Fish for thought
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Words by Hannah Tapping
A weekend immersed in Rick Stein’s Padstow, reveals a business with seafood at its heart and people in its soul.
Padstow arrives grey on the morning of my stay, the sky pressed low over the harbour and the water the colour of pewter. While it’s not the picture-postcard version of the town with blue skies and turquoise seas, there is something honest about it, the gulls wheeling and complaining over boats that rock gently at their moorings, the smell of salt and diesel and yesterday’s catch still hanging in the air. The mood feels contemplative and I really rather like it.
I park close to The Seafood Restaurant – Rick Stein’s first and flagship of the group – and step inside to find warmth waiting and coffee poured. I’m here at the invitation of the Stein family who are keen to share their ethos and the experience of Padstow and its seafood that has become the company’s marque. As I sit at my table by the window, watching the world walk by, the soundtrack of the low murmur of a kitchen already at work plays behind me. It is exactly the right way to begin a day that will turn out to be built almost entirely around the water.
Fuelled with coffee and delicious petit fours, we embark on our first adventure of the day; a fishing trip hosted by Jack Stein aboard the Emma Kate. Following in his father’s footsteps, Jack is Chef Director of Rick Stein and joins us on the quayside. Our skipper for the morning is a second-generation Padstow fisherman, the estuary written into him the way it is written into the town itself. He talks with the Cornish lilt and easy authority of someone who has spent a lifetime reading tides and currents. As the Emma Kate noses out past the harbour wall, Padstow reveals another face entirely. From the water, the town takes on a different perspective: a cluster of cottages climbing the hill, the Doom Bar shifting beneath the surface. From this vantage point, the whole business of fishing is laid bare in a way that is impossible to grasp from dry land. There is a particular pleasure, too, in being shown a place you think you know through the eyes of someone whose family has worked it for generations, in hearing which stretch of water still yields the best catch and which has long since been fished thin.
As we reach the estuary mouth, engine idling, Jack waxes lyrical about forgotten fish. Not the cod and the salmon that dominate supermarket shelves and restaurant menus, but the species that have slipped from fashion and from memory, gurnard, coley and pollack, fish that are abundant and sustainable and largely ignored. Jack’s argument is simple and persuasive: that by continuing to fish only the same handful of species, we place pressure on stocks that could be relieved if cooks and diners alike were willing to look again at what the sea actually offers. It is not a lecture, more a conversation with real feeling and it sets the tone. There is something compelling about hearing this argument from a chef, made not from a position of theory but from years spent at the sharp end watching the same handful of species move through the kitchen while others, equally worthy, seem to be passed over.
I grew up in the fishing cove of Cadgwith, my youth misspent messing about in boats and landing a catch always taken home in the same old battered orange bucket for mum to fillet. Fresh mackerel was a regular, same with pollack which mum would transform into the creamiest of fish pies. When dad ventured further out, it might be sea bass or whiting… on occasion Bernard the Gurnard would make an appearance, although we could never quite bring ourselves to eat him! If we were lucky, one of the cove’s commercial fishermen would add some crab claws to the bucket, from which the prized white meat would be picked out on the kitchen table, making for a lunch fit for a king. This was the norm for us growing up and it’s only over recent years that I’ve realised just how lucky I was to be exposed to such seafood species.
Meanwhile, back aboard the Emma Kate… Our skipper has set up multiple boat rods with colourful mackerel feathers. Eager to relive the excitement of my childhood, I drop my line over the side and begin the meditative practice of whiffing (as it’s known down Cadgwith); essentially pulling the rod upwards so that the feathers race through the water, mimicking the fry the mackerel are after. Three whiffs in and I feel the line pull. Reeling in, I’ve got a line-full. The fish were coming up fast and fighting and I take nostalgic pleasure in watching them hang from the feathers, their scales catching the light in flashes of iridescent blue and green, a colour that seems almost implausible against the grey of the morning. It is a small thing, but it stays with me, that flicker of oil-slick brilliance on a fish most people only ever encounter tinned or smoked. Rods around the boat are finding similar success and soon we have a basketful of fresh mackerel.
