St Kew Inn

Came for lunch with high expectations having cheered on Andy the head chef in GBM and also seen him (and liked the look of his food) in Rick Stein's show. Expectations, on this occasion, were sadly not met though. And I'm a bit gutted to be honest. Maybe I caught them on a bad day, or the flavours and textures are just not as much to my taste as I thought. But here's my thoughts. 1. Allergies - poor. I'm GF, and the catering for this particular allergy was "we'll remove anything containing gluten from the dish but we don't have anything to replace it with". This is the first restaurant, nay even food establishment in Cornwall that hasn't been able to fully cater for GF. Even the little tea rooms we've been to for lunch do GF bread etc. And I had an outstanding GF burger (with bun!) at Caffe Rojano's in Padstow. Bad start that reduced an already limited menu. 2. Oysters - amazing. This was the highlight, delicious. 3. Starters - poor. An underwhelming focaccia. Prawns served cold when I expected hot/barbequed (nothing to tell me this on the menu). Not de-vained which I find a bit poor for a restaurant. Very meh. 4. Mains - average. I had the strip loin steak, I wasn't asked how I wanted it, so assumed medium would be the standard. It arrived very very rare. Partly my fault for not asking / specifying. I didn't send back thinking it'd be fine (I've eaten rare before and enjoyed it). Tough to cut through all the sinew etc, the crust was ok but not the flavour hit I was expecting, I ate less than half. The chips were hard as bullets. I couldn't get my fork in to them, when I succeeded they simply shattered like glass splinters. More like cubes of crisps. My wife had aubergine with ras al hanout. It was a whole aubergine, nothing special done to flavour it except the spices, was expecting some serious char flavours. Not soft and yummy but a bit firm so not a great eat. And very oily. Our 8 year old had fish and chips, she liked it, hooray finally!! I was jealous of the kids chips, she could get a fork in to them. 5. Dessert - no idea. Gave up by then and left. Extras: Service - ok. Nice people. But didn't ask how I liked my steak which was a bit of a fail. Also, very very slow. Even if we wanted dessert we were out of time. 2 hrs for starters and mains. My steak was removed from the bill which I appreciated. Place - beautiful. The building and village are lovely. The outside space looks gorgeous. Can't fault this aspect. WiFi - no provision for diners. In summary I'm just so so disappointed. I really seriously wanted to love this place. With all the good reviews I've read I hope we got them on a bad day. But I wanted to post this for some balance. Maybe it's better to eat here in the evening and not for lunch? No idea. But I'm hugely disappointed it didn't live up to the hype for us. For the money, Padstow's many restaurants are a better bet.

Lovely pint, friendly staff and great menu which the kitchen will adapt for gluten free/ kids etc. Perfect setting, thanks, we will return!