Whilst out on a jolly on Monday, I was fortunate enough to walk out into the sunshine in Truro and find myself in the middle of my first St. Piran’s Day parade with the local schools, corporations and officials joined together to progress to the beautiful Cathedral to celebrate the county’s heritage in a procession of Cornish spirit. I was enraptured to see the large amount of support involved in keeping the tradition alive, celebrating the Patron Saint of Tin Miners, with activities also organised all over the rest of Cornwall for the occasion. This experience stirred a proud and happy feeling of patriotism, and while this was a slightly fraudulent emotion having only been a North Coast resident for a couple of years, I make up for this technicality by immersing myself in everything Cornish and genuinely considering myself very lucky to be part of such a lovely culture.
This county’s unique personality is homemade from many communities networked together within the 296 miles of stunning coastline, each with a friendliness and passion to welcome anyone to the area, whether its for relaxing holiday or to permanently build a life here. Everyone seems to possess a unanimous homing-pigeon gene, whereby being anywhere else in the world can be blissful, but that knowing smile will always creep out when passing the sign on the border into Cornwall.
And all this love, without even mentioning the produce – a new record for me! At the restaurant, Cornish produce is something we are proud to showcase, altering it only with the purpose of bringing out and marrying natural flavours. In 2011, we were greeted with our lovely produce weeks early, due to the gorgeous Cornish weather and growing conditions, causing our guests to look incredulously at our menu. Aside from the fish, which is known nationwide for its quality and freshness, we are now greatly looking forward to our seasonal fruit and vegetables this year.
As we head into spring our local greens and baby vegetables are blooming, taking us into St. Enodoc asparagus and gooseberry season (a favourite of mine), then onto the heaven that is the local sweet summer fruit. At the moment we are also experiencing the excitement of our kitchen garden in Porthilly getting underway; as Danny lovingly turns the soil by hand we sow the first seeds and look forward to our very local Nathan Outlaw garden produce.
With all this beauty and the mouth-watering dishes before you it really is futile trying to put Cornwall on the back burner, instead come and share it with us now while the beauty is flourishing and serenity fills the fresh Cornish air!
