Fowey is a good place for food as there is a wide range of restaurants and food shops. We tried a few during our stay, some old favourites and discovered some new.
We started at Sam’s a seafood brasserie and bar on the high street. Back in the good old days, in the late 1990s, you used to be able to get Lobster and Chips for less than £20. This time they were sold out and the price had gone up.
Sam’s is fun. It’s got a rock n roll vibe with music posters and records decorating the walls and a fun playlist playing in the background. The food is mainly fish and seafood but there are also burgers and steaks for those less inclined to our fishy friends. I’ve never been able to book. You arrive and either you’re seated straight away or you put your name on the list and wait in the bar for a table to come free. The turn around is fairly quick and we were at our table within 20 minutes of arrival. I had the Sam’s platter which was grilled sardines, squid, prawns and mussels. It was a huge plate of food. Tom had Hake with chips and salad, fresh cooked with a spritz of lemon. He said it was excellent. The sardines were the highlight of my dish for the same reasons. The prawns, mussels and squid good but not the stand out item. We had a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that went well with the food. All in all an excellent night out.
Sam’s also has a restaurant on the beach at Polkerris There’s a good walk to it around the Gribbin Head to work up an appetite.
Bistro
This classy restaurant is next door to Sam’s. It’s quieter and aims at a french style dining experience. I hesitate to say it’s fine dining of the Michelin variety. It isn’t that. From the photos on the wall it’s popular with the great and the good that pass through Fowey including Tony Blair and Bill Nighy. The menu was, as you’d expect, fish and seafood based. There’s even a Cornish take on Boullaibaise on the menu along with standards such as Mussels cooked a number of ways.
I liked that a number of dishes could be ordered as a starter or main size course it meant the menu had more options. I ordered a goat’s cheese dish for starters then the crab linguine but couldn’t fit in a pudding. All was nicely presented and cooked well. Altogether a pleasant experience and a good restaurant.
If you like sausages and good meat then this is the place to come. They also have a fantastic delicatessan with a great selection of cheeses and cooked meats. The sausages are outstanding. The meat is so fresh that, even on the boat, the bacon and sausages were safe after 5 days.
This is a new, to us, bakery. I noticed it as I was lamenting the closure of Cry of the Gulls an art gallery next door. We popped in just to see. They make excellent bread and cakes. It’s the tiniest of shops and there were a lot of people crammed in together. Everything seems to sell out so go early.
Places that I would like to have tried:
On Land 