courtyard Deli, Falmouth.  Nobody took my order for over half an hour - I was waiting for three members of my family, but I would have liked a coffee or tea while I waited.  My family were in Beerwolf  next door.  This place has developed from a book stall into a pub / bookstore and we all love it.  Apparently their food isn't really great (yet) so it might be worth popping next door for coffee / tea/ lunch.

I also had a long chance to look around the courtyard of the deli.  I think they could do more with the area.  The bins and air con unit from the pub adjacent are TOO visible and the table where I was sat was so sloping that the waitress had trouble putting glasses on it without them sliding downhill.  There was also quite a bit of litter around, plus flowers that needed deadheading more than my own at home.  And that's saying something.

Sooo, I was feeling worried about the food as the attention to detail in the 'courtyard' just wasn't there.  When my companions arrived we all ordered different dishes so I got a good idea of the menu.  My son ordered the homemade tomato and basil soup with garlic bread which he loved.  My daughter had the quesadillas which she thought were alright (we have them a lot at home so they might have had to live up to them!), my husband had a plate of local bread, cheese and charcuterie which he loved and I had some spinach filo pie with salads which was fine, although not outstanding.

I had a wander around the shop later and thought the interior was charming.  The friendly owner chatted to me and even provided a website for me to source a difficult to find ingredient that she didn't have in stock.  I was very grateful and I bought some local cheese.  A satisfying but not perfect lunch.

I was a guest of the Courtyard Deli but I was able to write what I wished

Review: Archies Loft, Coverack, Cornwall. Pizza with a view

When staying in Coverack, The Lizard we always try to make time to pop into Archies Loft.  It is owned by Roskillys the local ice cream family, and they basically sell freshly made cookies, pizzas when they are ready and ice cream.  There is no indoor seating, but a couple of tables and chairs outside to sit and munch on your homemade goodies.

 The seagulls look well fed (and unusually quiet!)

I love it there.

I Love The Lizard, Cornwall

This is my 100th blog post.  Wow.  I was delighted to write my first piece for the Guardian about great places to eat on a budget in North Devon.  Busy busy.  To celebrate I'm going to indulge in a couple of photos of one of my favourite places in the world: The Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall.  These places are all within about 10 miles of each other.

 This is The Lizard Point, the most southerly part of mainland England.  I met a friendly forager here who tempted us to nibble a couple of the local plants.  From this position there were about seven different wild edible plants within four feet of us.

 This is Mullion harbour

Cadgwith

The archetypally Cornish fishing village of Cadgwith.  Beautiful thrift in the foreground.

It is beautiful, rugged, remote and  just a very relaxing place to be.  

I have previously described some of my favourite things to eat there including the sinfully divine Hope's Cinnamon and Pecan Buns, Polpeor Cafe and Ann's Pasties, but actually you can't beat a little rustic picnic featuring Hope's gruyere and cumin bread, spiced pears, Helford Blue cheese (plus Tesco olives, Cornwall haven't got around to producing those....yet)

Food Magazine Reader Awards Ceremony, Abode Exeter, Jan 2012

Just got back home after attending the first ever Food Magazine Reader Awards event this evening.  It was held at Michael Caines' Abode in Exeter, a fine venue, the room brightly lit in Food Magazine's trademark bubblegum pink colours.  Thatcher's cider, Frobisher's fruit juices and Champagne were flowing.

Canapes were sole goujons served in miniature cardboard cones with a chunk of lemon and some tartare sauce, fish / quail's egg scotch eggs, mini skewers with baby mozarella, roasted tomato and basil.  All quite yummy.

The votes had come purely from readers (unlike some other foodie awards which can be a little bit 'manufactured') and covered the whole of the South West region - Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall so there was some stiff competition.  I chatted to the lovely people from Thatcher's cider (I hadn't realised until this evening that the current owner is fourth generation Thatcher and that they're a fairly small operation, as a Westcountry girl, I just thought they were everywhere and huge.)

The chap from River Cottage accepting the award on Hugh's behalf- we weren't really disappointed that Hugh wasn't there... 

