(^20) Cornwall Life: August 2019
the history of that place. It’s got a lot of my
signature dishes in there, and things that
you might find a bit more difficult to cook
- everything in there you can do, it might
just take a bit more time and effort.”
And like any high-flying restaurateur
with a deep-rooted appreciation for
environs, Outlaw is quick to heap praise on
his culinary contemporaries who ensure
the county is a place where visitors are
“going to struggle to know where to go
because there are so many good places”.
“You’re going to get food envy from
somewhere that’s for sure,” he smiles.
“There’s a really good street food place
called Craftworks, they’re doing really
well. And then there’s a place called
Hidden Hut – I can’t even get in there,
which is quite frustrating.
“The best restaurant that has opened
in the last couple of years, for me, is
Coombeshead Farm, which is run by a
guy called Tom Adams who used to be at
Pitt Cue in London. It’s the whole farm-
to-table thing: they have their own pigs
and chickens, they’re doing everything
themselves, they’ve got their own bakery,
they’ve got their own bees; it’s a lot more
than just cooking; that’s really good.”
‘You’re going
to get the best
seafood that
you’re ever
going to eat’
Outlaw does admit that, for all of his
obvious affection for Cornwall’s vibrant
culinary attractions, a short hop across the
Bay of Biscay led to his personal piscine
nirvana.
“I was filming five or six years ago in
North Spain, just outside of San Sebastian,
and we went to place called Getaria,” he
says. “The restaurant is called Kaia Kaipe;
they grill all the fish on these big charcoal
grills, and we stumbled upon it because we
were fishing for squid for this TV show. The
crew had arranged this restaurant for us to
cook at to do that segment of the show. And
I saw these guys doing the fish on these big
grills, and I just said: ‘we have to eat here’.
And everyone was telling me, ‘no, Nathan,
we have to go on to the next place.’ So, I
said, ‘tell you what, I’ll pay for everyone,
we just have to eat here.’
“I got the whole crew to sit down, there
were about 12 of us, and it was just whole
turbots, and whole breams, and all this
tuna that they canned themselves. The
year after, because I was so impressed by it,
I took my dad for his 60th birthday because
he loves seafood. It’s a really amazing
place. It was all really simple, but it was
just mind-blowing.” Photo: David LoftusNathan Outlaw admits he didn’t really like fish when growing up