Review of The Kitchen at Lusty Glaze beach near Newquay
If you live in London you would be forgiven for not going around Britain with a fork. There is are lot of bars and restaurants to try out in the metropolis. But you would miss out big time.
Last week-end past , he & I loosened our belts a couple of notches and took the night train direction: Cornwall and the sea. I was seduced by a call, not that of the sirens but of the mobile phone company Orange which named the popular "The Kitchen" beach bar and restaurant at Lusty Glaze Beach near Newquay as one of Europe's top finest ten.
All booked for 19.00 with high expectations of a spectacular sunset, we started up on a 20 minutes lovely walk from our Newquay hotel across greens and along the coastal path, down 133 steps, beneath a cliff to a horse-shoe shape cove to get to the restaurant which is located right on the beach.
I was almost blown over by the beauty of the location. A spectacular sunset was at our rendez-vous and with a pre-diner drink in hand, we sat down next to couple of chimeneas chatting away with the Lusty Glaze first aider and co as we had known one another for decades. My first impression was that this whole place is certainly very cool.
The menu makes the most of local products featuring moules, crabs as expected but also duck and steak. There is a wide range of prices to accommodate all budgets. You can shell out £2.95 for a salad or £15.45 for a steak.
For starters, he chose oven-baked Camembert in its box with caramelized red onion and garlic bread and I went for Cornish Crab on a garlic bruschetta with mixed leaves.
When in the South of France and 19, I went on regular crab-fishing expeditions in the dead of night. These involved a bucket, a fork, a torch and a lot of laughter. clambering on wet rocks, the idea was to flash the torch at any cancroid shapes to startle the "beasts" so that they stopped dead in their tracks. That was the moment we chose to impale the marine crustaceans with the fork and quickly through them in the bucket. My friend Monique worked her magic immediately on return so the next day, lunch was a fresh and zingy crab concoction of which I can still remember the taste but have never experienced again until Saturday at The Kitchen.
The restaurant buys crabs from a local fisherman, I did not asked if he too went on night-expeditions but when I enquired about the crabs, the waitress smiled widely joined her 2 thumbs together, did the same with her indexes to show me how big the spider-crabs are.
This is what I liked about the place, it is not pretentious, there is a laid back atmosphere, you can feel that everybody is working hard and working together in an unobtrusive manner, focused on one aim: to make the guests feel good.
For main course, we went with the recommendation one steak -well-done- and chips & one sea-bass on a bed of risotto with dried tomatoes.
His steak was slightly too cooked but he (who is a bit of a steak expert) thought that the meat was really good and the fact that he did not put his fork down one minute, all the while his plate had something on it, says a lot.
The sea-bass was perfectly cooked, personally I would have put it on a bed of "just" rice, in my opinion the risotto didn't add very much to it but still this was a good main course. The price per head would have been just under £20 + drinks which is really good value for money as the portions are no-nonsense, generous portions.
As well as The Kitchen bar and restaurant, the beach is home to The Adventure Centre which provides many exciting activities for visitors including surfing, coasteering, rock climbing, zip wire rides and jetski safaris.
On the way back we were so contented that we forgot all about giving our nice experience a grade but definitely my recommendation is: when in Newquay, make sure you pay a visit to The Kitchen : http://www.lustyglaze.co.uk/restaurant.html
