If you go to the seaside and don’t eat fresh fish, were you even really there?
There had been considerable hype around Ben Tunnicliffe, the chef who runs The Tolcarne Inn in Penzance. Supposedly the ‘jewel’ in Newlyn’s crown (a smaller, neighbouring town), the restaurant was said to serve seafood-based dishes with class and style, within the confines of an old maritime pub.
I can appreciate when a restaurant keeps the original features of a building in-tact, but ‘low-key’ seems to be the name of the game here – a theme that even runs through to the staff. We turned up a little early for our table, but were seated anyway and then made to wait 15 minutes for a drink order. This haphazard (although never actually unfriendly) service continued throughout our whole visit, which consisted of the lady behind the bar spilling a drink over a customer and then relaying the story to everyone who’d listen, a broken card machine which we were made to feel was our fault, and both members of wait staff bickering about people in the kitchen/other diners/the state of the dishwasher (delete as appropriate).
But anyway – on to the food.
I started with the cracked crab claws with lemon aioli and cucumber chutney. The crab was, as to be expected, deliciously fresh, although I didn’t really feel that the pickled cucumber brought anything to the dish and would have preferred the aioli to be served in a little pot for dipping, as opposed to being smeared on the plate. Portion-wise, there was plenty of juicy crab meat.
Husband went for the mackerel nicoise – calling it ‘dainty’ would be an understatement – and he thoroughly enjoyed all elements of the dish (potatoes, egg, mackerel – what’s not to like?) The rest of the time was spent laughing at me as I attempted to not do a Julia-Roberts-in-Pretty-Woman impersonation as I squeezed the crab claws to get the contents out.
For main course I opted for the fillet of hake with lobster & broad bean risotto and a salsa verde. The hake was perfectly tender with a crispy skin and the risotto was pleasantly cheesy, without overpowering the decent chunks of lobster. My only two gripes were that the broad beans seemed like an afterthought; something that had been added to the dish because they were in season, but which didn’t really marry flavours with the lobster and the cheese. Secondly, the salsa verde was, to me, inedible. I managed a few mouthfuls, but the overpowering flavour of parsley was too much (and I had an allergic reaction less than a hour later, which involved my tongue swelling up). Maybe I’m too used to Mexican-style salsa verde, but the bitterness of this sauce, and the fact that I was blatantly allergic to at least one of the ingredients, did nothing to enhance my experience.
Across the table was the roast monkfish with pak choi, peas, mushrooms and gnocchi. I’d shied away from this due to the inclusion of mushrooms (and I’m a sucker for lobster; sue me), but I had serious food envy. The homemade gnocchi was fried and crispy, the pea puree was wonderfully sweet and the mushroom sauce was rich and decadent. Again, the pak choi seemed like an odd choice, but not an entirely unwelcome one.
By this time, I’d eaten two plates of food that contained fantastically fresh seafood but that had left me wanting more. That ‘more’ wasn’t going to be a dessert, however, because by this time the staff had gotten even more erratic and I wasn’t being enticed by the choices.
We decided to instead call it a night and head back to our cottage.
The verdict? The seafood was just as fresh and well-cooked as you could expect at this kind of restaurant, but some of the other ingredients on the plates seemed to be an afterthought. Couple that with the wayward service and the overall experience what was I can only describe as… ‘unusual’.
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