In the Navy

Photo © Rob Jones

Herein lies a lesson well learned ….

In these days of shrinkflation, where restaurants and supermarkets are making things smaller to keep the price low, I wish to sing the praises of the Navy Inn in Penzance. It’s an unashamedly ‘local’ pub, without the trappings of the big corporates selling decent beer and even more decent food.

In a gang we tried it on the off chance because the weather was appalling and we didn’t want to stray far from the hotel, and arrived in a chaos of five very wet people and two even wetter dogs. Slightly off season there was clearly no need to book, though we did, and so taken to our table straight away.

A brief but enticing menu which catered for all tastes, including the coeliac amongst us, but what amazed me were the portions. I opted for what turned out to be the best Seafood Linguini I had ever tasted. I was simply bowled over by the amount and variety of seafood it contained, and the flavour fo the Alfredo sauce was fabulous.

The bottom line was - we came back again, the next night and ate it all again.

Had the meal been so-so, you can be sure we would have moved on to try the next place along the road.

As far as I could tell, the recipe was as follows:

Make some pasta, linquini or fettuccini, drain and keep a little liquid.

Sautee some garlic in butter on a low heat, adding a splash of white wine, once it begins to brown.

Add some cream, cracked black pepper and good quality Parmesan. Allow it to thicken a little.

Add the pasta and seafood - I spotted prawns, salmon chunks, what looked like hake, and calamari rings. Add a sprinkling of parsley.

Introduce some of the pasta water to get it to the right consistancy.

Serve with crusty bread, a little parsley and Parmesan.

And the lesson? Don’t be stingy and people will come and come again.