Padstow: UK Road Trip Part 5

After the road that went forever, we finally arrived at Padstow – the furthest destination of our trip! Padstow was the point that we were working towards as Rick Stein’s The Seafood Restaurant was the destination that inspired our whole trip. We managed to book an awesome deal at the Seafood Restaurant that included a “Generous” room (apparently second only to the Master suite!) plus an evening meal of 3 courses plus coffee in the restaurant itself and breakfast the next day – it seemed fairly pricey at first glance (£301), but when we realised that would get us anything we wanted off the menu plus an amazing room and breakfast, it turned out to be pretty good value! As it’s a celebrity chef’s restaurant (and our favourite one, no less!), the prices on the menu are typically quite high. We chose quite middle of the range priced dishes, although we could have gone really expensive (over £50 for a main course) – we chose not to because we wanted to get things we knew we would really enjoy since this was probably one of our only chances to visit the restaurant. So we added up how much our meal would have cost by itself, and it would have been nearing £200 at our estimations, so considering we got the room and breakfast too, the package deal was really good!
We didn’t manage to snap many photos of the food because the restaurant was busy and quite fancy, so I didn’t want to be that person taking photos of my food! The food was so good – I definitely want to go back now. I had scallops with prosciutto (AHmazing), rock bass with various incarnations of onion, then raspberry sorbet; Ben had crispy shrimp, Monkfish Goan curry and the super yummy apple dish below – the apple was filled with mousse and served with salted caramel ice cream and crumble.

And the best part of all?! As we finished our meal, none other than Rick Stein himself walked in!! He walked past our table, around the restaurant, back again (putting his hand on Ben’s chair on the way past!) and out the front of the restaurant. I just about fell off my chair when he walked in 😀 I gasped with excitement and Ben shushed me as he though I was just being weird (well…I was being weird!) then when he realised, he stopped shushing me! I persuaded Ben to let me go try and talk to him (it didn’t take much persuading) but as I approached him and he opened his mouth to speak to me (I managed to just say “Hello!”), his phone rang and he had to answer it – he did give me an apologetic look though. We saw him outside the restaurant again, still on the phone, but then we lost him! After a wander round Padstow (kind of looking for him, kind of a walk after dinner), we went back up to our room. And I fangirled all over Twitter about Rick Stein turning up for my birthday 😀

Again, I uselessly didn’t take many photos of the room! It was lovely and spacious, the bed was big and comfortable, we had a little patio area with a fountain, and the bathroom was amazing – I actually spent a good while in the bath before we went down for our dinner!

The next morning (my birthday!), we got up and I opened a few gifts and cards we’d brought with us (sewing books and kits galore!) then we headed down for breakfast – Ben went for the typical English breakfast and I had pancakes with a blueberry and lemon sauce. These were, again, AHmazing – really light and fluffy, and we’re now trying to perfect this recipe! Again, no photos though!
Before leaving Padstow for our next destination, the sun decided to shine for a little bit, so we had a walk in the morning sunshine around the town. There wasn’t a huge amount to see and do, but the views over the estuary were lovely and it was very quiet.

   We bought a few gifts on the way out of Padstow since our stay at the restaurant gave us a discount on Rick Stein products – wine, candles and bags all made the cut!
All in all, a pretty good start to a birthday – an amazing meal at a restaurant we’d been looking forward to, seeing Rick Stein, good breakfast and walk around a pretty seaside town. The next part of the day was equally as lovely too as we headed on to our next stop, so I’ve got another post for that one as it was entirely different, but a few more snaps first, including more outfit:

Just a quick note on the outfit too – I decided to dress up a bit more since the days previous had been in the same/similar jeans and jumper from the Shepherd’s Hut, and since it was my birthday 🙂 The blouse was new and quite different from my usual, and the skirt was also new but SUPER cheap (like £3) from Dorothy Perkins as they were having a closing down sale in the shop in Ripon and everything had to go – I got a few very cheap things!

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Outfit Details

White Blouse: ASOS | Skirt: Dorothy Perkins | Boots: Next (old, but similar here)