Porthminster Beach Cafe - St. Ives

Despite the disclaimer stating that the food is not suitable for those with celiac disease, the staff were very knowledgeable and accommodating. They were also very friendly and the food was delicious!

Great menu in a beautiful location on beach. Food is first class and service is always really good.

Stunning. One of the best locations in St Ives.Right by the sea. Charming style. Immaculate inside out and great value for money given some of the other places to eat that are no where near as nice but charging similar prices. Dine al fresco it's just amazing.

Everyone' said that a meal at the Porthminster Cafe was a must when in St Ives, so a table was booked a couple of weeks in advance and a table with the best view was requested, which they could confirm if we dined at No problem, I go to bed early these days anyway.On arrival, we were greeted warmly and led to a small table by the window, looking straight out onto the beach and ocean. We really enjoyed the view during our meal and even spotted a couple of seals just offshore.Alex started with the Cornish Scallops, with cauliflower puree, Cornish bacon, spiced nuts and warm grape truffle jelly. The dish was beautifully cooked and presented. For main course he had the Porthminster Monkfish Curry, with scallops, prawns, mussels, coconut, tamarind, turmeric, and jasmine rice; and I had the Pan Roasted on the bone Lemon Sole, with local rock samphire, vanilla pomme puree, crab, lemon, and spring vegetables. Both meals were most enjoyable, with fresh, perfectly cooked seafood and lovely flavours apart from the vanilla pomme puree' which was too sweet for my liking.For dessert, Alex had the intriguing sounding Caramel Bananas, with cinnamon meringues, pistachio ice cream, cinder toffee and Cornish wildflower honey. It not only looked fantastic, but tasted excellent too and made it to Alex's Top desserts of all time list. My dessert was equally delish the only thing I fancied on the menu was a Double Chocolate Brownie Ice Cream that accompanied one of the desserts, and after asking politely I was presented with a big bowl full of this decadent treat.We had a really memorable evening at this relaxed restaurant enjoyable food, friendly service and lovely views. Would certainly return if I am back in St Ives one day.

Even in chilly and blustery late March, St Ives is a popular place. While the sun was out, the shops and bars on the waterfront were seemingly never short of customers, and the chocolate-box narrow streets and whitewashed cottages behind teemed with day trippers and young families. Heaven knows how difficult it is to get a reservation in the Porthminster Beach Café in season, for even now, from the moment they open for lunch until late into the evening, it seems every table is taken. And beautiful though lunch in the daytime would have been, above the stunning aquamarine waters of Porthminster Bay, we had somehow, by sheer fluke, snagged a table for early evening on Tuesday.From the outside, the building is a pretty beach house, one of quite a few along the same stretch of coastline. Inside, however, the décor is standard contemporary restaurant, spot-lighting, welcoming beach wood floors and comfortable furniture. The welcome from the staff, too, was superb they'd even laid on a birthday card having learned from the hotel that it was one of our party's birthday. An easy thing to do, perhaps, but these little details make all the difference. We began with a local oyster each (they were from Fowey, just up the coast), dressed simply with lemon juice. Lovely in fact they disappeared so quickly I didn't manage to get a photo taken in time, but here they are after we'd finished with them:My starter was some local St Ives beef, served with a kind of coleslaw and a parmesan crisp. The beef was excellent a great, deep flavour and seasoned very well, a perfect example of intelligent local sourcing. And I always think anything crispy goes well with beef I'm a sucker for strong texture contrasts. The only slightly off note were a row of weird dried olives which tasted of cardboard and didn't really add much. But other than that, a great start.Things continued to improve with the arrival of bream fillets (my second portion in two days) and razor clams. Quite aside from being a stunningly presented plate of food, each element of the dish was cooked to a very high standard. The bream was delicately filleted and cooked expertly, the vanilla froth matched the fish very well, and a row of shredded razor clam meat added another texture layer. Top stuff. Similar noises were made around the table, the organic salmon and langoustines being another highlight.For dessert, I was served a pretty selection of five different sweets a crème brûlée, a dab of homemade fig jam, a raspberry shortbread, a superb fruit sorbet and a playful shot of fruit jelly topped with popping candy. A riot of texture contrasts and displaying a range of cooking techniques, only the questionable seasonality of raspberries detracted from what was otherwise an entertaining and delicious way to end the meal.So, as it turned out, Porthminster Beach Café is wildly popular for a very good reason it's a damn fine restaurant. Not only does it have the advantage of probably the best location for any restaurant I've visited outside the Costa Brava, but the food is intelligent and superbly executed and considering they could probably charge double these prices and still have them queuing in the street, very reasonably priced indeed. Residents of St. Ives will no doubt be completely unsurprised by this glowing review, but for anyone who has yet to visit this devastatingly pretty part of the world, Porthminster Beach Café should be top of your list.