Hardens Guide to the Best Restaurants in Victoria
Hardens guides have spent 33 years compiling reviews of the best Victoria restaurants. On Hardens.com you'll find details and reviews of 30 restaurants in Victoria and our unique survey based approach to rating and reviewing Victoria restaurants gives you the best insight into the top restaurants in every area and of every type of cuisine.
Featured Victoria Restaurants
1. The restaurant at Old Quay House
British, Modern restaurant in Fowey
28 Fore Street - PL23
“Continuing to be a reliable place for a quality meal in a lovely riverside setting” – the dining room and outside deck of this Victorian hotel provide wonderful estuary-side vantage-points for a meal. There are two-course and three-course menu options for about £40, and all-in-all it makes “an affordable special treat”.
3. Tiny Thai
Thai restaurant in Wadebridge
1a Molesworth Street - PL27
2021 Review: “At last a decent… well, actually quite a bit more than decent, Thai restaurant in North Cornwall!” – this “pretty tightly packed” café “lives up to its name, but this just adds to the fun” and its spicy scoff comes highly recommended.
4. Trevibban Mill Bar
Organic restaurant in Padstow
Dark Lane - PL27
2021 Review: “Windows overlooking the vineyard” afford views onto this peacefully located spot – run by Andy Appleton (a graduate of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Cornwall) although the “huge barn” it occupies can feel a tad “quiet” at less busy times. Numerous “excellent” meals are reported last year from its Med-slanted modern British menu.
5. Asquiths
British, Modern restaurant in Lostwithiel
19 North Street - PL22
2023 Review: “A small and intimate restaurant” – opposite an old church in Cornwall’s antiques capital – Graham Cuthbertson’s wood-panelled spot “serves great modern European and local dishes and the dining room is really comfortable”. “I went there with all my family and they were really accommodating with young children”.
6. Sam's on the Beach
British, Modern restaurant in Polkerris
2023 Review: “A gorgeous spot to eat tasty food while watching the sea”, this former Victorian lifeboat station has been transformed under Sam Sixton, who launched his local dining empire at the age of 17, back in 1988 (his son Noah is now part of the team). The “casual” menu runs from “wonderful fresh fish and seafood” to “tasty pizzas with both traditional and unusual toppings”.
7. Dining Room
British, Modern restaurant in Rock
Pavilion Buildings, Rock Rd - PL27
Limited but still all-round enthusiastic feedback this year for Fred & Donna Beedles’s low-key operation, in a parade of shops away from the harbour. The menu is a two-course or three-course à la carte, whose seeming straightforwardness belies the skill of the cuisine.
8. Karrek, St Enodoc Hotel
British, Modern restaurant in Rock
Rock Road - PL27
The dining room at this smart century-old hotel has long been one of Cornwall’s prime culinary destinations, but the volume and tenor of feedback was more muted this year, so we’ve left it un-rated for the time being. There’s a choice of tasting menus in six or nine courses, and less of a focus on seafood than in the Nathan Outlaw era of a few years back. Karrek is apparently Cornish for Rock.
9. Stein’s Fish & Chips
Fish & chips restaurant in Padstow
South Quay - PL28
2022 Review: “Well worth a visit if in the Padstein area” when you're in the market for “great fish ’n’ chips”; “other Rick Stein eateries are available but this one has views over the estuary” – although they come with the caveat that your reveries “can be interrupted by tourists peering through the window to see what is on your plate!”
10. The Scarlet Hotel
British, Traditional restaurant in Mawgan Porth
Tredragon Rd - TR8
2023 Review: This “modern spa hotel with views out to sea” from its clifftop vantage point is fully geared-up for the eco tourist, with a solidly rated kitchen serving up sustainable meals from breakfast via lunch and afternoon tea to dinner, when there is a choice of tasting menus including vegetarian and vegan. Non-residents are now welcome to book, but it remains child-free.
11. The St Enodoc Brasserie
British, Modern restaurant in Rock
St Enodoc Hotel, Rock Road - PL27
2021 Review: Still a “lovely, relaxing” location, with views across the Camel estuary, but feedback at this hotel dining room has become very mixed since the departure of chef James Nathan and his illustrious predecessor, Nathan Outlaw (and the ownership of the hotel itself changed in January 2019, which “may not have helped”). Whatever the cause, while it does still have some fans, some regulars feel it’s “just not in the same class” as it was formerly.