While on board, we lunched on Stein’s deli favourites; savoury pies with crisp pastry, sausage rolls to die for and cakes in every direction. There is a generosity to the spread that feels in keeping with everything else about the Rick Stein operation; proper food made well and offered without ceremony. We’re on a dropping tide, so as slack water takes hold, we reel in the final catch, stow the rods and motor back to Padstow, the Emma Kate’s twin diesels opened full throttle as we return to shore.
Back on land, I get my first proper look at the rooms, all designed by Jill Stein, whose eye for interiors runs through the whole business. I am staying at St Petroc’s Bistro and it is a space that seems to have absorbed the town around it. The sound of the harbour drifts up through the window, along with the cry of gulls and, more than once, the unmistakable smell of something good happening in the kitchen below. The room wants for nothing, right down to Jill’s own signature products on the shelf. It is worth noting, too, that Ed Stein, the eldest of the three brothers, works alongside Jill and his wife Kate on exactly this kind of detail shaping the bones of the business from behind the scenes.
Smelling of Jill Stein’s beautiful signature scent, Porthdune, I take the short stroll down to The Seafood Restaurant, where I’m excited to try the new tapas-style Seafood Bar. At the centre of the restaurant, the beautiful central bar area has been reimagined. Here, you can now walk in, order a glass of wine and a few plates of something delicious to share. The cocktails are extraordinary, mixed with the precision of a magician, each one arriving with a flourish and Rick Stein’s own-blend white Burgundy is a triumph.
Then comes the tapas… the prawn toast is immense, the octopus char siu skewers smoky and succulent in equal measure, charred at the edges and tender within, and oysters, of course, come three ways – raw, tempura, Rockefeller. There is something rather wonderful about a place with this much culinary pedigree behind it, choosing to keep its bar unpretentious. It feels glamorous though and that’s part of its appeal. I finish with an indulgent, but palate-cleansing sgroppino, a decadent dessert that I simply cannot recommend enough.
The evening is spent at the Seafood Cookery School, and it is here that the Stein family’s collaborative energy is most visible. We are there to learn how to fillet and cook red mullet, which we serve with a tomato and potato sauce, finished with chermoula and fresh herbs. Jack leads the filleting class, his deft and unhurried skill coming from years of experience, while Charlie waxes lyrical about wine.
We channel our inner MasterChef, filleting, seasoning and tasting with a concentration that comes from being slightly out of our depth, but the result is delicious and a reminder that there’s no need to be afraid of cooking fish; you just need a few pro tips and you’re away. We drink a particularly delicious Greek wine, a choice that says something about Charlie’s willingness to look beyond the obvious regions.
After a night’s sleep fuelled by sea air and a nightcap at Ruby’s Bar, the following morning dawns with the return of blue skies and a light breeze. A walk out to the beach and back is much needed after so much culinary indulgence. Padstow is just waking up and has that unique feeling you get when you’ve got a place almost to yourself.
Lunch at The Seafood Restaurant is hosted by Jill Stein as ever, graceful and eloquent, dressed in a buttery soft green leather jacket that draws admiring glances from every woman at the table. What strikes me most, though, is not the jacket but the manner behind it. Jill speaks of her sons with obvious pride, but never once does it tip into boasting. There is a gentle, humble nature here, and yet it is impossible not to notice that she has been the framework behind the business, the steadying matriarchal presence that allowed Rick, and now Ed, Jack and Charlie, to build something so expansive. She supports the next generation of Steins without needing to claim any credit for herself, and that, perhaps, is the truest measure of her role in all of this. Talking to her, it becomes clear that the business, for all its restaurants and hotel rooms and television series, still runs on the same values it was founded on back in 1975, and that Jill has spent five decades making sure of it.
What lingers, days later, is not any single dish or view but the sense of total immersion in a particular way of life. The Stein family have built something unique; a business run on instinct and ambition. Padstow may have greeted me under grey skies, but by the time I leave, the place has revealed itself in a hundred small, glinting moments, not unlike the mackerel on my line, catching the light when I least expect it.
