Rejos as the Spanish call them or Tentacles in English. Whatever they are called a lovely bit of octopus is delightful

When we planned this week away we did our food booking before confirming the accommodation dates. Having secured a booking in Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant, on Monday and Paul Ainsworth at No 6, which we will get to on Thursday, we booked the accommodation through Cottages.com. As the time drew nearer we looked at other eating places and opted, on my sister's recommendation, for Barnaby's and St. Petroc's Bistro and decided, as we were going to two of Rick Stein's places, we would also go to a second of Paul Ainsworth's so booked Caffe Rojano. That left two days for which we had booked nowhere.

 

On Saturday, after the treat of Barnaby's on a fishy Friday, we decided to rebook there to try there meat options on a non fast day, so are going on Wednesday night. This left tonight. 

I asked Drew if he had any preferences and he indicated he wanted somewhere lower key. We spotted a restaurant called Burgers and Fish and Drew's, former McDonald's employee, inner-self, suggested that would appeal to him. [Co-pilot's note: I'm sure, dear readers, that there is a leap there that only our favourite food snob could make.]

 

So tonight we climbed the stairs to Burgers and Fish, one floor up on The Strand, near the harbour in Padstow.

As it turned out Burgers and Fish is in the same place as the former Custard restaurant, a favourite of ours on our previous visit to Padstow 14 years ago, though we didn't recognise the connection until seeing the layout of the restaurant. 

We had booked for 7pm and were seated straight away at a nice table with a view out up Church Lane.

For our 'nibble while choosing from the menu' course we opted for Bread, Olives and Balsamic Vinegar and a plate of Crispy Mac and Cheese Bites sprinkled with parmesan with a delicious bacon mayo. 

The olives were in a large pot, given memories of eating too many olives in Jerusalem in what next year will be 40 years ago, I had eight of these and left the rest. The bread worked very well with the balsamic. I let it soak in and used my fork to extract it to get full flavour. 

The mac and cheese bites were delicious small pieces of pasta in tangy cheese cooked in squares covered with batter. The mayo was tangy and unexpected, with no evidence of bacon in it, it had an amazingly rich bacony taste. 

 

It wasn't a conscious plan to continue the theme of seafood from last night, but of all the starters the one that appealed to me most was the Crispy Squid with homemade garlic alioli and burned lemon. The chunks of squid were deep fried in a lovely dry batter, the alioli was garlic pungent and a perfect dip, and I eat the lemon flesh to cleanse my palette. Light, but delicious.

Drew opted for the Greek Salad, often a choice of his when we are in Spain. This was vibrantly coloured and filled with Mediterranean goodness as you can see in the picture. He eat every bit of it. 

My mains was the delightful Rejos, or octopus tentacle. The one large tentacle was charred on the barbeque and carried the smoky taste well. It was curled around lovely finely mashed potatoes which were on top of a lovely romesco sauce. The charredness of the tomatoes and red pepper in the romesco complimenting the charredness of the tentacle. A further char was on offer with the hispi cabbage on top of the potaoes and the whole thing was set off with a tangy gremolata dressing bringing an Italian note to this essentially Spanish dish.

I had a Green Salad on the side, it was extremely generous in size compared to the salads I've had elsewhere this week. It had a wide selection of tasty greens with small pieces of tomato and onion throughout. It was offered with a honey and mustard dressing, but given my distaste for honey I opted to have it with just some seasoning. A younger me might have scorned this salad as rabbit food, but the older and slightly wiser (honest) me really enjoyed all the lovely colours and textures which accompanied the charred delight on the main plate. 

Drew, to his great delight, had a burger, but not just any burger - The Full English Burger, which is essentially a Full English Breakfast, plus burger, in a bun. The amount of burger, bacon, black pudding, cheese, fried egg, lettuce, tomato, gherkin and onion piled between the top and bottom of this bun made it almost as tall as Drew's head. As he prepared to insert it in his mouth I wondered if it was going to eat him before he had eaten it - but he survived the encounter and managed to squeeze his treat into his mouth! [Co-pilot's note: It was like a modern day Beowulf.]

The burger was served with fries that tasted very like the fries that are so ubiquitous in the USA, he had these with mayonnaise. 

Drew's dessert, Chocolate Brownie Sundae, was also intimidatingly large. A traditional sundae glass served filled to the brim and beyond with home baked brownie pieces, chocolate sauce, honeycomb and caramel ice cream might have looked intimidating, but it didn't last for very long. 

My delight at finding yet another restaurant with a cheese course was enhanced with the fact that they were offering only Cornish Cheese. The delight reached even greater heights when it became clear, on arrival, that the chef here likes cheese and understands it needs to be eaten in sizeable chunks not little slivers. 

The cheeses were Cornish Blue from Knowle Farm, St. Endellion Brie from Trevarrian and Davidstow Cheddar from Davidstow. Each was delightful in their own right, the crumbly brie had a tang that would mature with age, the cheddar tannins were rich and earthy, but the Blue was just mindboggalingly wonderful, better still there were two chunks of it.

After two sharp espressos made with Italian coffee we were replete and happy, ready to make our way back up to our accommodation, we arrived back at 9:45pm.