The happy couple from Mendip Moments

Mendip Moments Ice Cream, shortlisted in the 'Food' Category, is now on my list of must-tries - apparently it's available from Chandos Deli in Exeter so I'll pop in next time I'm at Princesshay. Hey guys you didn't tell me you have Fig, Mascarpone and Honey flavour - yum!!   They were one of three products shortlisted in the Food Product category.  What a huge and varied category.  Considering all the food that is produced in the South West...

Some of the acceptance speeches were incredibly brief, but I found it quite endearing when the Best Chef, Adam Fellows just said ' Thanks, and thanks to my wife' and hurried off clutching his rather luscious and chunky pink Dartington Crystal award.  I think the chap from Browns Hotel may have even just said 'Thanks very much'.

Really enjoyed myself so thanks to the lovely folk at Mole Valley Farmers who were so chatty and friendly (and were the main sponsors of the event) and to Food Magazine for inviting me.

The Awards


Best Drink: Luscombe Organic Drinks
Best Food Product: Trevaskis Farm's Strawberry Jam, Hayle
Best Foodie Hotel: Browns Hotel, Tavistock
Best Retailer: Darts Farm, Topsham
Local Food Hero:Hugh Fearnley-Whittingtall
Best Foodie Pub: Victoria Inn, Perranuthnoe, Penzance - really want to go there!
Best Restaurant:  Allium, Fairford, Glos - besides the point but what AMAZING hair this gal had.
Best Chef: Adam Fellows, Goodfellows, Wells, Somerset
Best Cafe: Duchy of Cornwall Nursery Cafe

It was very pink in there.  These were the sole goujons in cones modelled by Yvonne from Thatchers!

Retro Trailers from Cornwall - Stylish Alternative to Caravans

About a month ago we were at Ruan Minor Vintage Rally and spotted two of these silver teardrop shaped handmade trailers on display:

I chatted to the maker, an innovative and personable chap, based in West Cornwall.  He custom makes each trailer to customers’ specifications.  They are roughly £4000 for the smaller one and £6000 for the larger one.  If it wasn’t for my two kids, lack of funds and no driveway to store the thing, I would definitely be a punter.

There was something incredibly appealing about these mini caravans.  The whole of the inside of the main compartment is taken up by a snug double bed with storage space and somewhere for a stereo, but no standing room.  Romping room only.

The back opened outwards in the style of an Italian street coffee cart, and inside was a diminutive kitchen, done up in a lovely black and white checks with red accessories; space for a cool box and a gas burner.  As the lady from Retro Trailers told me, it’s really a fair weather kitchen, but if the sun was shining, what fun.

They look so dinky when being towed (what?! could I consider a towbar? Yes, if I had an E Type, I damn well could.)

http://retrotrailers.info/

Sticky Pecan Big Buns from Cornwall - Hope's Bread

These are worthy of a blog post all to themselves.  I'm not supposed to eat nuts, so I picked them all off and passed them to my other half, so used my imagination to add them to the overall delight of these sticky, enormous, calorific, doughy wonderful delicacies.  Bearing no real resemblance to a French Pain aux Raisins, these little beauties have soft sticky thick toffee sandwiching the soft spiral together and then slightly harder, more toffee-apple crunchy bits in places.  £1 - total bargain - these are big buns! No wonder I put on weight when I visit Cornwall!

We were lucky enough to be in Cornwall at the right time for the Gweek Food and Craft Fair at Easter.  They seem to have one at Easter and one over the August Bank Holiday.  Next one is Bank Holiday Monday 29 August  2011.

 The village hall where it is held may be small, but it's packed with fantastic local food producers like Sargies (puds, meringues and lemon curd); Treveador Farm Dairy, producers of Helford White, possibly my favourite cheese in the world;  and the wonderful Hope's Bread.  Hope's produce can be found at most West Cornwall Farmer's Markets during the week and at other special events - see the website  Here's the lovely Hope of Hope's Bread who makes the splendid sticky cinnamon buns....oh and just a few different types of bread (the lavender and honey bread is yummy as toast, and the olive focaccia was the perfect accompaniment to lunch outside in the sun with a glass of wine):

All the producers were located within a few miles of Gweek, a small creekside village famous for its Seal Sanctuary (Top Tip: Use your Tesco Clubcard vouchers to pay for entry fees) and near the town of Helston.  See you there on August Bank Holiday!

