Kota Food & Wine — Restaurant in England

We've been wanting to come here for years as we're huge fans of the owner, Jude Kereama, following his appearances on Great British Menu so we were incredibly excited to finally get the chance to sample his food!

The Amuse Bouche was a parsnip soup with a mint raita and coriander oil along with a porcini mushroom macaroon, filled with duck liver pate! The macaroon, in particular, was absolutely mind blowing!

On to the scallops and pork belly... I didn't think those two elements would work well together and that it would be two delicious elements on the same plate. However, they complimented each other beautifully! And the little pickled elements were amazing! Wish there was a little bit more of them to be honest!

Then the Venison Carpaccio - the dish we were most nervous about as we haven't ever really eaten venison and carpaccio is always a bit scary given it's pretty much raw but it was the star of the show! The venison itself was so delicate and creamy and the dish, as a whole, was so perfectly balanced! Just a joy to eat!

Next, we had Hake Au Vin. I was so intrigued by this dish because Coq Au Vin is something we use to cook a lot and is, generally, considered a bit of a peasants dish. The hake was cooked perfectly and was absolutely sublime! The dish was deep, rich and delicious! Pretty simple food, executed perfectly!

Following the hake, we had our second main with the duck dish. This was actually our least favourite as the flavours of swede and duck were both pretty mild so they tended to blend together without a stand out flavour. However, the duck leg spring roll was an absolute flavour bomb!! Give me a place of those with some of that gorgeous hoi sin and I'd be a very happy man!

Dessert time! I'm not a big fan of coconut so was a bit nervous about this dish as there was 3 different coconut elements on the plate... However, this dish really does sum up my attitude that you should just trust chefs of this level because it was, alongside the venison, the best of the dishes! The mango mousse and coconut sorbet were just heavenly together! Especially when you throw in some delicious roasted pineapple!

And then we had another dessert I was nervous about - always give me strawberries over raspberries as I'd always rather have the sweetness over the sharpness! And, to be honest, I wouldn't have enjoyed this if it was just the raspberry sorbet but the combination with the intensely sweet white chocolate mousse was absolutely perfect!

What an absolutely stunning meal!

Cannot wait...

My wife and I have dinned at Kota since it opened and have really enjoyed great food and service . Usually we have dinned there on the last day of our holiday in Porthleven. A lovely end to a lovely holiday. We popped into Kota at lunchtime about 10 days before our meal and booked a table for our last night. As it turned out it was the head waiter that took our booking. We had to provide bank card details and were told that if we cancelled with less than 24 hrs notice we would be charged £30. On arrival and looking forward to our meal, we were given a table adjacent to the door and bar counter, which is outside the main restaurant seating area which was disappointing. A waitress then came over and presented us with a menu and welcomed us to, as she put it " a dining experience with a difference." The menu had if I remember correctly 8 items on and you could choose 4 for just under £50 or 6 for just under £70. It was a taster menu. When the waitress returned I asked if there was another menu, ie. a la carte and table d'hote. There wasn't one. Nobody had said at the time of booking that there was only a taster menu. We wanted a good meal to celebrate our holiday and we weren't going to get it, and if we upped and left they had my card details and I would be £30 out of pocket. We expressed our disappointment to both the waitress and the head waiter both who said that the restaurant had always done it like this. This we disputed with them and told them that we had been coming there for many years. In the end we resigned our selves to having 4 items off the taster menu. My wife only had 3 items as that was all she could find on the menu that she liked. Yes, the quality of the food was good but 15-20 minutes between each taster or mouthful was very frustrating when you had set out to have a quality meal with which to celebrate and end a lovely holiday and felt trapped because we had already given our card details . The head waiter made a 15% reduction to the bill, but it did not compensate for one of the most disappointing dinning...

I booked for myself and friends to have lunch here as a birthday celebration in late September and had been looking forward to it for some time as the reviews were excellent. As we are all small business owners and have busy schedules we decided on lunch rather than dinner as it was easier to congregate during the day. I wish we hadn't, I couldn't have been more disappointed. The staff seemed mostly bored to be there and gave the general impression that a Tuesday afternoon really was of no great importance to them. I mentioned at the time of booking that one friend was a coeliac but we had to remind them when we sat down as they didn't even know. They hurriedly defrosted some very generic supermarket style gluten free bread and bought it to the table still warm from the microwave. There were 2 female staff seated in the small bar are, one on a computer who rather blatantly sniggered and commented to each other on my dress as I was going to the toilet which I found bizarrely rude and uncomfortable. The drinks and food were relatively adequate but I've been a chef for 20 years and I can tell when someone is excited by the food they are producing, I felt the same about the attitude of the chefs as I did about the rest of the staff ~ 'hey its just a Tuesday arvo, whatever...' The vegetarian option was just a little odd to be fair, there's more to Plantbased cuisine than throwing a random amount of vegetables together on the plate and hoping for the best... Having all of them hot would have been a bonus too... I won't go on, needless to say I haven't recommended to anyone since. I can only hope they make a bit more effort with the evening service. If you are not really feeling it, I would bother opening for lunch, it's...