Mermaid Seafood Restaurant

Over rated sea food restaurant only decent menu item is the curry so covering the bland fish and shell fish with sauce. Seafood Por 98% mussels in sauce. So spent over £350 for 8 of us only to leave my wife and I to have severe poisoning from eating their mussels.

If you're in St. Ives and thinking of opening a seafood restaurant, Fish Street would be the obvious location; and then why not call it The Mermaid? Well, it worked on tempting us to try it out. It's only 100m or so from the sea, so the fish should be fresh, right?

The interior is more reminiscent of an Italian restaurant at first glance, as the ceiling is covered with chianti bottles in those quaint raffia holders, each inscribed with a dedication of some sort in black Sharpie. From this, you might deduce that they host a lot of weddings and other functions, and indeed the long table taking up most of the centre of the room promised more company for us during the evening.

Taking up our booth seating in the corner (they seem to have a lot of recycled pews), we settled down to peruse the menu. Surprisingly, it wasn't all seafood; they had a fair selection of 'turf' as well - not that it was of any interest to us as we don't eat it.

I had the Salt & Pepper Squid to start, which was served on a bed of salad with some chilli mayo. The squid was cooked just right, not chewy at all, although I would say that overall the dish wasn't as spicy as its title suggests. The Seafood Soup was the other choice, and that garnered approving noises from across the table. At least they sounded like approving noises - it was hard to hear over the hysterical cackling coming from the large party that had by now occupied the big centre table.

We followed that with the seafood platter, which was the most expensive fish dish on the menu, served with a cute wee fryer basket of chips in the middle of the plate. I was mildly disappointed at the size of the portion initially, but actually it was just perfect as we were pretty stuffed afterwards.

To finish off, Herself was in an indulgent mood and decided to have the cheese selection of Cornish Yarg. Yarg is a local cheese produced by the Gray family (geddit?) and is wrapped in nettles; although this had to be explained to us as the slices were too thin to be able to notice the nettles.

A glass of Taylor's late bottled vintage port each wrapped things up nicely.

This place is fantastic. I read a few articles on "best seafood restaurants in st Ives" and reckoned this place sounded really cosy. Definitely hit the jackpot. My starter was the seafood broth which was absolutely delicious (around £7). Main was the fish platter (around £18) which involved mussels, scallops, John Dory, prawns, and was accompanied by fried cauliflower cheese which was incredible. The surroundings were low lit and welcoming. You have to get yourself along here.