Posh Devon Cream Tea at Lewtrenchard Manor Hotel

We were treated this week to a 'posh afternoon tea' at Lewtrenchard Manor Hotel.  In the middle of stunning Devon countryside (bordering on Cornwall) that feels like it's miles from anywhere, this is an oak-panelled Jacobean mansion with a roaring log fire that was just right for a cold winter's day.

The ten of us were celebrating my Dad's birthday and we had a huge circular table in a panelled room to ourselves.  The children were determined to run around and around the outside of the table.  So they did.  We were brought out freshly baked (sultana) scones and small bowls of clotted cream and jam.  Rather embarrassingly (they didn't know about our distended Christmas bellies) we had to ask for more cream and they brought us a cereal bowl full.  The finger sandwiches weren't dainty, but the smoked salmon and cucumber ones were tasty.  Too much mustard on the ham version.

We ate all the chocolate cake, most of the lemon cake and only one piece of the seeded carrot cake.  We're that kind of family.  Shall I mention the member of our party who brought out their freezer bags and pocketed the remaining cakes to take home.....?  (wasn't me!)

Top marks for the scones - difficult to get right, superb when they are; sandwiches pretty good and the cakes were good, but could have been smaller and a little more....elegant... to fit in with the surroundings, rather than hefty big rectangles that looked straight out of a tray bake.

A lovely afternoon with family - thanks, Mum!

Lewtrenchard have the interestingly named 'Purple Carrot' experience where up to eight diners sit in a row and watch their meal prepared for them on flat screen monitors in front of them.


Chef's commentary is apparently optional.  Wouldn't be my first choice of a gourmet night out, but I suppose if I was getting bored of my dining companion, or needed something different, eating gourmet food whilst watching a kitchen on CCTV cameras might be a fun way to spend some time...

Polpeor Cafe, The Lizard, Doughnut with Clotted Cream

This is my guilitiest pleasure in the whole world.  The Most Southerly Cafe in England is Polpeor Cafe, perched on the clifftop at the point of The Lizard in Cornwall.  They serve all sorts of wicked goodies, including the Cornish Heava Cake (full of fruit and doughy).  My sinful indulgence is the freshly fried doughnuts served hot with strawberry jam and a huge dollop of clotters on the top.  This is the most calorific food imaginable and should really only be consumed by Michael Phelps and marathon runners.  And me.

This is their knickerbocker glory, conjured up by visiting fairies:

The views from this cafe are awesome.  Sitting here is a real spiritual tonic - you feel renewed by the sea air and the expanse of ocean - it's also quite exciting feeling that at any point you might be the MOST southerly person on the English mainland.  The dramatic cliffs slope down to white-flecked turquoize waters (if you're lucky enough to be there on a sunny day).  From the cafe seating area you can sight the rare chough (similar to a crow, with a red beak and feet) that first started renesting within a few hundred yards of the cafe a couple of years ago.  There are currently thought to be eight of them.  Twitchers with binoculars abound.  Seals are frequent visitors to the waters below and we have spotted them several times while tucking into doughnuts and knickerbocker glories.  One day when we got down to the beach after a trip to the cafe, the seal approached us like a friendly dog - he was as curious about us as we were about him - sadly, no pictures!

A Quick Cornish Crab Sandwich from Cadgwith, The Lizard, Cornwall

This is enough to make my mouth drool.  Freshly picked white crabmeat from the Crab Shop at Cadgwith Harbour, The Lizard, served on our own homemade bread with plenty of ground black pepper and a squeeze of lime juice.  Simple food that I could eat every day of the year.

Have just found out that a major new publicity drive for a fantastic South Devon product - CRAB - has just started - all the info is here:

http://www.peoplesrepublicofsouthdevon.co.uk/2010/06/02/get-crabby-about-south-devon-new-tourism-and-food-campaign/comment-page-1/#comment-142948

Ann's Pasties, The Lizard, Cornwall

Ann is one of Rick Stein's food heroes and deservedly so.  Forget Ginsters forever.  These pasties are amazing.  Full of top notch ingredients and baked by Ann in the converted garage at the back of her house in a quiet residential area almost at the Southerly tip of the UK.  

