You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘porthleven’ category.
OK, I realise that two consecutive blog posts have contained images of bunting fluttering in the Cornish breeze – you’ll have to forgive me (particularly male readers) but really you’ve got to make hay while the sun shines.
This is a clip of Porthleven Food Festival on Saturday, taken from next to the food marquee, where I sat pint of Betty in hand, enjoying Read the rest of this entry »
All inspired by The Art of Cornwall on BBC4, I went over to the Tate St Ives to check out the Peter Lanyon exhib, his first retrospective in 40 years – now showing for an extended period until 23 Jan.
Lanyon’s works occupy a zone between out-and-out abstraction and realism that makes for rewarding viewing, I think. I prefer starting out with at least a hint of recognition when it comes to paintings, which is probably why the first room of the exhibition was my favourite, with wonderful representations of Porthleven (pictured above), Coverack and West Penwith. Click here for the curator of the Tate talking through the exhibition.
On the way out, I took this picture of the open-air atrium by the entrance – looked like a widescreen telly.
I also stopped off at the Barnoon Cemetery on the way back to find Alfred Wallis’s grave. It took quite a lot of finding in the fading winter light – as you might expect, it’s not an ostentatious tribute. It is simple, unpretentious but nonetheless charming – decorated with tiles by Bernard Leach.
When you review restaurants, as I have done on and off for ten years for Time Out in London and recently Cornwall, it is always slightly scary to sing high praises about a place or dish out a damning report on the basis of one trip.
So, even though a chef is only as good as his last meal and all that, I was pleased to see that Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner had made it all the way to “a gnarly old building at the skinniest end of Cornwall” to write about Kota in Porthleven, as a year ago I stuck a red star on it in the Time Out Guide to Devon & Cornwall.
“I’d be happy to declare this the best Asian food in Cornwall but the distinct lack of competitors renders it a rather hollow statement; instead, I’ll just say that Kota is quietly superb,” is what I wrote. So what did Mr Rayner make of it?
Despite expecting “the fishing-village shtick: food that went from surf to plate with little interference” (fair), Rayner found that: “There is an awful lot happening on the plates here. Ingredients from a lot more than 810 miles away are chucked at the dishes, culinary traditions co-opted with enthusiasm. There is a kitchen here which has yet to meet an ingredient it doesn’t like, and for the most part it works.”
Now I want to go again, you know, just to double-check that review. Read Rayner’s full review of Kota here.
Kota restaurant, Harbour Head, Porthleven, Helston Cornwall TR13 9JA. 01326 562 407. www.kotarestaurant.co.uk
ismay atkins
pasties & cream cornwall blog 