Stein's Fish & Chips — Restaurant in England

It is with a heavy heart that I write this review having seen such a lot of Rick on TV. He has talked a lot about "good food" and "good service" but how does it really stack up?

I gave his Padstow chip shop a try on a super hot day in July with my family for a last day holiday treat. We had avoided the typical standard food on offer in a lot of places in Cornwall and kept the pennies for a nice meal. Sadly the meal was pretty average and service pretty poor. We stood and waited for ages for a table due to slow staff action. Then eventually we ordered. Asking for Starters first of course.

They forgot the jug of water, when we and the  Manager seemed put out when I called her back to order a 2nd beer for £5. They seemed to want to rush around but produced not much. They only have a few tables to serve.

Some time later..... (over half an hour) starters arrived which two were wrong and had to be sent back. To arrive instantly again! Clearly sat there cooked already!  Salad on starters pretty poor and dressing had a huge amount of sesame and not much soy. You don't put thet much oil on a deep fried, battered scallop of course. Sadly both were overcooked!  The dressing needed an emulsifier. Also £10 for three scallops is a touch steep Rick unless they are tip top.

Oyster battered starter tasted good but same salad and dressing issue was there. Shame really.

3 fish and chip meals. They forgot the tartar and mushy peas for one even though it costs extra. Fish was very good and nice size. Chips were dry and not crispy also dry inside. I think they had sat a long time and been left. Not sure about dripping cooked?

Dressed crab special. Sad as at £15 it was very salty and lacked "dressing". Needed more seasoning not salt!

So Rick sadly not the best and we will not be coming back a 2nd time I think.

Also the toilet although nice inside had not been checked all afternoon and between time of arrival and leaving the same cling ons were still there and bins full. But nice to ginger handwash.

They did at least knock of £10 for the poor scallops but I think they can do a lot better overall. It was really not vey busy and the staff are not very sharp. The service slow and food just chip shop pretty much. For £25 each!

Need to look back to Keith Floyd for more...

Oh dear... the chips...

It wasn't the best start to be questioned by the takeaway till operator with a condescending '... is that all?', when I ordered a single portion of chips. And why should I not order a solitary portion of chips when such valuable insight can be gained from a transaction totalling £3.50!?

The chips arrived in an unnecessarily flimsy but nonetheless decent-looking cardboard box looking less like fried potatoes and more like pale, fleshy fingers fished out of a morgue drawer. Their complexion was anaemic, possessing the spectral, clammy translucence of a creature that has never known the sun. Each one lay limp and weary, devoid of the will to live, let alone stand to attention. There was no crispness. No satisfying crunch. Biting into one was like sinking your teeth into a warm, greasy sponge that had given up on life three stages of cooking ago.

The culprit, I suspect, was the cooking medium. Billed as beef dripping, it must have been sourced from an animal that had led a long, miserable life, ruminating on its own failures. The fat tasted ancient, tired, and full of ghosts. It imbued the potatoes with a lingering flavour of industrial weariness and faint, mournful regret.

One does not expect to pay a premium for what is essentially a masterclass in culinary nihilism. For a place with a name like "Rick Stein's Fish & Chips" to fail on the chip is not just an error; it is a fundamental betrayal of a sacred trust. It's like finding out the Pope is an atheist, or that The Queen's Guard are all just cleverly disguised mannequins.

I returned home, a haunted man, and fired up my air fryer. For a fraction of the cost—a pittance, really—I produced a batch of chips so golden, so gloriously crisp, they seemed to mock the memory of the sad, flaccid spectres I had just paid so dearly for.

In conclusion, if you wish to confront the void, to gaze upon a plate and understand the true meaning of disappointment, I cannot recommend the chips at Rick Stein's highly enough. For anyone else who still possesses a soul and a functioning set of taste buds, buy a potato and do it yourself. It's cheaper, and you won't need...

Huge disappointment. Advise to avoid - my mistake going against gut instinct about ‘tourist traps’ and following a crowd. Padstow appears to be owned by Rick Stein (not really, but there are too many places with his name for a small town).

Anyway - as a vegetarian, I consider myself a ‘chip connoisseur’ as I’m partial to the concept of ‘fish and chips by the sea’.

They were old and overcooked, warm temperature-wise (would have requested a fresh, hot batch if we didn’t have an impatient baby with us!) extremely hard and chewy due to the thick, overcooked outer. Flavour wise, bland.

A lonely half empty bottle of sarsons vinegar by way of seasoning. I requested salt and they gave me a rock salt shaker which didn’t grind - large granules fell out (they needed all the seasoning they could get so perhaps this was a lucky bonus). I asked for tomato sauce, the server, looking disgusted at my request, asked ‘how many do you need’ and hastily gave me a few mean plastic sachets of Heinz. A 2 ounce tub of mayonnaise, however, would be £1.50 I was told. Having paid £29 for take-away cod & chips (husband) and a small portion of chips (me) - I felt this to be a little bit tight.

My husband, who happens to know a thing or two about food, ordered some cod with his chips. He said that the cod tasted good, however the batter wasn’t anything to write home about. Aesthetically, a wedge of lemon had served to smash up the fish as the box was closed.

There is nowhere to lean, perch, loiter let alone sit. So, if you want to takeaway, beware, there is no rain shelter, and you will eat standing up unless you can subtly plop your box of chips on the hood of an old Peugeot in the car park. Sadly there were two vans next to where we stood, as well as a good handful of equally duped tourists who were trying to find shelter from the imminent rain. Alas, the only shelter was Rick...