A Sense of Plaice

Gurnard's Head. Treen. Cornwall

It is not the last pub in England. There may be one or two others further out toward Land’s End, but it’s in the hamlet of Treen in the Parish of Zennor, and Zennor’s the last parish in England. That might be alphabetically … but you feel it geographically. So though my understanding of matters ecclesial may be shaky, I’m going to go out on a limb here. If there’s a pub further west than the Gurnard’s Head, God probably doesn’t know about it.

I drove out to it from the nearest large conurbation, the sprawling, neon-smirched Sodom and Gomorrah of the West Country they call St Ives/Carbis Bay. We were somewhere outside of Boswydnek on the B3306 when the bats appeared. Bats, birds, a couple of ex-badgers and something that might, in the half-light, have been a panther.

Christ, it’s a long way. I mean, it’s beautiful... insane, savage, eldritch beauty. People say it’s romantic, but I find it incomprehensible and hallucinogenic - it scares me worse than Lovecraft. Take the wrong turn out here after dark and you might just get eaten by a hill.

SatNav says it’s 15 miles, but then it also says it’s 45 minutes. It took 55. And my average speed was 45mph. That’s not just amusing; it’s messing with our comprehension of space and time.

But then, suddenly, it’s there. A long, low, indisputably agricultural structure, painted, for no reason anyone can explain, in the exact shade of orange the RNLI use for lifeboats. Maybe they heard about a truckful of paint heading for Penzance and lured it off the road and onto the rocks. In case you’re catastrophically drunk, driving in thick fog or piloting a rescue helicopter (all equally likely round here), they’ve painted, in metre-high letters on the roof, THE GURNARDS HEAD HOTEL.

The place has been significant for a while now. It was bought in 2006 by Charles and Edmund Inkin who, since the turn of the century, had been running the screamingly successful Griffin in Felin Fach, Monmouthshire. Charles trained at Ballymaloe, and the influence on the menu - in fact, the general vibe at the Gurnard’s is palpable, but it’s the delivery, from head chef Chris Angove, that’s utterly exceptional.

Though it’s been around since gastropubs started being gastropubs, and could easily claim OG status, it really isn’t. The Gurnard’s Head is really a pub. A proper one, with randomly accreted, instead of highly curated stuff. People park muddy quad bikes outside and nip in for a pint on the way home, seemingly oblivious to the international food appreciators who’ve travelled bloody weeks to get here. As I drove in, I hid my car between a pair of vast blacked-out SUVs, built like a couple of oligarchs’ battle-tanks. As I went to leave, I found myself bracketed by two knackered VW buses, occupied by blissed-out couples, living the “van life” and looking for somewhere to drain their feral offsping so they wouldn’t have to spend the night, kettled with a bucket of warm child pee.

Uptight, no. Formal, it is emphatically not. Artisan crockery? Possibly... but not... y’know, actually matching. More ... enthusiastic.

I don’t particularly want to trawl through the entire menu because a) I’m not being paid, so I don’t have to b) it was uniformly phenomenal, and c) it changes, as you’d hope, with what is good at any time. Which, on the evening I went, was whole plaice.

In truth, I’m not a zealot for plaice. It’s a joyless flatfish. Inshore they are small, adolescent. Inland, you get it served in posh restaurants where it feels like a hangover from Edwardian fine dining. So delicate that there’s no possibility anyone might smell, y’know... fish. Denuded of bone, skin, history and character. Meuniered to within an inch of its life, and offered through primly taught lips, ‘And may I recommend for the lady... the plaice?’

Inland plaice is genteel, jejune*, un-fish with the texture of barely set semen.

But out here on the Head, where the sea has spent the last aeon trying to tear the granite out from underneath you in at least three directions. Plaice is something else.

Or maybe it’s just Chris Angove.

It’s not been been messed with much. They probably didn’t have time between pulling the hook out of its lip and slamming it on my plate. It’s not huge, but it’s hench. A wiry little fucker, muscled like a tin-miners forearm. And Angrove clearly knows this, because he doesn’t tit around with it like some culinary fluffer. He doesn’t mince about dicing skinless cucumber into a beurre blanc...

BTW. WTF is that all about? An insistently, performatively ‘delicate’ sauce. It shrieks from the menu “order me if you fret that people might think you’re unattractively assertive”. I mean, Jesus... what kind of Jane Austen-grade bollocks...

I digress.

Angrove puts it out grilled. And then he sticks a load of flavoured butter on it. And then he mounds up powerful, fighty things... not because the fish needs it... but because he knows it can take it.

Shallots, samphire, capers. Proper flavours that poke you in the chest and accuse you of stealing their pint. Particularly because they know they’ve got backup. That butter is fiercely, properly lemony and shot through with almonds. A textural trick stolen from military technology. Like the polystyrene beads in Napalm-B, the crushed almonds are there to make sure the effective stuff sticks.

Monkfish done ‘scampi’-style would have been good enough, but dipped in a fresh curry aioli and sprinkled with house-made dukkha ... c’mon! Positively Shavian wit. Scallops... what can I say? Hours out of the water and grilled with loads of butter. No Notes. How could I dare?

My companion opted for the “Ribeye of beef, hash brown, charred padrón pepper, green chutney, chimichurri”, (God... I’ve *always* wanted to write that. I should probably finish with “...which was to-die for, especially when washed down with an indulgent glass of Picpoul. Nom Nom!!!”) but, in fact, it was constructed on a very similar armature to the plaice. A well-chosen bit of something very local, cooked à point and then buttressed with a kind of muscular brio. Padrón, chutney and chimi? Together at last? Hell yeah. Why on earth not, when each element is house-made with a preternatural talent for flavour and balance.

Seriously. It was an outstanding meal on every level. But the plaice was something else. A perfect evocation of a much grander thought.

I reckon it’s a Ballymaloe thing...

1. Find what’s beautiful, right where you are

2. Don’t fuck with it

3. When you do, do it “For Cause”.

4. Commit.

Everything at the Gurnard’s Head lives this like a creed.

But the plaice was the ultimate expression.

*I did it! I got it in! I’ve been trying to casually slip jejune into conversation since Adrienne Lowry took me to see ‘Manhattan’ at the Bournemouth Odeon in 1979.