Back in the 1970s, pasties were what Cornwall was all about. I spent my childhood sitting in a howling gale on a Cornish beach eating a soggy pasty behind a striped wind break, retrieving Auntie K’s straw hat every few minutes when it flew like a drunken Frisbee towards the sea. The weather might not have changed much in the last 40 years, but the food and culture has. Cornwall, has morphed from a county of caravans and pies into a British Babylon.
The renaissance happened in the 1990s when culture started to arrive in Cornwall. The Tate kicked it off — a glittering gallery reflecting the surf of St Ives; intellectuals and aesthetes paying homage to Alfred Wallace, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. Then an outspoken and energetic Dutch record producer masterminded the renovation of the Lost Gardens of Heligan, and everyone remembered that Cornwall was stuffed with the most spectacular gardens in the country, complete with a microclimate for growing all sorts of exotica. Next came the biodomes of Eden, growing everything from bananas to coffee.
At about the same time as the culture arrived, so did the food — Rick Stein opened a fish restaurant in Padstow, and then another one, and then another one, until Padstow was rechristened Padstein. The county wasn’t really into the food: it was those from ‘up country’, in their shiny cars and designer clothes, who really loved the off-the-trawler fresh fish.
After that, you couldn’t stop restaurants opening: Charlie Inkin’s Gurnard’s Head; Will Ashworth managed to persuade Jamie Oliver to bring Fifteen down to his Watergate Bay complex, and Nathan Outlaw won two Michelin stars at his eponymous Rock restaurant.
The Driftwood hotel won a star for its restaurant; the Lugger won plaudits for its boutique style, Watergate Bay went eco and Olga Polizzi’s Tresanton made old-school cool once again. The ‘staycationers’ came in their droves, their Puglian aspirations dampened by too many children and too little cash. Alastair Sawday was to the rescue, creating his Canopy and Stars website to promote childhood nostalgia: yurts, teepees, surf huts, old horseboxes and anything that could possibly be seen as retro was quickly painted, stuffed with Cath Kidston and driven to a clifftop with sunset views and an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ stamp.
So once again, families batten down the hatches of their tents against the driving Cornish rain, although this time they do so with a cappuccino in hand, safe in the knowledge that tonight’s dinner will be ‘hand-dived’ scallops and samphire, not a pasty.