12. Emily Scott at Watergate Bay
British, Modern restaurant in Watergate Bay
One of a handful of restaurants in this famous hotel, this ultra-romantic outpost was born as a beachside pop-up, and is ably overseen by Scott, a fast-rising Cornish chef and cookbook author; whether opting for the lobster lunches or six-course seafood menus, you’re in for some “fantastic food” (although one or two regulars feel it comes at a cost).
13. Seafood Restaurant
Fish & seafood restaurant in Padstow
Riverside - PL28
“Continues to impress after 25 years or more since our first visit” – the Stein family’s harbourside HQ continues to deliver the goods for the very many people who report on it in our annual diners’ poll. Opened in 1975, it is nowadays run primarily by Rick’s ex-wife Jill and her sons, and achieves the hard task of living up to the world fame of TV chef Rick (who nowadays spends a good chunk of his year living down under in Aus’). If you were to quibble, you would say the food is “lovely but not brilliant” or that it’s “not cheap by any means”, but to an impressive extent serious disappointments are completely absent in feedback this year: “you get the excellent seafood that you would expect with a good mix mix of interesting dishes alongside more plainly cooked options that allow you to fully appreciate the quality of the fish”. “Well worth the trip to Cornwall: the freshest seafood served with care and love!”
14. St Petroc’s Hotel & Bistro
Mediterranean restaurant in Padstow
4 New Street - PL28
One of the lesser-known venues in the local Stein empire, set in an old stone building in the heart of Padstow, this low key bistro serves “excellent” and “reliable meals that never disappoint” – “we usually enjoy fish”. Importantly for some visitors, there’s “a small indoor dog-friendly space”.
15. Paul Ainsworth at No6
British, Modern restaurant in Padstow
6 Middle St - PL28
“Out of this world!!” – “Paul Ainsworth’s flagship restaurant goes from strength to strength” and few restaurants in the UK achieve such a high level of esteem in our annual diners’ poll. “A culinary haven in the middle of, and yet a world apart from, the tourist crowds of Padstow”: it certainly eclipses its local rivals nowadays, with Nathan Outlaw a few miles down the coast its most serious nearby culinary competition. Set in a bijou Georgian townhouse, “the open kitchen shows off the enthusiastic team and it’s a case of selfies all round with the chefs after the meal”. “No, it isn’t cheap, but we found ourselves wondering how the team managed to set such high standards for the money”. “Special mention go to the dessert… and we don’t usually like desserts!” “All around an amazing gastronomic experience”!
16. Rick Stein’s Café
Fish & chips restaurant in Padstow
10 Middle Street - PL28
This casual venue – one of five outlets the TV chef and his family run in their adopted home town – is “not your typical café”: “prices are reasonable and the dishes spot-on”. The all-day menu runs from breakfast staples through to a lively mix of bistro and Asian dishes alongside seafood and steak sarnies.
17. Caffè Rojano
Italian restaurant in Padstow
9 Mill Square - PL28
Paul Ainsworth’s casual spot is a “surprising crowd-pleaser”, turning out “perfect arancini”, “brilliant salty house fries” and “excellent pizza with blistered crust” (“other dishes are available, but I’ve never got past the pizza”). While the odd skeptic who hasn’t visited since its 2020 bistro relaunch rues the disappearance of the “formerly excellent pasta dishes”, the vast majority love the “amazing” small-plates menu and, for dessert, “the brown butter soft-serve ice cream with your own toppings to add is SO Paul Ainsworth – fun!”.
18. Prawn on the Lawn
Fish & seafood restaurant in Padstow
11 Duke Street - PL28
Rich & Katie Toogood’s Cornish offshoot – a tiny spot near the harbour – generates much less feedback than their Highbury Corner original in London, but the ratings for its small plates of local seafood remain high. They also run a seasonal pop-up called Barnaby’s on similar lines, at Trevibban Mill Vineyard a short drive from Padstow.
19. St Kew Inn
British, Traditional restaurant in St Kew
“This beautifully situated Cornish pub” off the Padstow tourist trail has a pleasant location in a fifteenth-century stone building replete with a garden overlooking the local church; solid marks if little feedback this year for its open-fire cooking, and especially “good-value set lunches”.
20. The Cornish Arms
British, Modern restaurant in St Merryn
Churchtown - PL28
Rick Stein’s large, much extended village pub has had its ups and downs in the past, but continues its recent upward curve; the worst that anyone had to say about the British pub grub on offer is that it was “OK” (and one fan praised the vegetable tart as a “little pie of dreams”). If the “barn-like dining area” doesn’t appeal, opt for the garden in summer – or make a night of it in one of the six new ‘shepherds’ huts’ on the property (far less rustic than they sound).
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