She reckons her gift in life is to be able to correctly season a a pasty.  Well it takes all sorts....Here are the ladies making the pasties:

Phone ahead to reserve them - hungry hikers from the SW coastal path sometimes buy them up en masse.

We took ours to nearby Kynance Cove and perched on the cliff and had a perfect picnic.

Ann's Pasties
Sunny Corner
3 Beacon Terrace, The Lizard, Helston, Cornwall TR12 7PB
01326 290 889

Enough to Turn a Girl's Head - Skinners Heligan Honey Beer

I am a confirmed non-beer drinker.  Have never liked the stuff (and boy, did I try to when I was in my teens).  However, I had a wee sample of  N's beer during a balmy evening bbq a couple of nights ago and....this was a beer I could almost enjoy.  Skinner's Heligan Honey - with the addition of Cornish honey and apparently commissioned by the fabulous Lost Gardens of Heligan.  These gardens, restored by Tim Smit of The Eden Project, are an amazing place to visit if you ever happen to be in the region of South Cornwall.

This was when we visited in 2006:

But back to the beer! I chose the beer from a service station and, I have to say, it was chosen because it was local and Cornish brewed, not for their classy graphic design: the label is hideous.  N was pleased I  bought it for him to try as he said it was delicious and he would never have bought it with this label on.  Apparently, they also do a well-known (in beer circles) beer called Bettie Stoggs.  There was an even more grotesquely labelled beer called Cornish Knocker - I will try to find a picture - but I didn't like that one.  On so many levels.

As We Were Dining In St Ives....

...we had to go to Porthminster Beach Cafe, or Porthminster Restaurant as it's now known.  We only phoned them the evening before to make a table reservation (which given the popularity of the restaurant was a bit foolish).  They only had outside tables remaining.  The weather forecast was poor, but they reassured me that there was a retractable roof and outside heating if it happened to rain.  Hmmm, we thought, that's fine, but we're parking at J and J's house in Carbis Bay and after a 3/4 mile walk in the rain, we may not be entirely happy to be eating outside.  We are also aware that the restaurant has the reputation for being a bit on the pricey side: we wanted to enjoy our treat, not feel miserable and cold. 

Well, as it happened, the wonderfully fickle English weather turned out to be like this:

An absolutely stunning day of sunshine and blue sky.  Along with the beach cafe at Byron Bay, Australia, I would be happy to eat at the Porthminster every day of the year.  Unfortunately we weren't beachside as we had made a late table reservation, but  the view of the sea is still wonderful. It's a cliche, but the quality of the light really is different in St Ives.  The staff are all young, trendy and sporting ridiculous-for-May tans.  They're also welcoming and friendly which doesn't always go hand in hand with the previous description.  

I tried a glass of Polgoon Raspberry Aval as an aperitif.  Looked very pretty - it's a Cornish 'champagne-style' cider infused with raspberries.  I think they throw in the 'champagne-style' so they can double the price of it, however it was very pink and summery.  I prefer this to English wine - our cider is better than our wine is ever going to be.

 So after our 3/4 mile coastal path walk and quick construction of sandcastles on the beach, we all chose......fish and chips!  They really were the business.  The children were delighted with the food and declared it the 'best fish and chips ever'.  The chips are mixed with fried garlic cloves, chopped rosemary and plenty of flakes of sea salt.  The fish is perfectly offset by the crispest and lightest batter I've ever experienced.  Served with a wedge of lemon, freshly made tartare sauce and a shot glass of white balsamic vinegar.  (Would be quite funny if you tried to down that in one.)   Looking at these pictures is making my mouth water all over again.

Posh fish and chips.

We went and raided the fudge shops of St Ives for dessert.  Porthminster has a local reputation for being expensive, but I disagree.  For two fish and chips, two child sized fish and chips, one glass of Polgoon, one Peroni, a tea, coffee, salad and bread, the bill came to £50.  I would rather eat here once a year than have a years worth of average or substandard fish and chips that many places provide.

The only problem: we didn't meet a man with seven wives, kids, sacks, cats, kits which left us all a tad disappointed...